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Social Instability (social + instability)
Selected AbstractsRelative abundance of males to females affects behaviour, condition and immune function in a captive population of dark-eyed juncos Junco hyemalisJOURNAL OF AVIAN BIOLOGY, Issue 3 2007Timothy J. Greives Relative numbers of males and females in breeding groups may vary from expected values owing to a variety of factors. To determine how sex ratio might influence individual phenotypes in a captive population of dark-eyed juncos Junco hyemalis during the breeding season, we established three treatment groups: a male-biased (2:1), equal (1:1), and female-biased group (1:2). Within-group density (birds/m2) was constant across groups. We assessed the frequency of flight chases (a proxy for social instability), measured changes in body mass and pectoral muscle condition, assayed plasma levels of testosterone (T) and compared cell-mediated immunity of individuals. We found significantly more chases in the male-biased group than in the female-biased group. Birds in the male-biased group lost more mass and displayed poorer pectoral-muscle condition than birds in the equal group. Cell-mediated immune responses were reduced in individuals in the male-biased group in comparison to the female-biased group. Plasma T levels in both sexes did not vary with sex ratio. Collectively, these results suggest that during the breeding season, social instability is greater in male-biased populations, and instability may lead to decreased general health and vigour. [source] The crisis of masculinity: Class, gender, and kindly power in post-Mao ChinaAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2010JIE YANG ABSTRACT In this article, I examine how Chinese state enterprises sustain social stability in the wake of mass unemployment caused by privatization. At the same time that China, in its attempt to sustain stability, unmakes, or remakes, state workers into entrepreneurial subjects, it attempts to remake itself as a benevolent patriarchal government exercising kindly power. State enterprises translate labor unrest into a crisis of masculinity and the sustaining of stability into governing men and masculinity. For men, mass unemployment has meant the loss of virility associated with life-tenured employment, and this loss of livelihood and virility results in social instability, which is embodied in the unemployed male. Male workers then use the language of gender and family and translate it back into an expression of class antagonism. [source] The Nature of Stability in the Augustan AgePARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 1 2009RICHARD CONNORS This article seeks to synthesise aspects of recent research on the Augustan age and consider the longevity of the interpretations of the period provided in the late 1960s by Geoffrey Holmes and Jack Plumb. More particularly, it reconsiders the nature of political and social instability in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and examines the arguments historians now offer to account for the diminution of the strife and discord that characterised the rage of party under Queen Anne and the difference between that late Stuart polity and the seemingly more stable and politically placid Georgian period. Furthermore, it considers the broader social and economic conditions of the Augustan age and seeks to show the importance contemporary debates over moral reform, poverty and poor relief had for social stability in the decades after the Glorious Revolution. [source] Een-Gonyama Gonyama!: Zulu Origins of the Boy Scout Movement and the Africanisation of Imperial BritainPARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 1 2008TIMOTHY PARSONS British imperialists in the late 19th century denigrated non-western cultures in rationalising the partition of Africa, but they also had to assimilate African values and traditions to make the imperial system work. The partisans of empire also romanticised non-western cultures to convince the British public to support the imperial enterprise. In doing so, they introduced significant African and Asian elements into British popular culture, thereby refuting the assumption that the empire had little influence on the historical development of metropolitan Britain. Robert Baden-Powell conceived of the Boy Scout movement as a cure for the social instability and potential military weakness of Edwardian Britain. Influenced profoundly by his service as a colonial military officer, Africa loomed large in Baden-Powell's imagination. He was particularly taken with the Zulu. King Cetshwayo's crushing defeat of the British army at Isandhlawana in 1879 fixed their reputation as a ,martial tribe' in the imagination of the British public. Baden-Powell romanticised the Zulus' discipline, and courage, and adapted many of their cultural institutions to scouting. Baden-Powell's appropriation and reinterpretation of African culture illustrates the influence of subject peoples of the empire on metropolitan British politics and society. Scouting's romanticised trappings of African culture captured the imagination of tens of thousands of Edwardian boys and helped make Baden-Powell's organisation the premier uniformed youth movement in Britain. Although confident that they were superior to their African subjects, British politicians, educators, and social reformers agreed with Baden-Powell that ,tribal' Africans preserved many of the manly virtues that had been wiped by the industrial age. [source] Serotonergic influences on life-history outcomes in free-ranging male rhesus macaquesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY, Issue 8 2007Sue Howell Several studies have demonstrated that nonhuman primate males with low cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of the serotonin metabolite 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) exhibit antisocial behavior patterns. Included in these deleterious patterns are impulse control deficits associated with violence and premature death. No studies to date have longitudinally studied the long-term outcome of young subjects with low CSF 5-HIAA concentrations as they mature into adults. In this study we examined longitudinal relations among serotonergic and dopaminergic functioning, as reflected in CSF metabolite concentrations, aggression, age at emigration, dominance rank, and mortality in free-ranging rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) males. Our results indicate long-term consistency of individual differences in levels of 5-HIAA in CSF in the subject population from the juvenile period of development through adulthood. We found a significant negative correlation between 5-HIAA concentrations measured in juveniles and rates of high-intensity aggression in the same animals as adults. Further, CSF 5-HIAA concentrations were lower in juveniles that died than in animals that survived. For the young animals that migrated there was a positive correlation between CSF 5-HIAA concentration and age at emigration, whereas for the animals that remained in their troop until later in sexual maturity there was a negative correlation between CSF 5-HIAA concentration and age of emigration. After animals emigrated to a new troop, social dominance rank in the new troop was positively correlated with early family social dominance rank, but inversely correlated with juvenile CSF 5-HIAA concentrations. Taken together, our findings suggest that males with low central serotonin levels early in life delay migration and show high levels of violence and premature death, but the males that survive achieve high rank. These findings indicate that longitudinal measures of serotonergic and dopaminergic functioning are predictive of major life-history outcomes in nonhuman primate males. Low concentrations of CSF 5-HIAA are associated with negative life-history patterns characterized by social instability and excessive aggression, and positive life-history patterns characterized by higher dominance rank. Am. J. Primatol. 69:851,865, 2007. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] | |||||||||||||