The Social World
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When humans form communities, they are capable of banding together in groups of almost any size: from two-person couples to international organizations.
In this promo shot, two Asian men share cigarettes with two European men after a generous, seafood picnic along the Pacific coast of North Korea in 2014. (Uri, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Table of Contents
Books (13)
Featured:
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⭐ Recommended326 pages
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⭐ Recommended160 pages
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⭐ Recommended499 pages[recommended but under copyright]
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341 pages[recommended but under copyright]
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Canonical Works (14)
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… can you point out a fruit of giving that’s apparent in the present life?
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… seven principles that prevent decline
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You can get to know a person’s ethics by living with them. But only after a long time, not casually; only when attentive, not when inattentive; and only by the wise, not by the witless.
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Possessions, honor, and popularity are brutal, bitter, and harsh.
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Readings (36)
Featured:
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⭐ Recommended
Humans have cooperative sentiments usually assumed to be absent in rational choice theories. On the other hand, the slow rate at which cooperative institutions evolve suggests that considerable friction will afflict our ability to grow up commons management institutions where they do not already exist and to readapt existing institutions to rapid technological and economic change.
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⭐ Recommended
The panic attacks started after Chloe watched a man die.
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⭐ Recommended
… these hours were often spent in the company of close friends: women and adolescent girls used the twilight to enjoy the company of female friends, while some youth reported visiting friends’ houses where they played and listened to music, completed their homework or chatted. Others spent their pocket money on movies or karaoke.
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⭐ Recommended
… studies gave statistically significant positive results indicating that people really could tell when they were being looked at from behind
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… engineering education successfully turns potential critics into agents of cultural reproduction
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Dharma principles are manifested in the social construction of norms and beliefs and in the ways macro-level social structures and change are founded on micro-level social interactions embedded in mundane moments
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Hearing about the latest reality TV show with 20 beautiful women chasing after a rich bachelor, watching a commercial showing a woman getting excited about a kitchen cleaner, or even taking a class with a White instructor are all ways the environment can conspire to make us think about our social identities.
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… humans exhibit a tendency to identify, adopt, and enforce the norms of their local communities.
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… ways of understanding their [group’s] distinctiveness which challenge dominant characterizations with the goal of greater self-determination
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Sexual harassment is more prevalent for women supervisors than for women employees.
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In World War II, Britain invented the electronic computer. By the 1970s, its computing industry had collapsed—thanks to a labor shortage produced by sexism.
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⭐ Recommended
Pride is a highly pleasant emotion; this internal reward can incentivize people to undertake and persevere at costly but socially valued courses of action. Pride has a full-body display featuring an erect and expanded posture and gaze directed at the audience and thus it appears to generate common knowledge about the individual’s enhanced value. This display conveys achievement and dominance, is produced by congenitally blind individuals, and is recognized by young children and by adults across cultures.
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… feeling close to the match is associated with an 86% increase in the probability of assimilation of political views. Our analysis also uncovers an asymmetry: Interacting with someone with opposite views greatly reduced feelings of closeness; however, interacting with someone with consistent views only moderately increased them.
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⭐ Recommended
… studies suggest that diversity statements [should] be aspirational, emphasize autonomy, and express a value for difference
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… municipalities of Spain with a history of a stronger inquisitorial presence show lower economic performance, educational attainment, and trust today. The effects persist after controlling for historical indicators of religiosity and wealth
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When I took the stand at the trial in San Francisco in 1993 I could not have done worse…
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Participants who were asked to talk with another person expected to learn significantly less from the conversation than they actually reported learning afterward, regardless of whether they had conversation prompts and whether they had the goal to learn (experiments 1 and 2). Undervaluing conversation does not stem from having systematically poor opinions of how much others know (experiment 3) but is instead related to the inherent uncertainty involved in conversation itself.
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Hannah Arendt knew what was at stake. In 1951, she published a hefty book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which traced the roots of what was happening in Europe…
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⭐ Recommended
Therapy assumes that someone is sick and that there is a cure, e.g., a personal solution. I am greatly offended that I or any other woman is thought to need therapy in the first place. Women are messed over, not messed up! We need to change the objective conditions, not adjust to them.
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An inability to engage with our communities hurts everyone
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Aśvaghoṣa twice refers to a story in which the ṛṣi Vyāsa was kicked by a prostitute…
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A community is defined by four criteria: membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection.
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… a simple guide that shows you the term isn’t as cringey or scary as it’s all made out to be
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Of course, there will be instances where a stranger will not be amenable to your overtures (this isn’t permission to harass people on the street), but your intention should be to brighten someone’s day without worrying what they think about you.
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… during this season we remember and celebrate the lives of all our departed loved ones
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… a defense against reality
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The song goes on forever then it stops. Its basic idea is that time can be defeated for an hour if everyone breathes together, but songs are not made out of ideas
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Audio/Video (50)
Featured:
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🥇 Best of
An explanation of the fundamental asymmetry between matrilineal and patrilineal societies which gave rise to the patriarchy along with an examination of the forces pushing back against it.
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⭐ Recommended
… in order to understand the truth of any situation, you have to start from the position that every person is equally valuable, and that what they have to say must be heard. And whether that is in a clique where somebody is being shunned and blamed for everything, or whether that’s an entire class of people whose experiences are not taken into account, it’s the same formula from the bottom to the top: let everyone speak and let everyone be heard.
62 min -
⭐ Recommended
I would frequently see adults recount something a child had said that was particularly provocative or deep by describing it as “adorable.” “How cute they are.” Even well-meaning adults just kind of dismiss children’s larger questions and ideas.
59 min -
… how we see the world is dependent upon what we expect to see
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What should have been a difficult few months turned into 30 years of bloodshed and mayhem in Northern Ireland.
44 min -
We always say “Nobody knew,” and that means that everyone who knew was a nobody.
1h 45m -
… how do you come to understand, make sense of, listen to, take seriously the observations and the reflections that come from people’s lived experiences?
1h 27m -
⭐ Recommended
Back in the 1930s, Alan Lomax traveled the country recording obscure musicians of all stripes for the Library of Congress. Lomax believed that the culture of poor Americans was important, and worthy of saving. And it was these same beliefs that led to an investigation by the FBI.
27 min -
… two stories of people trying to figure out what to say or if they should say anything in this moment of backlash.
60 min -
… the fight for disability rights in the UK and India, the remarkable life of Helen Keller, how a Rwandan Paralympic volleyball team made history, and the invention of the Invacar
53 min -
22 min -
We wrote our names all over the city because we felt invisible. And it was fun. I existed when I did graffiti.
40 min -
Why do we see more information [about other people’s stuggles] as threatening rather than as clarifying? At the point that we can see that things are hard for all of us, then we [should] know that it’s a structural problem.
36 min -
Deepa’s Russian pens pals were obsessed with Bollywood
33 min -
… the kind of tragedy that befell Tierney and her daughter can be averted if we appeal to the better parts of human nature
31 min -
On the six stories we tell to justify ownership.
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🥇 Best of
Each year, Ma collects more and more superstitions
5 min -
13 min -
You read the road as if it’s encrypted with what a father should say on a drive like this.
13 min -
12 min -
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i open the screen door slowly
n wait for Abuela n her red walker
to begin the procession
from the back door out to the street5 min -
Morning: walking my neighborhood, I come upon a colony
of ants busy at work…5 min -
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth5 min -
I too have had my hands full of what keeps me
contained…5 min -
Across from me she
was crying badly…5 min -
We were thirty-one souls, he said, in the gray-sick of sea…
5 min -
The people I love the best
jump into work5 min -
all those bodies in Departures
are naked under clothes and scarred5 min -
when the day calls i will answer
5 min
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