Deserving victimhood: kinship, emotions and morality in contemporary politics

Politics, Kinship, and Ecology in Southeast Persia

The Iranian plateau is an ideal area for investigating the relationship be? tween ecological and sociological factors because of its stark aridity, on the one hand, and its historical role as a meeting place of ethnic and cultural movements on the other. The part of the plateau which forms the southeast corner of Persia is particularly interesting from this point of view. Over an area of some 2...

Toward an Integrative Jurisprudence: Politics, Morality, History

Digital enthymeme: morality, emotions, and materialism in new media participation

In this article, I discuss moral and rhetorical challenges in new media discourse concerning celebrities. I focus on the concept of digital enthymeme, that is, an online comment evaluating people negatively or positively without articulated reasoning, but, instead, letting online participants find proofs by themselves in a digital environment surrounded by pictures, texts, links, and videos. Th...

Kinship-based politics and the optimal size of kin groups.

Kin form important political groups, which change in size and relative inequality with demographic shifts. Increases in the rate of population growth increase the size of kin groups but decrease their inequality and vice versa. The optimal size of kin groups may be evaluated from the marginal political product (MPP) of their members. Culture and institutions affect levels and shapes of MPP. Dif...

Sexual Morality: The Cultures and Emotions of Conservatives and Liberals1

Political conservatives and liberals were interviewed about 3 kinds of sexual acts: homosexual sex, unusual forms of masturbation, and consensual incest between an adult brother and sister. Conservatives were more likely to moralize and to condemn these acts, but the differences were concentrated in the homosexual scenarios and were minimal in the incest scenarios. Content analyses reveal that ...