They say that ideology is like breath: you never smell your own.1 And so I was not surprised to see my book The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity described as ‘ideological’ by reviewers who strike me as black pots in glass houses casting the first stone. By the same token, it is not easy for an author to defend himself against such an accusation: ‘I am not ideologi...

Michael Mann criticizes class reductionist theories of the capitalist state which described the state as an organization for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie (504). While he acknowledged that Marx had a point in this regard, he insists that Marx had “underestimated the constraints on capitalism that moralideological and party-democratic crystallizations might bring.” My question to Micha...

Abstract Nature is never at a steady state. Natural history generated by ever-new and ever-interacting forces that produce continuous changes. At virtually all timescales, the geological record shows these changes do not cancel each other out and, thus, state utopic. However, we need of equilibrium as starting point for modelling Nature, steady-state condition widely used reference in idealisat...

‘Non-state armed groups’ refers to groups who retain the potential to deploy arms for political, economic and ideological objectives, which in practice are often translated into an open challenge to the authority of the state. In principle, non-state armed groups and political parties/movements are perceived as two opposite models of approach to democratic political processes. However, given th...

Synaptic vesicle protein 2B (SV2B) was identified by the subtraction hybridization technique as a molecule of which mRNA expression was decreased in puromycin aminonucleoside (PAN) nephropathy by glomerular cDNA subtraction assay. The expression of SV2B was detected in glomerular lysate with Western blot analysis. Dual-labeling immunofluorescence studies with glomerular cell markers demonstrate...

The subject of religious experience has been marginalised in the social sciences. Although authors such as James (1903) have suggested that religious experience is pre-cultural and pre-cognitive, this paper argues against the perennialist position, suggesting instead that religious experience and its narration are both socially constructed. The ideological role of religious experience is discus...

Communication in the media about climate change in the United States is complicated by the intensely ideologically polarized state of the debate surrounding the issue; moral rhetoric is an important dimension of how ideology is communicated. In this study we examined how moral rhetoric regarding this issue differs on the basis of a publication's perceived ideological lean. To address the questi...

The colonial category of mestizo was an ideological tool that shaped national identity in the post-revolutionary period in Mexico. The Indian-mestizo axis functioned to organize the ethnic and political interactions of the state. Doctors and anthropologists reinforced this dual taxonomy in studies of human populations, using biomedical markers to produce differentiated descriptions of the India...