A doctrine with roots in eighteenth century thought, liberalism emerged in the nineteenth century as the prevailing ideology of Western capitalist societies and democracies. Philosophically, liberalism consists of a commitment to the ideals of equality, liberty, individuality, and rationality. However, liberals have divided over their social and political implications. Some liberals have believ...

Contemporary societies are often “polarized”, in the sense that sub-groups within these societies hold stably opposing beliefs, even when there is a fact of the matter. Extant models of polarization do not capture the idea that some beliefs are true and others false. Here we present a model, based on the network epistemology framework of Bala and Goyal [”Learning from neighbors”, Rev. Econ. Stu...

Although genomic studies suggest that natural selection in humans is ongoing, the strength of selection acting on particular characteristics in human populations has rarely been measured. Positive selection on male wealth appears to be a recurrent feature of human agrarian and pastoralist societies, and there is some evidence of it in industrial populations, too. Here we investigate the strengt...

From the process of organic evolution to the analysis of insect societies as self-organizing systems, biology is full of awe-inspiring examples of complexity arising from simplicity. Yet in the contemporary study of animal cognition, demonstrations that complex human-like behavior arises from simple mechanisms rather than from 'higher' processes, such as insight or theory of mind, are often see...

̄ Ibis document gives a short background Io Societies of Compulafion (SoC). Societies of Computation bri gs together and exLcnds ideas from contemporary research in Disu’ibuled AI, CSCW and HCI design. SoC serves as a common framework for re.~.earch projects at SICS, at the University of Ronneby-Karlskrona and at the University of Lund

This article is focused on some conditions in today’s world of globalized media, which are producing either an uncritical acquiescence or fright in Muslim societies as a result of the interaction between these societies and the contemporary Western powers that represent modernity and postmodernity on the global stage. The rise of fundamentalism, a tendency toward returning to the roots and stri...

Previous studies show that in many pre-modern and traditional populations the presence of a grandmother correlates with increased child survival rates, maybe as a result of improved child nutrition. Grandmaternal investment aimed at improving grandchildren's nutritional status in subsistence societies may have different outcomes in contemporary affluent societies. Using the British Millennium C...

Despite the significance and growth of tourism in the Caribbean, ontologies and epistemologies of sustainable tourism in island societies remain fragmented, fragile, fleeting and fatalistic. In a review of, and reflecting on the classical canons of tourism, sustainable tourism, and islands, within contemporary Caribbean island societies, this paper contends that our current scientific modes, mo...

Several concepts are available to indicate the type of society that evolves under the influence of the use of information and communication technology. The most popular concept is the information society. In this book that concept is used in combination with the concept network society to typify contemporary developed and modern societies marked by a high level of information exchange and use o...