All the utopian talk of information superhighways and the great media societies of the future helps to mask the fact that contemporary capitalist societies are in a situation of seemingly permanent crisis with increased human suffering due to deteriorating social conditions. In the United States, more than 34 million people live below the poverty level; over 3 million are homeless; over ten mil...

Current literature on disaster response argues that societies providing greater local participation in decision-making and which have more community coordination and governance organizations are more resilient to climate-related disasters. In contrast, recent research in psychology has argued that societies with tighter social norms and greater enforcement of those norms are more resilient. Thi...

the development of technology and modern industrial foundations has faced new matters to contemporary human societies. technology is rapidly changing lifestyles, social interactions and even modern human worldview about him (her)self and existence. technology-the unavoidable reality of modern world- represented itself as a phenomenon of expanding. the modern techniques have become quite differe...

INDIGENOUSNESS IS AN IDENTITY CONSTRUCTED, SHAPED AND LIVED in the politicized context of contemporary colonialism. The communities, clans, nations and tribes we call Indigenous peoples are just that: Indigenous to the lands they inhabit, in contrast to and in contention with the colonial societies and states that have spread out from Europe and other centres of empire. It is this oppositional,...

This paper undertakes a philosophical investigation of the implications of the traditional Yoruba understanding of education for the contemporary African quest for development. The paper argues that the Yoruba conception of education is marked by the underlying philosophical principles of functionalism, moralism and progressivism. These principles, the paper contends, are of great relevance to ...

According to Moral Foundations Theory, people endorse “individualizing” foundations (Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity) or “binding” foundations (Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, Purity/sanctity) to varying degrees. As societies with higher pathogen prevalence have been found to exhibit more pronounced antipathogen psychological tendencies and cultural practices (e.g., conformity, collectivism...

Drawing from the experience in research and practice the paper tries to discuss the effectiveness of participatory approaches in dealing with the problem of the growing fragmentation of contemporary urban societies. It is divided into three parts. In the first part there is a description of how “fragmentation” can be a key concept to interpret very different phenomena in contemporary urban soci...

Is our moral cognition “coloured” by the language(s) that we speak? Despite the centrality of language to political life and agency, limited attempts were made thus far in contemporary political philosophy to consider this possibility. We therefore set out to explore the possible influence of linguistic relativity effects on political thinking in linguisticallydiverse societies. We begin by int...

The higher costs of sons compared with daughters extends to a negative effect of brothers on the lifetime reproductive success of their siblings in subsistence and preindustrial societies. In societies with fewer resource constraints, one might expect that these effects would be limited or non-existent. This study investigates the costs of brothers and sisters in a contemporary western society ...