ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY.
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Social Citizenship and Plural Values of Land: Land Acquisition cases from India
Fellow: Sattwick Dey Biswas Abstract: In the globalised economy, the value chains of production have crossed national boundaries. As a result, the demand has intensified for land acquisition in order to set up production facilities and infrastructure. This industrialisation proceeded rapidly, and, therefore, a vast area of land had to be acquired, both in the Global South and in the North. This development has led to many conflicts. These conflicts are the result of the inability to understand the plural values of land in the realisation of property rights in social citizenship. This article has considered two land expropriation case study areas in India, Salbani and Singur in West Bengal, as a source of empirical data. The empirical evidence suggests that the straitjacket of monorational property rights discourse, which heavily relies on the absolute ownership and control (via exclusion of others) ignores the different ways in which plural land values shape ideas of social citizenship. There is a need to rediscover the ‘social’ in citizenship to ensure the subordination of market price to the ideals of social justice. Keywords: social citizenship, social justice, plural values, market price and land acquisition. |
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Counterproductive regulation
Fellow: Peter Grabosky Introduction: The old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions applies to many aspects of life, among them regulatory policy. That regulatory compliance can be an elusive goal is hardly a revelation; the analysis of regulatory failure has become a popular pastime. The ways in which efforts to produce regulatory compliance may become derailed are numerous and diverse, as are the generic pathologies which give rise to them. The present paper pursues this theme by attempting an overview of the ways by which regulatory initiatives may defeat themselves or may otherwise inflict collateral damage. The focus goes beyond those initiatives which simply fail to have their intended effect. Rather, we shall be concerned with programmes which either backfire entirely, in effect making things worse, or those resulting in significant harm which offsets many or most of the benefits which the original initiatives might produce. The term 'regulation' is construed broadly, to embrace not only the traditional functions of inspection and enforcement, but to include a wider range of regulatory policy instruments. This paper will have three main parts. Firstly, a typology of iatrogenic outcomes of regulatory policies will be presented. The foll0xdng part of this paper will seek to explain the dynamics of these negative outcomes. Finally, this paper will suggest principles and safeguards, which if heeded by those in a position to formulate and implement regulatory policy, might serve to reduce the risk of undesirable unintended consequences. Although some readers may be tempted to conclude that the author is instinctively opposed to regulation, such is not the case. The approach taken here is self-consciously utilitarian. The objective is not to cast a pall of pessimism over the idea of regulation, but rather to foster more analytical rigor in the planning and the implementation of regulatory policy. Nor does the risk that some regulatory interventions may produce significant harm necessarily imply that they should be abandoned entirely. Rather, by identifying these risks at the outset, authorities may be able to design them out, or at least to introduce measures to mitigate their adverse impact. |
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Using non‐governmental resources to foster regulatory compliance
Fellow: Peter Grabosky Abstract: This article explores means by which non‐governmental institutions and resources, both commercial and voluntary, may be enlisted in the interest of regulatory compliance. Following a discussion of non‐governmental social control, it reviews the basic institutional forms of indirect governance through which third‐party “co‐production” of compliance might occur. It then discusses the basic issues which arise when certain public functions are delegated to or devolve upon private interests, and suggests safeguards which might be put in place to enhance the advantages and to minimize the adverse consequences of such devolution. The conclusion seeks to articulate basic principles for the mobilization of third parties in furtherance of compliance, and to encourage the idea of a more participative regulatory process. |
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Citizen co‐production of cyber security: Self‐help, vigilantes, and cybercrime
Fellow: Peter Grabosky Abstract: Given the limited resources and capabilities of states to maintain cyber security, a variety of co‐production efforts have been made by individuals or by collectives, of varying degrees of organization and coordination. This article identifies different forms of citizen co‐production of cyber security and notes the risk of unintended consequences. Safeguards and principles are proposed in order to facilitate constructive citizen/netizen co‐production of cyber security. Although co‐production of security can contribute to social control, only those activities within the bounds of the law should be encouraged. Activities of private citizens/netizens that test the limits of legality should be closely circumscribed. Keywords: co-production of security, cybersecurity, cybercrime, internet vigilantism, self-help. |
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Virtual criminality: Old wine in new bottles?
Fellow: Peter Grabosky Introduction: It has become trite to suggest that the convergence of computing and communications has begun to change the way we live, and the way we commit crime. Whether this will necessitate a revision of our philosophical, historical and sociological assumptions, however, is another matter. One must beware of overgeneralization and hyperbole, which characterize a great deal of discourse on the digital age. In the pages that follow, I suggest that ‘virtual criminality’ is basically the same as the terrestrial crime with which we are familiar. To be sure, some of the manifestations are new. But a great deal of crime committed with or against computers differs only in terms of the medium. While the technology of implementation, and particularly its efficiency, may be without precedent, the crime is fundamentally familiar. It is less a question of something completely different than a recognizable crime committed in a completely different way. Perhaps the most remarkable developments relating to crime in the digital age are its transnational implications, and the threats to personal privacy posed by new technologies. The speed of electronic transactions allows an offender to inflict loss or damage on the other side of the world, bringing new meaning to the term ‘remote control’. In addition, digital technology facilitates surveillance, by public agencies and the private sector, to a degree that is quite revolutionary. |
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Violence and warfare in prehistoric Japan
Fellow: Naoko Matsumoto Abstract: The origins and consequences of warfare or large-scale intergroup violence have been subject of long debate. Based on exhaustive surveys of skeletal remains for prehistoric hunter-gatherers and agriculturists in Japan, the present study examines levels of inferred violence and their implications for two evolutionary models, which ground warfare in parochial altruism versus subsistence. The former assumes that frequent warfare played an important role in the evolution of altruism, while the latter sees warfare as promoted by social changes induced by agriculture. Our results are inconsistent with the parochial altruism model but consistent with the subsistence model, although the mortality values attributable to violence between hunter-gatherers and agriculturists were comparable. Keywords: archaeology, warfare, parochial altruism, human skeletal remains, Japan |
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Changing relationship between the dead and the living in Japanese prehistory
Fellow: Naoko Matsumoto Abstract: The aim of this paper is to propose a new insight on the changing burial practice by regarding it as a part of the cognitive system for maintaining complex social relationships. Development of concentrated burials and their transformation in Japanese prehistory are examined to present a specific case of the changing relationship between the dead and the living to highlight the significance of the dead in sociocultural evolution. The essential feature of the burial practices observed at Jomon sites is the centrality of the dead and their continuous presence in the kinship system. The mortuary practices discussed in this paper represent a close relationship between the dead and the living in the non-hierarchical complex society, in which the dead were not detached from the society, but kept at its core, as a materialized reference of kin networks. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals’. Keywords: Jomon period, mortuary practice, kinship, ancestor worship, social cognition |
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Sociology Rediscovering Ethics
Fellow: Stephen Turner Abstract: Gorski tells us that the fact-value distinction is dead, that we know what human flourishing is and therefore relativism is wrong, and concludes that sociologists ought to throw off their self-imposed shackles and get into the business of telling other people how to live their lives, but only after sociologists listen to other people who are already in this business, especially from ethics and religion. In one sense this advice is misdirected, because, as I shall explain briefly below, sociologists have long been concerned with exactly the thing he suggests they should be concerned with, flourishing, eudaemonia or happiness, and continue to produce research on the topic in several subfields of the discipline. Morever, there have been many attempts to do exactly what he is recommending. The results, however, including my own attempt with Mark Wardell in the 1980s, have not been especially successful. In this comment I will try to point out some of the philosophical obstacles to this kind of work. The sociological obstacles are also serious: the intellectual cultures of ethics and sociology are so radically divergent that dialog is virtually impossible. Nevertheless, there is no reason to give up. In this respect I agree with Gorksi. My dissenting point will be a simple one: there is are multiple relations of fit between sociological ideas and ethical theories, not just the one he describes, and some ethical theory is in outright conflict with normal social science. |