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The Glue that Binds
There are certain things I miss about my first scientific love, ecology. Mostly it is being able to travel to neat places, like the Yellowstone or the Kruger National Park in South Africa, to commune...
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Harvey Whitehouse. Three Wishes for the World
If you had three wishes to change the world, what would they be? Perhaps you would like to put an end to war? Reverse global warming? Or eliminate extreme poverty? The key to solving all these problems...
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William Swann: How can social glue foster cooperation rather than...
In an audaciously ambitious article, Whitehouse proposes a solution to three of the world’s perennial problems: (a) predicting, preventing, and resolving civil wars; (b) channeling social cohesion for...
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Harvey Whitehouse Responds
I have just been reading through these very thought-provoking posts and there are many observations it would be great to discuss further, including the point that social glue can be used for immoral...
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Gordon Ingram and Karolina Prochownik: The Notion of “Identity Fusion” Raises...
In his target article Whitehouse describes a fascinating and extremely worthwhile program of research. We understand that this research is in its early stages, and so we are not too concerned that at...
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Jonathan Lanman. Two Stars and a (Fourth) Wish: Ritual Theory and the...
There is much to admire in Whitehouse’s ambitious programme of research. There is the testing of a theory that offers greater precision in describing and explaining social cohesion. There is the...
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Timothy M. Waring. On the Application Methods for Various Types of Social...
Whitehouse’s article on social cohesion provides a mix of research agenda and aspirational vision. The research agenda springs from the “Ritual, Community, and Conflict” project that he directs, but...
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Karl Frost. Ritual Theories, the Sacred, and Social Control. A Commentary on...
I am quite enthusiastic about Whitehouse’s research program, an impressive body of empirical work in a variety of cultural contexts and using multiple methods, exploring diverging modes of religiosity...
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Douglas Jones. Modes of Interaction and Social Glue. A Commentary on Harvey...
Whitehouse convincingly argues for a distinction between two kinds of social glue – identity fusion and social identification. In his earlier work he related these to two memory systems, semantic and...
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Zoey Reeve and Dominic Johnson: Identity (con)fusion: Social Groups and the...
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. —Margaret Mead Harvey Whitehouse argues that we will be better able to...
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Complex Societies before Agriculture: Göbekli Tepe
A week or two ago I was sitting in a doctor’s office, when I realized that I forgot to bring any readings with me. As I was idly rifling through the usual stack, my roving eye was suddenly arrested by...
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Why Become a Farmer?
The previous blog discussed Göbekli Tepe, which achieved a surprisingly high level of social complexity before the adoption of agriculture. In the language of philosophy of science, Göbekli Tepe is an...
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Another Nail in the Coffin: Poverty Point
In the two previous blogs I have been proceeding under the assumption that the standard ‘bottom-up’ theory is a bankrupt paradigm. (As a reminder, the standard theory says that agriculture came first...
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Harvey Whitehouse: More On Social Glue (a response to commentaries)
The discussions in this forum have raised some big issues, ranging from the implications of two types of social glue for the evolution of groups (e.g. Waring; Smith) to the practical and ethical...
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The Joy of Cooperation
Both the Sci Foo Camp at the GooglePlex and the symposium at the Evolution meeting in Snowbird were extremely productive and enjoyable experiences. I’ll write about some of the sessions I went to at...
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Yule in Denmark
In my previous blog I speculated that the Danes use ritualistic feasting as a way of creating a shared sense of belonging, which is an important basis for social cooperation and trust. Last week I was...
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Scott Atran, Jeremy Ginges, and Rumen Iliev. Devoted Actors, Devoted Realism,...
What is the other commonwealth that remains standing now that the mundane commonwealth, embodied in the Roman Empire, has fallen? ─ Saint Augustine, The City of God (De Civitae Dei), on what survived...
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A Tour of Sacred Places in Moscow
As I more-or-less expected, my trip to Toulouse, Moscow, and St. Petersburg was too intense (and the internet connection too iffy) for me to be able to blog. Lots of new ideas, impressions, and topics...
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Belfast: A Symbolically Dense Landscape
Two weeks ago, after we were done with various Cliodynamics activities in Dublin, we went on a field trip to study the post-conflict landscape in Belfast. Our guide on this trip was Kevin Feeney....
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Murals versus Flags: A Symbolically Dense Landscape, continued
As I said in my previous blog, the Catholic areas in Belfast tend to be symbolically demarcated primarily with murals, while the Protestant ones are festooned with flags. The distinction is not...
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