Food for all: An agent-based model to explore the emergence and implications of cooperation for food storage

Abstract

A consistent access to food is paramount for humans at individual and group level. Besides providing the basic nutritional needs, access to food defines social structures and has stimulated innovation in food procurement, processing and storage. We focus on the social aspects of food storage, namely the role of cooperation for the emergence and maintenance of common stocks. Cooperative food stocks are examined here as a type of common-pool resource, where appropriators must cooperate to avoid shortage (i.e. the tragedy of commons). ‘Food for all’ is an agent-based model in which agents face the social dilemma of whether or not to store in a cooperative stock, adapting their strategies through a simple reinforcement learning mechanism. The model provides insights on the evolution of cooperation in terms of storage efficiency and considering the presence of social norms that regulate reciprocity. For cooperative food storage to emerge and be maintained, a significant dependency on the stored food and some degree of external pressure are needed. In fact, cooperative food storage emerges as the best performing strategy when facing environmental stress. Likewise, an intermediate control over reciprocity favours cooperation for food storage, suggesting that concepts of closed reciprocity are precursors to cooperative stocks, while excess control over reciprocity is detrimental for such institution.     

Beyond “unwinding”: Constitutional review strategies in consociations

This article contributes to the emerging literature on the role of constitutional courts in consociational democracies. While most works have approached the topic from the perspective of regime dynamics, this analysis focuses on how courts relate to the constitutions they are mandated to enforce. Beyond addressing the empirical question of what choices courts make in their balancing between universal values and stability, this article also investigates how courts do this balancing. Through the analysis of seven cases from two consociations, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, I argue that courts embrace specific interpretive approaches (proportionality analysis, purposive interpretation, and the political question doctrine) to reconcile the ideas of constitutional supremacy and respect for political agreements. The analysis also demonstrates how—by their nature political—framework agreements establishing consociational settlements become primary reference points for interpreting constitutional documents.     

British Diplomacy,Propaganda, and War Strategy and the Hungarian-Romanian Dispute over Transylvania in 1939–40

Abstract

Between 1914 and 1935, the cities of Vienna and Pressburg/Bratislava were linked by an electric railway known as the Pressburgerbahn. More than just a line of transportation, the railway became intertwined with the complex politics of identity in Pressburg. The Pressburgerbahn presented nationalists in the Habsburg Empire with a dilemma: it had the potential to contribute to the unification of the nation, but at the same time was transnational by definition. This paradox generated a heated controversy about the Pressburgerbahn between Magyar nationalists and the predominantly German-speaking Pressburg bourgeoisie. Using biologized rhetoric, Hungarian politicians and journalists portrayed their nation as a body politic that was disfigured by having a railway ‘vein’ cross the border into Austria, in particular from such a peripheral location as Pressburg. By contrast, the discourse of the German-speaking bourgeoisie was firmly anchored in an imperial, supra-ethnic landscape. This controversy was replayed following the incorporation of the renamed city of Bratislava into Czechoslovakia in 1919: the Prague-based Ministry of Railways employed the rhetoric of the railway as an integrating structure within the body politic, while the eventual closure of the Pressburgerbahn in 1935 was closely connected to the belated nationalization of Bratislava. The railway to Vienna thus became a symbol of the liminal status of the town as a whole, in terms of nation, geography, politics and culture.     

An Experimental Study of the Anatomical Distribution of Cut Marks Created by Filleting and Disarticulation on Long Bone Ends

Analogical frameworks created through experimentation are a vital part of taphonomic studies for interpreting the archaeological record. Understanding the anatomical location of cut marks is crucial for interpreting the butchery behaviour of humans in the past, as well as for indirectly inferring the subsistence and economic function of archaeological sites. Two experimental/ethnoarchaeological studies have provided taphonomists with analogues to interpret filleting and disarticulation butchery behaviours from archaeofaunal assemblages. However, these analogues were made with limited control and both involved the use of metal knives. The present work provides the first systematic and controlled study of cut mark distribution on long bones made with stone tools, aimed at differentiating cut marks created by filleting or defleshing from those inflicted during disarticulation. It also studies the variability of cut mark distribution according to stone tool type (simple flakes, retouched flakes and handaxes). The results show some differences with previous studies made with metal tools and offer an updated analogue to interpret butchery (filleting, dismembering and skinning) from prehistoric contexts.     

Serpentine Hot Springs,Alaska: results of excavations and implications for the age and significance of northern fluted points

The dispersal of Homo sapiens across the New World is one of the greatest chapters in the history of our species; however, major questions about this late Pleistocene diaspora remain unanswered. Two contentious issues are the timing of colonization of the Bering Land Bridge and origin of Clovis, which at 13,000 calendar years ago is the earliest unequivocal complex of archaeological sites in temperate North America, known by its specialized fluted spear points. One hypothesis is that fluting technology emerged in Beringia and from there was carried southbound, with fluted points becoming the diagnostic “calling card” of early Paleoindians spreading across the Western Hemisphere. Fluted points have long been known from Alaska, yet until now they have never been found in a datable geologic context, making their relationship to Clovis a mystery. Here we show that a new archaeological site at Serpentine Hot Springs, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska, contains fluted points in a stratified geologic deposit dating to no earlier than 12,400 calendar years ago. Our results suggest that Alaska's fluted-point complex is too young to be ancestral to Clovis, and that it instead represents either a south-to-north dispersal of early Americans or transmission of fluting technology from temperate North America. These results suggest that the peopling of the Americas and development of Paleoindian technology were much more complex than traditional models predict.     

Nationality in the open society: Popper versus Hayes and Kohn

Popper's attitude to nationalism can be analysed by comparison with the position taken by Hayes and Kohn, who distinguished between a communal, malevolent form of nationalism, and a civic and constitutional variant that could coexist with liberalism. By contrast, Popper welcomes communal affiliations whose diversity he perceives as essential to liberalism, while rejecting sovereignty, whether or not invested in a representative body, as a threat to the liberal open society. This perspective reverses the normative priorities that Hayes and Kohn attribute to liberalism. Its basis is Popper's adherence to a pluralist liberalism, which centres on protecting social ties rather than on representation and state organs. This denotation of liberalism competes with the legalist individualism that Hayes and Kohn identify with liberalism and therefore accommodates nationalism differently.     

Globalisation and the decline of national identity? An exploration across sixty‐three countries

The relationship between globalisation and national identity is puzzling. While some observers have found that globalisation reduces people's identification with their nation, others have reached the opposite conclusion. This article explores this conundrum by examining the relationship between globalisation and people's feelings towards national identity. Using data from the International Social Survey Program National Identity II ( 2003 ) and the World Values Survey ( 2005 ), it analyses these relations across sixty‐three countries. Employing a multilevel approach, it investigates how a country's level of globalisation is related to its public perceptions towards different dimensions of national identity. The results suggest that a country's level of globalisation is not related to national identification or nationalism but it is related negatively to patriotism, the willingness to fight for the country and ethnic conceptions of membership in the nation. An examination of alternative explanations indicates that globalisation has a distinct impact on national identity.     

Social Cooperation and Resource Management DynamicsAmong Late Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Societies in Tierra del Fuego (South America)

This paper presents the theoretical basis and first results of an agent-based model (ABM) computer simulation that is being developed to explore cooperation in hunter–gatherer societies. Specifically, we focus here on Yamana, a hunter-fisher-gatherer society that inhabited the islands of the southernmost part of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina–Chile). Ethnographical and archaeological evidence suggests the existence of sporadic aggregation events, triggered by a public call through smoke signals of an extraordinary confluence of resources under unforeseeable circumstances in time and space (a beached whale or an exceptional accumulation of fish after a low tide, for example). During these aggregation events, the different social units involved used to develop and improve production, distribution and consumption processes in a collective way. This paper attempts to analyse the social dynamics that explain cooperative behaviour and resource-sharing during aggregation events using an agent-based model of indirect reciprocity. In brief, agents make their decisions based on the success of the public strategies of other agents. Fitness depends on the resource captured and the social capital exchanged in aggregation events, modified by the agent’s reputation. Our computational results identify the relative importance of resources with respect to social benefits and the ease in detecting—and hence punishing—a defector as key factors to promote and sustain cooperative behaviour among population.     

Penetrating the ‘black‐box’ of ‘remembrance day’ playlist: bereavement and the induction mechanisms of glocalization – a study in cultural sociology

This article examines the musical repertoire broadcast on Israeli state radio stations on Remembrance Day. Commencing with the first Remembrance Day, Israeli radio stations have refrained from broadcasting songs that do not contribute to the glorification of the military mythology or failure to reinforce the consensual perception of national loss. In view of globalization – it might be assumed that Remembrance Day songs would undergo changes in tune with the times. From a musical point of view, new songs that belong to what Regev and Seroussi classify as ‘globalizing Israel’ penetrated into the nationalist arena. But, following Inglehart and Baker, these songs, despite their seemingly secular façade, remain limited hegemonic enclosures organized around the core of founding values. Apparently, this is an example of the process of glocalization of culture. The article seeks answers to the strategies employed to accommodate these new songs to the traditional ideology of the classical Remembrance Day songs and examines whether the mechanisms of legitimacy that enable the inclusion of new voices on Remembrance Day, can be identified. We argue that their choice is not arbitrary and that they illustrate the manner by which voluntary cultural entrepreneurs (musical editors) are co‐opted in the postnational condition.