Hong Kong Sociological Association 11th Annual Conference

The 2009 Annual Conference of the Hong Kong Sociological Association will be held on December 5, 2009, hosted by the Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong. The theme of the Conference is “Envisioning the World City”.

Papers are welcome from sociologists and colleagues in the social sciences. Prospective participants can apply to:

• present a paper.
• organize a panel.
• attend the conference.

Please send an abstract of paper or panel of 250 words, along with the abstract submission form (downloadable at Abstract Submission Form) to Dr. Travis Kong at hksa2009@hku.hk, by fax (852) 2559 8044, or by post to Department of Sociology, K.K. Leung Building, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, no later than September 10, 2009.

Proposals will be peer reviewed and results announced by the end of September 2009. Please browse the conference’s call for paper for more details.

Dr. Travis Kong
Dr. Maggy Lee
Dr. Amy Sim
Dr. David Palmer
Conference Organizing Committee, Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong

Experimental Sociology in Cyborgsociability

In the interest of comparative urban sociology of global cities, somebody needs to do this is in Singapore (Botanical Gardens, Orchard Road, or somewhere in the Heartland?)…

Watch the video…
http://www.tweenbots.com/

From the website:
“Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter… Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal… The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal… One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

Global Connectedness

We often talk about “global flows” and “global connectedness” in very cliché and flippant ways in sociology, anthropology and other social sciences.

A new map of global connectedness, provides empirical evidence of this, well worth considering.

It not simply reinforces what we already know, but potentially can push our thinking on this. For example, the authors note that the Amazon basin is actually not all that ‘remote’ (though the Tibetan plateau is).

I have made some further notes on this map of global connectednesson my own blog.

Here is the link to the original source at the EU-JRC:

Time Travel to Major Cities: A Global Map of Accessibility
This is the original map, research and related papers. This should be of great interest and value to all of us who do serious research on globalization. Even if you don’t, you’ll likely be fascinated by the pretty maps and pictures… really, worth a look.

Also, a radio program discussion of the global accessibility map.

On the Evolution of Bureaucracy (Comments on Kaiser & Yong 2003)

With Edgar Kaiser visiting this week, presumably some if not many in the department have recently read his work. If not, Kaiser and Yong (2003) “War and Bureaucratization in Qin China,” American Sociological Review 68(4):511-539, comes highly recommended.

Here are my thoughts and comments on this article:

The basic question being addressed is one of the evolution of organizational complexity – how do social systems (specifically, what are thought of as ‘state’ or ‘political’ systems) undergo a qualitative transition from patrimonial (or patron-client) type systems organized around personalized ties to bureaucratic type systems organized around impersonal ties. [Note 1]

The advantage of bureaucratic systems is that they create organizational efficiencies, and are able to out-compete personalized patron-client, patrimonial or feudal systems (particularly, but not exclusively, in mustering and organizing armies in warfare). More generally, the de-personalization which is the hallmark of bureaucratic systems – by treating people as categories, rather than individuals – allows for more stable and more expansive social organization (bureaucratic systems can grow larger and persist longer than personalized patrimonial ones). As in any evolutionary scenario, however, bureaucratic systems must overcome a variety of obstacles, including (but not limited to) the entrenchment of the pre-existing patron-client type system. This can be modeled analogously to a new – derived – evolutionary variant of a species competing within an ecosystem to colonize territory occupied by an already well established variant of that species; due to the close similarity of the two species or sub-species, they compete for the same resources in the same evolutionary niche. With respect to bureaucracy and patrimonial-type systems, they are competing with each other to be the dominant (more prevalent; accepted) cultural model for social organization. In that respect, this is a case of cultural evolution and the struggle over the ecological niche (human society) is a “clash of cultures”. [But not in Huntington’s ethno-racialized sense of the term!] I used this particular example in SC2218: Anthropology and the Human Condition last term (click on link above). 

One small problem with the paper is its subtle(?) implications of unilinear evolutionism. At several points (e.g. pg.513-514) the authors make reference to ‘early’ and ‘late’ bureaucratization. Given that they are making the case for independent evolution of bureaucracy – emerging out of pre-bureaucratic forms (e.g. patrimonialism, feudalism, etc.) the reference to ‘early’ or ‘late’ on an historical timeline is inappropriate. Bureaucratization may be a common evolutionary path of human social (socio-political) organization. And the authors are demonstrating this (by showing that it occurred independently in China and Europe). But if these are distinct cases, to say one is relatively ‘early’ or another relatively ‘late’ is misleading – and inappropriately implies a unilinear evolutionary theory. It implies that all societies must or will inevitably evolve a bureaucratic socio-political system. Some societies have never or may never do so; they are not evolutionarily ‘behind’ or ‘late’. Rather, they simply have not gone down that evolutionary path. [Note 2]

To demonstrate by analogy, a common evolutionary path for biological species is insular dwarfism. When large mammalian species move from a large mainland to a smaller island, it is common for them to undergo dwarfism (they become smaller; for instance elephants and rhinos in the Indonesian archipelago). This occurs because the environmental pressures of being on an island (small, confined space) push their evolutionary path toward smaller size. If this happens (hypothetically… the following are made up examples… see Wikipedia link above for some actual examples) to one group of elephants in Japan at one point in earth’s history (let’s say 500,000 years ago) and to another group of elephants on Java at another point (say 100,000 years ago), we would not say that the horses in Japan were “early” and those in Java “late” in evolving from a larger size to a dwarf version of the elephant. They are two independent evolutionary events – but ones in which the same general evolutionary path is taken because of the extraordinary similarity in environmental conditions (island living) and the species involved (it could be the same species; or it could be similar ones, like elephants and rhinos).

Similarly, Kaiser and Yong are demonstrating the independent emergence of bureaucratic organization out of pre-existing forms of patron-client or patrimonial organization, driven by a particular set of “environmental” conditions (warfare, destruction of aristocracy, emergent communications and monitoring systems, etc.).

The references to ‘early’ and ‘late’ are not at all a crucial problem with the paper, but they imply an empirically questionable theory of evolutionary emergence of complex systems (unilinear 19^th century; rather than nonlinear 21^st century evolutionary theory) on which a very great deal of sociological theory has floundered (e.g. mid-20^th century ‘modernization’ theory).

 

p.516-517: I’m not sure that large infantry armies required bureaucratization; however bureaucratization may well have created efficiencies making those armies that did bureaucratize (in one way or another) more powerful… and mortal combat is a very direct test of evolutionary fitness of such organizational systems! (I’m thinking of cases of relatively small, but tightly organized Roman armies defeating larger but less tightly organized armies in Europe and the British Isles). Bureaucratization (perhaps the ratcheting-up of ever more substantial bureaucratization), then, results from a selection process; which would conform to the empirical evidence that it is driven by intensity and severity of warfare (this seems essentially what the article is saying, without putting it in such an explicitly ‘evolutionary’ framework).

 

The “ruler preference” theory (imputed on p.517) echoes principle-agent theory (rulers are choosing one ‘agent’ over another). [I would take issue with this; mainly in that it seems to presuppose a fixed hierarchical power relationship between agents in the system… Does not the nature of the ‘ruler’ in at least some cases ultimately change? The king or emperor as paramount patrimonial figure is displaced by prime minister – the paramount bureaucrat!]

 

[Note 1: The feudal, patrimonial, etc. systems that beget bureaucracy are themselves evolved forms of complex kinship and ‘big man’ systems of social organization and hierarchy.]

 

[Note 2: A major problem faced by social science with regard to evolutionary systems theory is that we have an extraordinarily limited number of extant cases; the HRAF, for example, contains a couple hundred cases of what might be considered distinct ‘human societies’. Compare this with biologists who study evolutionary biological systems. They have tens(?) or hundreds(?) of thousands of distinct species to draw on for comparative theorizing – and even then they faces some of the same problem of limited cases for theory testing. The problem is that biological evolution on earth, and in and even more radically limited way, human history – over the past 100,000 years or so – is an experiment run once. All our theories are derived from that single experiment. And computer modeling of complex adaptive systems – e.g. from the Santa Fe Institute – clearly demonstrate that we should expect human society, as a dynamical, complex adaptive system to exhibit ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’ and far from equilibrium systems behavior; meaning that if the experiment were run over, we should expect very different results due to the inherent production of random variation upon which such systems thrive.]

 

Film Screening: Hard Candy

The Sociology Graduate Students’ Committee is happy to announce the 2nd installment of the Sociology Movie Screening.  This time we will be screening Hard Candy, .  The rest of the movies to be screened for the remainder of the semester will be announced shortly.  In the meantime, we leave you with the film’s synopsis, trailer video link, and other information below:

Screening Information:
Date    10 March 2009, Tuesday
Time    6:00 PM
Place   TBA

HARD CANDY

Synopsis:

A smart, charming teenage girl, Hayley probably shouldn’t be going to a local coffee shop to meet Jeff, a 30-something fashion photographer she met on the Internet.  But Hayley’s ready to have fun, and soon she’s mixing screwdrivers at Jeff’s place and stripping for an impromptu photo shoot.  It’s Jeff’s lucky night – until his vision blurs and he passes out.  Turns out Hayley isn’t as innocent as she looks after all.  In fact, she has a lot on her mind.  Like getting Jeff to confess to his penchant for teenage girls – and to what he did to Donna Mauer, the girl who disappeared from Jeff’s favorite coffee shop.  When Jeff awakens, he’s tied to a chair.  If he doesn’t cooperate, Hayley has something to help him along–a little surgical procedure she picked up on the Internet.  All she needs is an ice pack. And a knife…

An edge-of-your-seat psychotic thriller, HARD CANDY exposes the visceral terror and violence that lie at the heart of the battle of the sexes. Starring Patrick Wilson (Jeff) and Ellen Page (Hayley Stark) and Sandra Oh (Judy Tokuda), HARD CANDY is directed by David Slade, written by Brian Nelson, produced by David Higgins, Richard Hutton and Michael Caldwell, and executive produced by Jody Patton, Rosanne Korenberg and Paul G. Allen.  It is the latest film from Vulcan Productions (FAR FROM HEAVEN, TITUS) in association with Launchpad Productions. The director of photography is Jo Willems, the editor is Art Jones, the production designer is Jeremy Reed. The original music is by Harry Esscott and Molly Nyman, and the casting is by Valerie McCaffrey.

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-C2H4ipxz0

Important note:
This is a private screening activity.  Those who are interested to see the film are requested to send us an email to have your name included in the guest list.  An open forum will follow after the discussion of the film by a designated person.  Comments and ideas are welcome!

For more information, please contact the Sociology Graduate Students’ Committee at socigradsg@gmail.com

Sociology Graduate Seminar Series 3

AIESEC Overseas Sustainability Projects 2009

Hello Everyone!

AIESEC Singapore is calling for applications to their 2009 Sustainability Projects.

AIESEC Oversea Project is a special project that provides excellent opportunities for local university students to undergo short term overseas internships in the countries having similar projects. Under BEADS project, the students will work on HIV/AIDS related project, and for SFC, the students will be engaged in sustainability related projects.

For more information, please click on the PDF below.

Racial achievement gaps and home environment

We recently introduced Prof Jean Yeung as a new member of the department. Jean, who is at the forefront of research in social demography, also holds a joint appointment with the Asia Research Institute. In the spirit of academic and intellectual exchange, she would like to share a soon-to-be-published paper.