Collective singing dynamics in a competition context drive song plasticity

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pepe Alcami ◽  
Shouwen Ma ◽  
Manfred Gahr
Keyword(s):  
Time Scales ◽  
Physical Aggression ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Recording Technology ◽  
Singing Behavior ◽  
Freely Behaving ◽  
Motor Production

AbstractAnimals need to adapt their motor production to challenging social conditions at behaviorally-relevant time scales. Here, we use telemetric recording technology from freely-behaving canaries in natural-like social conditions in which male canaries compete for females. We report that male canaries influence each other’s singing during ‘duels’ characterized by temporal overlaps of their songs, which are often followed by physical aggression. Duels evolve in time and both canaries can lead or follow the other canary’s song on a song-to-song basis. Remarkably, overlapping behavior induces singing plasticity: both song length and its variability increase when canaries overlap their songs. Furthermore, song acoustic properties reveal a link between dueling and song similarity. Altogether, results show that canary singing behavior is plastic in social environments.

Das Ende der Postdemokratie, den Pessimismus überwinden.

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 487-494
Author(s):  
Daniel Mullis
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Windows Of Opportunity ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The One

In recent years, political and social conditions have changed dramatically. Many analyses help to capture these dynamics. However, they produce political pessimism: on the one hand there is the image of regression and on the other, a direct link is made between socio-economic decline and the rise of the far-right. To counter these aspects, this article argues that current political events are to be understood less as ‘regression’ but rather as a moment of movement and the return of deep political struggles. Referring to Jacques Ranciere’s political thought, the current conditions can be captured as the ‘end of post-democracy’. This approach changes the perspective on current social dynamics in a productive way. It allows for an emphasis on movement and the recognition of the windows of opportunity for emancipatory struggles.

Naturalizing Moral Regression

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Group Threat ◽  
Epistemic Practices ◽  
Harsh Conditions ◽  
Development And Evolution

This chapter proposes a theory of moral regression, arguing that inclusivist gains can be eroded not only if certain harsh biological and social conditions indicative of out-group threat actually reappear but also if significant numbers of people come to believe that such harsh conditions exist even when they do not. It argues that normal cognitive biases in conjunction with defective social-epistemic practices can cause people wrongly to believe that such harsh conditions exist, thus triggering the development and evolution of exclusivist moralities and the dismantling of inclusivist ones. Armed with detailed knowledge of the biological and social environments in which progressive moralities emerge and are sustained, as well as the conditions under which they are likely to be dismantled, human beings can take significant steps toward transforming the classic liberal faith in moral progress into a practical, empirically grounded hope.

Jargon, Bullshit, sinnlos

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 646-660
Author(s):  
Max Beck
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Content ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Personal Approach ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Theological Language

Abstract Theodor W. Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity (1964) is one of the bestknown, but also most controversial works of Critical Theory. Many philosophers, writers and editorialists have attacked the text in recent decades and accused Adorno of cultivating his own “jargon”. In his book, Adorno develops a critique of metaphysical and theological language, which he observed in Germany from the 1920s up to the 1960s. In my paper, I argue that the mode of critique Adorno deploys is still relevant today, even if its object has largely disappeared. This becomes clear in comparison to the language criticism of the analytical tradition, namely logical empiricism or Harry G. Frankfurt’s critique of “bullshit,” which are comparably more widespread today in academic debates. While Adorno examines linguistic expressions in terms of their social content and places them in a historical constellation, the critique of “bullshit” following Frankfurt remains constrained to a personal approach. In the language criticism of logical empiricism, on the other hand, the possibility of understanding linguistic phenomena as expressions of social conditions is still present. From this comparison, much can be learned for an up-to-date language criticism.

Kinematics of birdsong: functional correlation of cranial movements and acoustic features in sparrows

1993 ◽  
Vol 182 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. W. Westneat ◽  
J. H. Long ◽  
W. Hoese ◽  
S. Nowicki
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Tract ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Zonotrichia Albicollis ◽  
Low Frequencies ◽  
Acoustic Frequency ◽  
Mean Frequency ◽  
Singing Behavior ◽  
Resonance Properties ◽  
Melospiza Georgiana

The movements of the head and beak of songbirds may play a functional role in vocal production by influencing the acoustic properties of songs. We investigated this possibility by synchronously measuring the acoustic frequency and amplitude and the kinematics (beak gape and head angle) of singing behavior in the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) and the swamp sparrow (Melospiza georgiana). These birds are closely related emberizine sparrows, but their songs differ radically in frequency and amplitude structure. We found that the acoustic frequencies of notes in a song have a consistent, positive correlation with beak gape in both species. Beak gape increased significantly with increasing frequency during the first two notes in Z. albicollis song, with a mean frequency for note 1 of 3 kHz corresponding to a gape of 0.4 cm (a 15 degrees gape angle) and a mean frequency for note 2 of 4 kHz corresponding to a gape of 0.7 cm (a 30 degrees gape angle). The relationship between gape and frequency for the upswept third note in Z. albicollis also was significant. In M. georgiana, low frequencies of 3 kHz corresponding to beak gapes of 0.2-0.3 cm (a 10–15 degrees break angle), whereas frequencies of 7–8 kHz were associated with flaring of the beak to over 1 cm (a beak angle greater than 50 degrees). Beak gape and song amplitude are poorly correlated in both species. We conclude that cranial kinematics, particularly beak movements, influence the resonance properties of the vocal tract by varying its physical dimensions and thus play an active role in the production of birdsong.

Notes on Luhmann, Adorno, and the critique of neoliberalism

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-69
Author(s):  
Laurindo Dias Minhoto
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Rationality ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Normative Model ◽  
Negative Dialectics ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Critical Interpretation ◽  
The One

This article discusses some possibilities for a critical interpretation of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. On the one hand, this theory could provide a sophisticated new sociological account of well-known modern social pathologies, such as alienation and reification; on the other, it could be considered a crypto-normative model for the reciprocal mediation between system and environment in which neither blind tautologies nor colonizations would take place. I argue that as a normative model this theoretical matrix seems to resonate with aspects of Adorno’s negative dialectics between subject and object and that the involuntary promise it contains could be fully realized only under other social conditions. The article also presents a preliminary critique of neoliberalism reconceptualized in systems theoretical terms as a dedifferentiation machinery that aims at establishing the primacy of economic rationality and the formation of ‘industries’ in different social spheres.

scholarly journals Evaluation of Buss-Perry aggression Questionnaire with item response theory (IRT)

Psihologija ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bojana Dinic ◽  
Bojan Janicic
Keyword(s):  
Item Response Theory ◽  
Psychometric Properties ◽  
Item Response ◽  
Physical Aggression ◽  
Verbal Aggression ◽  
The Other ◽  
Irt Model ◽  
Graded Responses ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
Aggression Questionnaire

The aim of this research was to examine the psychometric properties of the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire on Serbian sample, using the IRT model for graded responses. AQ contains four subscales: Physical aggression, Verbal aggression, Hostility and Anger. The sample included 1272 participants, both gender and age ranged from 18 to 68 years, with average age of 31.39 (SD = 12.63) years. Results of IRT analysis suggested that the subscales had greater information in the range of above-average scores, namely in participants with higher level of aggressiveness. The exception was Hostilisty subscale, because it was informative in the wider range of trait. On the other hand, this subscale contains two items which violate assumption of homogenity. Implications for measurement of aggressiveness are discussed.

scholarly journals Dyskursy psychoterapii a rozumienie rzeczywistości społecznej

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-221
Author(s):  
Barbara Józefik
Keyword(s):  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The One

Complex and changing social conditions engender the need to find a language to describe the phenomena and to elucidate their mechanisms. One possibility is the language of psychotherapy, which in itself is complex because it combines the various currents which have emerged in psychotherapy’s more than one hundred years of history. The author’s aim is to analyze the relations between culture, social reality (including Poland’s), and psychotherapy. On the one hand, she attempts to view psychotherapy as a cultural discourse, and on the other, to understand culture and social phenomena from the perspective of a psychotherapy office.

Conclusion: good relations, free speech and political activism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Sheldon
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Transnational Politics ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Ethical Relations

This chapter begins by asking how sociology can respond to the abnormal and tragic transnational politics of Palestine-Israel. I discuss how my ethnographic approach challenges the violent abstractions of dominant political theories and offers a distinctive contribution to the field of the ‘anthropology of ethics’. I then address a series of questions arising from my research into campus struggles around Palestine-Israel. First, what social conditions enable ethical modes of relationality to develop between student activists? Second, how can a sense of ethical relations as responsive to the singularity and uncertainty of ‘the other’ come into tension with the political expression of moral commitment and coherent action? And how can more complex, localised ethico-political responses be scaled up to the level of more broadly mediated communications, in which reductionist, symbolic representations flourish? Grounding my responses to these questions in an ethnographic vignette, I show how an easily overlooked interpersonal encounter carries the potential to transfigure the seemingly intractable tensions between ‘free speech’, ‘good relations’ and ‘political activism’ within universities. In this way, this book concludes with an - at once - philosophical and ethnographic response to the continued presence of the Palestine-Israel conflict within British campuses.

Dickens’s National Novel

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-245
Author(s):  
Josephine McDonagh
Keyword(s):  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Law ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
National Borders

Bleak House is a novel saturated with figures of unsettlement, in which characters uprooted by their social conditions operate within a plot animated by unsettlement, in an affective world dominated by feelings of pity and sympathy for those who have been displaced. Thresholds recur in the novel as privileged sites of heightened emotion. The novel’s preoccupation with unsettlement is best understood in the context of mid-century bourgeois aspirations to reimagine the nation as a place in which all citizens might enjoy freedom of movement. In framing this vision, Dickens draws on two contemporary discourses, one drawn from emigration, especially Caroline Chisholm’s popular ‘family emigration’ schemes; the other from public discussions about the law of settlement in the context of the New Poor Law. The latter were attempts to regulate where the poor could live, in the context of the bureaucratic reorganization of national geography that occurred at this time. Throughout, however, the novel displays profound ambivalence about Britain’s engagement with the wider world, expressed most clearly through its antagonism to overseas philanthropy, which it sees as a misdirection of national feeling. The novel’s vision of the nation, underpinned by its commitment to mobility and an ideology of freedom of movement within, but not beyond, the nation, produces its particular formal features and thematic emphases on mobility and movement, and its preoccupation with thresholds—doorsteps, entrances, and finally national borders—as places at which political decisions about inclusion and exclusion are made.

Suffering Games: De Quincean Transgression and Self-Production in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Igrok (The Gambler)

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Lonny Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Self ◽  
Production Functions ◽  
First Person ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Modern Self ◽  
Self Production

This paper compares Dostoevsky’s The Gambler (1866) to certain features of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) to show that the two texts demonstrate the emergence of a simulacral culture of the modern self. The De Quincean model of subjectivity is presented as a prototype of the modern self before The Gambler is investigated in its light. Insofar as the self is constructed in the context of social environments, modernity is characterized by a mimetic mode we might call intensity, where the modern self finds and creates its identity through repetitive patterns of mediated experience. In particular, it is argued that the first-person narrators of Confessions and The Gambler exemplify the obsessive cycle of self-production—a characteristically modern addiction to the decentring and multiplication of the self, rooted in the need for the intoxicating effect of strong sensations and imaginary experience. Self-production functions in a cycle of passion, transgression, and suffering, followed by anticipation of change and renewal, on a par, psychologically, with rebirth or resurrection. The major difference between the works is that, while Confessions emphasizes the causality of social conditions, The Gambler is predicated on the uniquely Russian sense of destiny (sud’ba).

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