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Singh 47's avatar

Effective policing, such that families do not fear their daughters will be raped. Today in India, every day is another horror story. As Kavita Krishnan details, this tends to heighten paternalistic protection.

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You cannot have effective policing with SC/ST & reservations.

White men will tolerate Negro rape + single mothers.

We honor kill

ਅਕਾਲ

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Cathy Reisenwitz's avatar

What do you think drives patrilineage vs matrilineage?

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R Meager's avatar

As someone agonizing over whether to join their local building whatsapp group, I enjoyed this post.

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Alice Evans's avatar

LOL. Did it aid your decision?

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R Meager's avatar

no but it clarified for me why the decision is difficult!

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Alice Evans's avatar

truthfully, i think that community rituals are hugely important for building social glue, and that's important for trust and cameraderie.

it's also true that any community will police its members, and tussle over certain standards of behaviour, which many of us may find restrictive or repressive.

that said, i think the decline of community rituals does weaken the fabric which makes us feel a sense of belonging, and aids cooperation, trust, mutual care.

there are definitely trade-offs.

too much community tightness is repressive, but too little can mean people don't give a crap about their neighbours

to give the most extreme example, you get PNG, where people strongly identify with their immediate locality, but in cities (among strangers, without cohesion) there is very high violence and distrust

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Charles Mendelson's avatar

I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot lately for an article I’m writing on Early Modern Eurpean Witch Trials, and I think something that is missing from your framework is the role of activism and specifically a small subsection of the population with the moral courage to challenge norms.

To bring it to an example I’m more familiar with, during the antebellum period in the US, the abolitionists who publically advocated against slavery provided a counter-narrative to the norm that chattel slavery was acceptable, which in turn allowed people who were privately uncomfortable with slavery to become more public about it.

This is also an area where cross cultural contact matters, which you demonstrated in your articles on the send-down generation in China.

This may also be a result of closed societies vs open societies where activism is broadly more tolerated in open societies and is consequently more effective.

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Niespika's avatar

Great post as usual, however, as "a erstwhile philosopher", I'm surprised you didn't cite Searle or Bicchieri's works. Their perspective seems to fit with the framework you're developing here. (For a primer on them see, ch. 4 of Rosenberg's Philosophy of Social Science)

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Alice Evans's avatar

Great point. By terminology is a little different, by Bicchieri's Norms in the Wild Chapter 2 is good. I'm not so convinced by the rest of the book. Now added! Thank you!

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