Search results

As specialisation takes root in human communities, the economics of scale and of diversity come into play. Scale leads to product markets, specialised firms, channels, and to industries. Diversity generates peasant markets, shopping malls, and business eco‐systems. These outcomes are all examples of marketing systems, and are typical of the patterns that emerge, grow, adapt and evolve in complex transaction flows. Marketing systems are multi‐level, path dependent, dynamic systems, embedded within a social matrix, and interacting with institutional and knowledge environments. The purpose of this paper is to outline a number of propositions that might serve as a basis for a theory of marketing systems.

The paper draws on historical research into the evolution of exchange and on examples of markets and exchange practices from marketing, anthropology, sociology, and economics. It utilises results from complex adaptive systems theory, from the networks and markets literatures, and from ecology, to formulate a series of propositions that identify properties believed to be common to all marketing systems.

Marketing systems are identified and categorized as emergent patterns in flows of transactions. In total, 12 foundational propositions are suggested. The propositions are complementary to those suggested by S‐D logic.

This paper offers a fresh approach to the study of marketing systems, developing relevant theory. Marketing systems link micro choices with macro outcomes, with implications ranging from disaster recovery to distributive justice and QOL outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze socio-cultural and political forces which have shaped anti-violent attitudes and strategies of the Batek and Batek Tanum of Peninsular Malaysia.

Data collection during the authors’ long-term, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork among the Batek and Batek Tanum in Peninsular Malaysia. Methodology included participant observation, semi-structured interviews and a literature review of texts on the Orang Asli and anthropological theories on violence.

Traumatic experiences of past violence and atrocities greatly influence the Batek's and Batek Tanum's present attitudes toward direct and structural forms of violence. A variety of anti-violent strategies are adopted, including the choice to escape when physically threatened. Rather than demonstrating “weakness,” this course of action represents a smart survival strategy. External violence reinforces values of internal cooperation and mutual-aid that foraging societies, even sedentary groups, typically privilege. In recent years, the Batek's increasing political awareness has opened new forms of resistance against the structural violence embedded within Malaysian society.

The study proposes that societies cannot simply be labelled as violent or non-violent on the basis of socio-biological theories. Research into hunter-gatherer social organization and violence needs to be reframed within larger debates about structural violence. The “anti-violence” of certain foraging groups can be understood as a powerful form of resilience to outside pressures and foraging groups’ best possible strategy for survival.

Communities and neighbourhoods are often perceived to be under threat in the information society, as technological developments accelerate economic and social change. Technological developments may also provide a solution: ‘virtual communities’. There has been much debate about whether virtual communities can exist, but in the midst of such debates there has been little recognition that ‘community’ is a complex phenomenon. Many varieties of community exist, which can be categorised as moral, normative or proximate. Evidence suggests that some varieties of community can be constituted via electronic communication, but it is probably not possible to replicate those features of community that many people find lacking in modern life. Such a lack, and the desire for virtual communities as a response to that lack, are symptomatic of individuals‘ disengagement from social and political participation. If the process continues, this suggests an information society constituted by segmented diversity with isolated pockets of sociability.

The purpose of this paper is to question the assumptions behind the aggressive competitive image of Northwest Coast (NWC) forager societies, given that their most reflective descendants emphasize sharing and paying back as constant peacemaking actions through history. Also to seek data that help ascertain whether this contemporary view might predate today's sensibilities colored by life as post-foragers encapsulated in nation states.

Historical, ethnographic and ethnohistorical documentary sources are studied, together with regional archeological findings. These are considered against the author's own ethnographic work among various foragers on the edge of, but integrated with higher profile coastal peoples. Some historical context for regional war and peace is provided.

The archeology indicates that evidence for violent warlike activity appears clearly about three times in 10,000 years, the most extensive being contiguous with Europe's economic and political influence on the continent in the past half millennium. Even in this latter period, extended family foragers managed and sought to control aggression/competition by social sharing and cooperation between like units and by upholding established peacemaking processes and protocols.

Since the region and its literature are vast, this theme requires extensive long-term investigation. Findings given here from a limited number of locations are tentative and require detail from other parts of the region; however, they do suggest an existing ethic of sharing and peacemaking reflected back in time through oral history and archeology.

The literature of the NWC's bellicosity, its slavery, war-making and agonistic giving is based on events reported from a very short span of contact history. If these conditions had been endemic over time, there would have been insufficient peace to allow these foragers to hunt, gather, fish, barter and prepare foods and goods with which to survive between annual growing and spawning seasons.

Instead of finding ways to cooperate with each other to seek better living conditions, some NWC post-foragers now assume competition and aggression to be endemic features of their relations with each other. Such persons, perhaps from a sense of inferiority engendered by history, cite the bellicose literature and the glories of the fur trade period as more typical of their heritage than the wisdom and peaceful teachings of their own elders about the past, the future, human relations and the natural world.

The findings from the NWC suggest analogies in the emphasis on sharing as a mechanism for making and maintaining peace in the broader comparative context of hunter-gatherer studies. Sharing remains central whether one examines complex hunter-gathers or their more egalitarian colleagues.

The question of violence in hunter-gatherer society has animated philosophical debates since at least the seventeenth century. Steven Pinker has sought to affirm that civilization, is superior to the state of humanity during its long history of hunting and gathering. The purpose of this paper is to draw upon a series of recent studies that assert a baseline of primordial violence by hunters and gatherers. In challenging this position the author draws on four decades of ethnographic and historical research on hunting and gathering peoples.

At the empirical heart of this question is the evidence pro- and con- for high rates of violent death in pre-farming human populations. The author evaluates the ethnographic and historical evidence for warfare in recorded hunting and gathering societies, and the archaeological evidence for warfare in pre-history prior to the advent of agriculture.

The view of Steven Pinker and others of high rates of lethal violence in hunters and gatherers is not sustained. In contrast to early farmers, their foraging precursors lived more lightly on the land and had other ways of resolving conflict. With little or no fixed property they could easily disperse to diffuse conflict. The evidence points to markedly lower levels of violence for foragers compared to post-Neolithic societies.

This conclusion raises serious caveats about the grand evolutionary theory asserted by Steven Pinker, Richard Wrangham and others. Instead of being “killer apes” in the Pleistocene and Holocene, the evidence indicates that early humans lived as relatively peaceful hunter-gathers for some 7,000 generations, from the emergence of Homo sapiens up until the invention of agriculture. Therefore there is a major gap between the purported violence of the chimp-like ancestors and the documented violence of post-Neolithic humanity.

This is a critical analysis of published claims by authors who contend that ancient and recent hunter-gatherers typically committed high levels of violent acts. It reveals a number of serious flaws in their arguments and use of data.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the discrepancy between ethnohistorical accounts on north-western Kalahari San of the nineteenth to early twentieth century and recent ethnographic accounts, the former depicting the San as intensely warlike, the latter as basically peaceable.

Review of historical, ethnohistorical and ethnographic source material (reports, journal articles, monographs).

The warlike ways of the nineteenth-century Kalahari San were reactions to settler intrusion, domination and encapsulation. This was met with resistance, a process that led to the rapid politicization and militarization, socially and ideationally, of San groups in the orbit of the intruders (especially the “tribal zone” they created). It culminated in internecine warfare, specifically raiding and feuding, amongst San bands and tribal groupings.

While the nineteenth-century Kalahari San were indeed warlike and aggressive, toward both intruders and one another, this fact does not warrant the conclusion that these “simple” hunter-gatherer people have an agonistic predisposition. Instead, of being integral to their sociality, bellicosity is historically contingent. In the absence of the historical circumstances that fuel San aggression and warfare, as was the case after and before the people's exposure and resistance to hegemonic intruders, San society and ethos, in conformity with the social structure and value orientation of simple, egalitarian band societies, is basically peaceful.

A setting-the-record-straight corrective on current misunderstandings and misinformation on hunter-gatherer warfare.

This essay emerges from the author’s ongoing attempts to explore the implications of the postmodern condition on the activity called public administration. The approach is unorthodox; mixing current international events with history of science, administrative theory, and ending with an intriguing science fiction novel. The central theme of the essay is the myth of progress connected with Michael Spicer’s excellent analysis of competing theories of state. Whatever else might be said of the essay, the argument comes full circle. It begins with the idea that governing is hard work and ends on the same note.

It is often believed that the type of religion that a group of people follow (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) can account for significant and important cultural differences, with implications for business ethics, corporate and social responsibility, and other business-related variables. The alternative view is that the cultural differences between religions are either trivial or are actually misinterpreted ethnic or national differences. The purpose of this paper is to compare and evaluate these two views.

The authors focus on Africa, the most religious region of the world, whose cultures should therefore be especially susceptible to the effect of religion. We used latest data from 100 religious groups, following 19 religions, and living in 27 countries, from the nationally representative Afrobarometer. The items in the authors’ analysis reveal cultural ideologies concerning key cultural domains, such as inclusive–exclusive society (gender equality, homophobia and xenophobia), the role of government and the role of religion in politics. These domains are related to cultural conservatism versus modernization and have clear implications for management. The authors compare the group-level effect of belonging to a certain nation to the effect of belonging to a certain religion.

A hierarchical cluster analysis produced crystal-clear national clusters, with only one of the 100 religious groups systematically clustering outside its respective national cluster. The authors did not obtain a single cross-national cluster of coreligionists. Variation between nations was far greater than between religious groups and the latter was most often statistically insignificant. A comparison of Muslims with other religions revealed that Muslims are not generally more conservative, although they do have a marginally greater tendency to be less gender egalitarian. The authors conclude that the African national environments have a much stronger impact on cultural differences than do religions. The effect of the latter, compared to the former, is negligibly small and often insignificant. Thus, they find no evidence that religions can produce a powerful discriminant effect on some of the most important elements of culture.

Non-Abrahamic religions are poorly represented in Africa. Therefore, we could not assess their effect on culture. Nevertheless, it seems that attempts to explain cultural differences in values and ideologies in terms of religious differences are misguided, even in a cultural environment where religion is very strong.

The findings could help improve executive training in cross-cultural awareness, purging it from erroneous views on the origins of cultural differences. Managers should avoid simplistic explanations of the values and ideologies of their employees in terms of their religious affiliation.

Simplistic (yet very popular) explanations of culture as a function of type of religion should be avoided in society at large, too. The idea that different religions generate different cultures is not only dubious from a scientific perspective but also socially dangerous as it may lead to religious intolerance.

This is only the second study in the history of the whole cross-cultural field that provides a multinational and multidenominational comparison of the effect of nations versus religious denominations on culture.

1. Religions are often portrayed as sources of important cultural differences.

2. We compared differences in cultural modernization between religions and between nations in Africa.

3. Variation between 27 African countries dwarfed that between 100 religious groups.

4. Practically all religious groups yielded perfectly homogeneous national clusters.

5. We did not observe a single cluster of coreligionists from different countries.

6. We conclude that nations have a strong effect on cultural differences whereas religions have a minimal effect at best.

Religions are often portrayed as sources of important cultural differences.

We compared differences in cultural modernization between religions and between nations in Africa.

Variation between 27 African countries dwarfed that between 100 religious groups.

Practically all religious groups yielded perfectly homogeneous national clusters.

We did not observe a single cluster of coreligionists from different countries.

We conclude that nations have a strong effect on cultural differences whereas religions have a minimal effect at best.

Although typologies of violence have become more common, relatively little attention has been given to Donald Black’s (1983) distinction between moralistic and predatory violence. Moralistic violence is rooted in conflict; predatory violence is rooted in exploitation. We elaborate Black’s typology and show how it is similar to, but distinct from, other typologies of violence. We also address the criteria by which typologies of any kind might be judged. Borrowing from the literatures on typologies and on standards of scientific theory, we argue that explanatory typologies should be evaluated according to four criteria: the degree to which they are powerful, theoretical, general, and parsimonious. Applying the criteria to Black’s typology, we argue that the distinction between moralistic and predatory violence is an important contribution to the arsenal of the student of violence.