In The Origins of Collective Decision Making, Andy Blunden identifies three paradigms of collective decision making – Counsel, Majority and Consensus, discovers their origins in traditional, medieval and modern times, and traces their evolution over centuries up to the present. The study reveals that these three paradigms have an ethical foundation, deeply rooted in historical experiences. The narrative takes the reader into the very moments when individual leaders and organisers made the crucial developments in white heat of critical moments in history, such as the English Revolution of the 1640s, the Chartist Movement of the 1840s and the early Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. This history provides a valuable resource for resolving current social movement conflict over decision making.
When one thinks about how collective decisions are made, voting is the method that comes naturally to mind. But other methods such as random process and consensus are also used. This book explores just what a collective decision is, classifies the methods of making collective decisions, and identifies the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Classification is the prelude to evaluation. What are the characteristics of a method of making collective decisions, the book asks, that permit us to describe a collective decision as good? The second part of the book is detailed exploration of voting: the dimensions in which voting situations differ, the origins and logic of majority rule, the frequency of cycles in voting, the Arrow and Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorems, criteria for ways of cutting through cycles and the application of these criteria to a variety of rules, voting over continuums, proportional representation, and voting rules that take account of intensities of preferences. Relatively unknown methods of voting give voting a much greater potential than is generally recognized. Collective Decisions and Voting is essential reading for everyone with an interest in voting theory and in how public choices might be made.
A critical review of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, the psychology originating from Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934). Tracing its roots in Goethe, Hegel and Marx, the author builds a concept of activity transcending the division between individual and social domains in human sciences.
This book aims to understand and explain who governs, and for how long, under the institution of parliamentary democracy. In the process, it investigates the nature of political scientists' knowledge of coalitional behavior and how to advance it.
Individual decision making can often be wrong due to misinformation, impulses, or biases. Collective decision making, on the other hand, can be surprisingly accurate. In Democratic Reason, Hélène Landemore demonstrates that the very factors behind the superiority of collective decision making add up to a strong case for democracy. She shows that the processes and procedures of democratic decision making form a cognitive system that ensures that decisions taken by the many are more likely to be right than decisions taken by the few. Democracy as a form of government is therefore valuable not only because it is legitimate and just, but also because it is smart. Landemore considers how the argument plays out with respect to two main mechanisms of democratic politics: inclusive deliberation and majority rule. In deliberative settings, the truth-tracking properties of deliberation are enhanced more by inclusiveness than by individual competence. Landemore explores this idea in the contexts of representative democracy and the selection of representatives. She also discusses several models for the "wisdom of crowds" channeled by majority rule, examining the trade-offs between inclusiveness and individual competence in voting. When inclusive deliberation and majority rule are combined, they beat less inclusive methods, in which one person or a small group decide. Democratic Reason thus establishes the superiority of democracy as a way of making decisions for the common good.
Andy Blunden’s Hegel Marx & Vygotsky, Essays in Social Philosophy uses a series of essays to demonstrate how the cultural psychology of Lev Vygotsky and the Soviet Activity Theorists can be used to renew Hegelian Marxism as an interdisciplinary science.
What induces groups to commit political suicide? This book explores the decisions to surrender power and to legitimate this surrender: collective abdications. Commonsensical explanations impute such actions to coercive pressures, actors’ miscalculations, or their contamination by ideologies at odds with group interests. Ivan Ermakoff argues that these explanations are either incomplete or misleading. Focusing on two paradigmatic cases of voluntary and unconditional surrender of power—the passing of an enabling bill granting Hitler the right to amend the Weimar constitution without parliamentary supervision (March 1933), and the transfer of full executive, legislative, and constitutional powers to Marshal Pétain (Vichy, France, July 1940)—Ruling Oneself Out recasts abdication as the outcome of a process of collective alignment. Ermakoff distinguishes several mechanisms of alignment in troubled and uncertain times and assesses their significance through a fine-grained examination of actors’ beliefs, shifts in perceptions, and subjective states. To this end, he draws on the analytical and methodological resources of perspectives that usually stand apart: primary historical research, formal decision theory, the phenomenology of group processes, quantitative analyses, and the hermeneutics of testimonies. In elaborating this dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, Ruling Oneself Out restores the complexity and indeterminate character of pivotal collective decisions and demonstrates that an in-depth historical exploration can lay bare processes of crucial importance for understanding the formation of political preferences, the paradox of self-deception, and the makeup of historical events as highly consequential.
This open access book summarizes the multi-disciplinary results of one of China’s main primatological research projects on the endemic Tibetan macaque (Macaca thibetana), which had continued for over 30 years, but which had never been reported on systematically. Dedicated to this exceptional Old World monkey, this book makes the work of Chinese primatologists on the social behavior, cooperation, culture, cognition, group dynamics, and emerging technologies in primate research accessible to the international scientific community. One of the most impressive Asian monkeys, and the largest member of its genus, the Tibetan macaque deserves to be better known. This volume goes a long way towards bringing this species into the spotlight with many excellent behavioral analyses from the field. - Frans de Waal, Professor of Psychology, Emory University, USA. Macaques matter. To understand primate patterns and trends, and to gain important insight into humanity, we need to augment and expand our engagement with the most successful and widespread primate genus aside from Homo. This volume focuses on the Tibetan macaque, a fascinating species with much to tell us about social behavior, physiology, complexity and the macaque knack for interfacing with humans. This book is doubly important for primatology in that beyond containing core information on this macaque species, it also reflects an effective integrated collaboration between Chinese scholars and a range of international colleagues—exactly the type of collaborative engagement primatology needs. This volume is a critical contribution to a global primatology. - Agustín Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, USA. I have many fond memories of my association with Mt. Huangshan research beginning in 1983, when together with Professor Qishan Wang we established this site. It is such a beautiful place and I miss it. It is gratifying to see how far research has progressed since we began work there, becoming more internationalized and very much a collaborative endeavor under the long-term direction of Professor Jin-Hua Li and colleagues. This book highlights the increased interest in this species, representing a variety of disciplines ranging from macro aspects of behavior, cognition and sociality, to micro aspects of microbes, parasites and disease, authored by a group of renowned Chinese and international primatologists. I applaud their efforts and expect more interesting work to come from this site in the years ahead. - Kazuo Wada, Professor Emeritus, Kyoto University, Japan.
Hegel for Social Movements by Andy Blunden is an introduction to the reading of Hegel intended for those already active in social movements. It introduces Hegel’s ideas in a way which will be useful for those fighting for social change, and while some familiarity with philosophy would be an advantage for the reader, the main pre-requisite is a commitment to the practical pursuit of ideal aims. The book covers the whole sweep of Hegel’s writing, but focuses particularly on the Logic and Hegel’s social theory – the Philosophy of Right. Blunden brings to his exposition an original interpretation of Hegel’s Logic as the logic of social change, utilizing his expertise in Vygotsky’s cultural psychology and Soviet Activity Theory.
Geographical Information Systems, Three Volume Set is a computer system used to capture, store, analyze and display information related to positions on the Earth’s surface. It has the ability to show multiple types of information on multiple geographical locations in a single map, enabling users to assess patterns and relationships between different information points, a crucial component for multiple aspects of modern life and industry. This 3-volumes reference provides an up-to date account of this growing discipline through in-depth reviews authored by leading experts in the field. VOLUME EDITORS Thomas J. Cova The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States Ming-Hsiang Tsou San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, United States Georg Bareth University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany Chunqiao Song University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States Yan Song University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States Kai Cao National University of Singapore, Singapore Elisabete A. Silva University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom Covers a rapidly expanding discipline, providing readers with a detailed overview of all aspects of geographic information systems, principles and applications Emphasizes the practical, socioeconomic applications of GIS Provides readers with a reliable, one-stop comprehensive guide, saving them time in searching for the information they need from different sources
