It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Corporate ethics czar investigating Levi Strauss over alleged links to forced labour
The Canadian Press+
Canada's corporate ethics watchdog has launched an investigation into allegations that Levi Strauss Canada is working with companies that use forced labour in China.
Sheri Meyerhoffer, the ombudsperson for responsible enterprise, is looking into whether the denim company known for Levi's jeans has supply relationships with Chinese companies that source materials from Uyghur people forced to work in the Xinjiang region.
Meyerhoffer's office is tasked with investigating complaints about possible human-rights abuses in the operations of Canadian garment, mining and oil and gas companies.
Levi Strauss denies the allegations, saying they are based on outdated and inaccurate data.
The company did not make itself available for an initial assessment meeting and did not provide information verifying its response to the allegations, the ombudsperson's office said.
Given the company's limited participation in the complaint process, the watchdog said it may consider whether the company is participating in good faith at a later stage in the process.
That could include making a recommendation to the minister of international trade about withdrawing or denying trade advocacy support to the company.
The allegations stem from a complaint that was made in June 2022 by a coalition of 28 civil society organizations. The organizations initially took their complaint to Levi Strauss in November 2021, and they say they have not received a response.
The complaint cited a March 2020 report from Australia that documented the use of Uyghur labour in Xinjiang, as well as a 2021 report by a professor at Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom that linked Levi Strauss to three companies that use or benefit from forced labour.
The United Nations found in 2022 that China committed serious human-rights violations against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities that "may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity."
Beijing has disputed that report.
In its response to the ombudsperson, Levi Strauss said "to the best of the company's knowledge, it has no commercial relationships with the five suppliers named in the complaint."
As a result, the investigation aims to "assess the reliability of the data" in the reports cited in the complaint.
The ombudsperson also recently announced investigations into Walmart, Hugo Boss and Diesel.
Levi is the seventh company to be investigated for allegations it uses Uyghur forced labour in its supply chain, and the ombudsperson's office said more assessments will be made public in the coming weeks.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2023.
Friday, February 04, 2022
Barney Glaser, 1930-2022: The Guardian of Grounded Theory
Sociologist Barney G. Glaser, who co-discovered the qualitative methodology known as grounded theory, has died at age 91 of Parkinson’s disease. Glaser died on January 30 at his Mill Valley, California home with his family with him, according to the Institute for Research and Theory Methodologies, which is the home of the Glaser Center for Grounded Theory.
Grounded theory grew out of extensive qualitative research on dying hospital patients conducted by Glaser and sociologist Anselm Strauss in the early 1960s. The method flips the common research process of starting with a theoretical framework to assess what data is gathered. It instead first systematically gathers and analyzes data, and only at that point erects a theoretical or hypothetical scaffolding.
There is of course more to grounded theory, including specific techniques for capturing and coding qualitative responses, but it was intent from the start on demonstrating – and perhaps resuscitating — the legitimacy of qualitative social science research. It “is reportedly the most invoked method in qualitative research worldwide,” Astrid Gynnild and Vivian B. Martin wrote in their 2011 book, Grounded Theory: The Philosophy, Method, and Work of Barney Glaser.
The resulting extensions to classical grounded theory – as well as the criticism that dogged it — gave Glaser a raison d’être after he left institutional academe. An “academic nomad” for the past three decades, Glaser wrote extensively and conducted a stream of seminars to maintain his – and classical grounded theory’s – good reputation.
“Whatever your position on #groundedtheory,” Jenna Breckenridge at the University of Dundee tweeted the day after Glaser’s death, “he revolutionised qualitative research. He had an enviable passion for his work and for mentoring others – I was lucky to receive a little back in 2010. Farewell Dr Glaser.”
Barney Galland Glaser was born on February 27, 1930, to a wealthy family in San Francisco, California. In retelling his early life, Glaser created an aura of absolute autonomy, saying “I was always on my own.” He told Gynnild that when he was age 5, he needed to remind his mother that he ought to be attending kindergarten, and then having a chauffeur attend to the details so he could enroll. “So I was on my own at the age of 5. My parents hardly knew that I went to college.”
Attend college he did, earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Stanford University in 1952. He spent two years in the U.S. Army, which allowed him in his off hours to first attend the Sorbonne in Paris, studying contemporary literature, and then the University of Freiburg, studying literature.
He and his German then-girlfriend moved to the United States, and when that relationship failed, Glaser entered psychoanalysis. He would tell Gynnild that the therapy allowed him to “get the exact data [about himself] to see what it is,” and that data capture was a key building block of what would be grounded theory. “The true devotion to data, the true source came from psychoanalysis.”
Glaser would return to higher education and to sociology at Columbia University. Glaser said he was “all in” on sociology when he was an undergrad at Stanford and retained his allegiance to the discipline. “In buying the program 100 percent,” he would explain in a 2005 keynote at the International Qualitative Research Convention, “I bought the four dimensions of doing sociology – autonomy, originality, contribution and the power of sociology. All dimensions are interrelated; they became a part of my sociological identity and led eventually to my originating grounded theory.”
At Columbia he studied under Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, and his experiences under these greats helped him craft grounded theory – not by what they taught, but in rejecting how they taught.
“He particularly disliked Merton’s behaviour to his students, accusing him of ‘[controlling] everyone, undermining their confidence and straight-jacketing creativity’; behaviours which led to six students failing their PhD ,” counselor Damian A. Stoupe observed in his 2020 dissertation, citing incidents Judith Holton outlined in her chapter of Grounded theory: The philosophy, method, and work of Barney Glaser. “Glaser, while still a student at Columbia University, had fun in the creative ways in which he gained vengeance: writing a paper challenging Merton’s views and sending over 2,000 reprints around the world and submitting his notes from one of Merton’s lectures for peer review in the American Sociological Review and receiving the anonymous feedback that they were ‘reified gibberish.’”
Nonetheless, Glaser received his PhD in 1961; his dissertation was soon published as Organizational Scientists: Their Professional Careers. He returned to his hometown as a post-doc at the University of California, San Francisco, where he taught methods and collaborated with Anselm Strauss, who had founded the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the university. They worked together on a study of dying patients at some California hospitals. A book, Awareness of Dying, arose from the collaboration. Published it 1965, it was an immediate success.
The methodological approach that Awareness highlighted led to a sequel, of sorts, in the duo’s The Discovery of Grounded Theory. “They asserted that the twofold process of firstly generating and subsequently verifying a theory should receive equal treatment within social research,” Méabh Kenny and Robert Fourie observed in an excellent 2014 article, “Tracing the History of Grounded Theory Methodology.” “However, they observed that ‘since verification has primacy on the current sociological scene, the desire to generate theory often becomes secondary, if not totally lost, in specific researches.’”
Released two years after Awareness, Discovery proved even more successful and influential than had the older work.
Glaser later explained that drafted most of The Discovery of Grounded Theory, again hitting on the need for autonomy that marked his professional career. “Anselm loved me,” Glaser would write in his solo-authored Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis in 1992, “but he never understood me or my roots in sociology and my thoughts and idea input into grounded theory, which shaped it as we know it today. Nor did he ever try to understand my background.”
Joining that desire for autonomy now was an insistence on orthodoxy. As Stoupe wrote two years ago, “Glaser has functioned as the guardian of the purity of the method over the last 50 years” even as grounded theory split into several schools and Glaser himself split professionally from Strauss.
The split appeared in paper well before Basics appeared. Glaser had written a second grounded theory methodology, Theoretical Sensitivity, by himself, in 1978. Strauss published his Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists in 1987, and with Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques, in 1990. The latter grated on Glaser, who wrote to Strauss, “I demand that you withdraw the book pending a rewriting of it. And then you and I sit down and go through each page of the book and iron out what I consider to be the misconceptions and then rewrite the book by mutual consent.”
They didn’t, and even dedicated the text “to Barney Glaser with admiration and appreciation.” Glaser responded with Basics.
“I published Basics and everybody was unhappy,” he later told Gynnild. “Anselm was running out of soft money. It wasn’t even quitting, so much as that of a progression.” Glaser left UCSF and became an independent scholar. “Well, I didn’t teach any more, but I was still writing, wasn’t I? It wasn’t a big split or a big disjunction, or juncture, more just a progression of doing more of one thing and less of another. I think Basics turned a lot of people against me. It wasn’t that they threw me out, but all of a sudden there was no more research money.”
Glaser published nearly a dozen books about the method “to correct the record and explicate grounded theory.” Gynnild and Martin wrote, Glaser, they noted, would argue that Strauss — who died in 1996 — “was the one who deviated from grounded theory’s “established definitions.”
Ever vigilant, “for Glaser,” Stoupe wrote, “the remodelling of GT by many of those in the room represented the transformation of a simple research method into a complicated jargonised, specialist process.” His 2009 article “Jargonizing: Using the vocabulary of Grounded Theory,” for example, is a broadside at the apparently apostate content in the SAGE Handbook of Grounded Theory (“90% jargonizing distortion of GT as originated,” he claimed!). And despite his disdain, Glaser kept his critiques professional, such as when his former student, the late Kathy Charmaz, dared to promote what she dubbed “constructivist grounded theory.”
He was proud of his business acumen, such as refurbishing and renting out houses and in processing loans (although the Cascade Acceptance Corporation he founded in 1968 filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and was liquidated the year after). In 1970 Glaser started the publishing company Sociology Press, specializing in his grounded theory methodologies and readers. And in 1999 he founded the non-profit Grounded Theory Institute and it bespoke journal, Grounded Theory Review: An International Journal.
Tuesday, July 07, 2020
Our animal inheritance: Humans perk up their ears, too, when they hear interesting sounds
SAARLAND UNIVERSITY
Many animals, including dogs, cats and various species of monkeys, will move their ears to better focus their attention on a novel sound. That humans also have this capability was not known until now. A research team based in Saarland has demonstrated for the first time that we make minute, unconscious movements of our ears that are directed towards the sound want to focus our attention on. The team discovered this ability by measuring electrical signals in the muscles of the vestigial motor system in the human ear. The results have now been published in the journal eLife.
Asking children to 'perk up their ears' means asking them to listen intently. Nobody seriously thinks that kids literally move their ears the way that cats, dogs or horses do. But the fact is, they do, as researchers at the Systems Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Unit (SNNU) have now shown. The research team, led by Professor Danial Strauss, has shown that the muscles around the ear become active as soon as novel, unusual or goal-relevant sounds are perceived. 'The electrical activity of the ear muscles indicates the direction in which the subject is focusing their auditory attention,' says neuroscientist and computer scientist Strauss. 'It is very likely that humans still possess a rudimentary orientation system that tries to control the movement of the pinna (the visible outer part of the ear). Despite becoming vestigial about 25 million years ago, this system still exists as a "neural fossil" within our brains,' explains Professor Strauss. The question why pinna orienting was lost during the evolution of the primate lineage has still not been completely resolved.
The researchers were able to record the signals that control the minute, generally invisible, movements of the pinna using a technique known as surface electromyography (EMG). Sensors attached to the subject's skin detected the electrical activity of the muscles responsible for moving the pinna or altering its shape. Two types of attention were examined. To assess the reflexive attention that occurs automatically when we hear unexpected sounds, the participants in the study were exposed to novel sounds coming at random intervals from different lateral positions while they silently read a monotonous text. To test the goal-directed attention that we show when actively listening, the participants were asked to listen to a short story coming from one laterally positioned speaker, while ignoring a 'competing' story from a speaker located on the opposite side. Both experiments showed that muscle movements in the vestigial pinna-orienting system indicate the direction of the subject's auditory attention.
To better characterize these minute movements of the ear, the team also made special high-definition video recordings of the subjects during the experiments. The subtle movements of the ears were made visible by applying computer-based motion magnification techniques. Depending on the type of aural stimulus used, the researchers were able to observe different upward movements of the ear as well as differences in the strength of the rearward motion of the pinna's upper-lateral edge.
'Our results show that electromyography of the ear muscles offers a simple means of measuring auditory attention. The technique is not restricted to fundamental research, it also has potential for a number of interesting applications," explains Professor Strauss. One area of great practical relevance would be in developing better hearing aids. 'These devices would be able to amplify the sounds that the wearer is trying to hear, while suppressing the noises that they are trying to ignore. The device would function in a way that reflects the user's auditory intention.' The hearing aid would almost instantaneously register and interpret the electrical activity in the ear muscles. A miniature processor would gauge the direction the user is trying to direct their attention towards and then adjust the gain on the device's directional microphones accordingly.
The research project was conducted by researchers at the Systems Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Unit (SNNU), which is affiliated to both the Medical Faculty at Saarland University and to the School of Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Saarland (htw saar). External project partners were Dr. Ronny Hannemann from the hearing aid manufacturer Sivantos GmbH and Steven A. Hackley, Professor of Psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who in 2015 first postulated the existence of a vestigial pinna-orienting system in humans.
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Link to publication:
Daniel J. Strauss, Farah I. Corona-Strauss, Andreas Schroeer, Philipp Flotho, Ronny Hannemann, Steven A. Hackley: 'Vestigial Auriculomotor Activity Indicates the Direction of Auditory Attention in Humans'. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.54536 (https://elifesciences.org/articles/54536)
The inter-institutional Systems Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Unit (SNNU) is the project lead on numerous German and international research projects at the interface of neuroscience and technology. SNNU is involved in projects whose potential uses range from medical applications to optimized human-machine interactions.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Eucalyptus, a pest-resistant evergreen valued for its hardy lumber and wellness-promoting oil, can be genetically modified not to reproduce sexually, a key step toward preventing the global tree plantation staple from invading native ecosystems.
Oregon State University's Steve Strauss led an international collaboration that showed the CRISPR Cas9 gene editing technique could be used with nearly 100% efficiency to knock out LEAFY, the master gene behind flower formation.
"The flowers never developed to the point where ovules, pollen or fertile seeds were observed," Strauss said. "And there was no detectable negative effect on tree growth or form. A field study should be the next step to take a more careful look at stability of the vegetative and floral sterility traits, but with physical gene mutation we expect high reliability over the life of the trees."
Findings were published in Plant Biotechnology Journal.
Strauss, Ph.D. student Estefania Elorriaga and research assistant Cathleen Ma teamed up with scientists at the University of Colorado, Beijing Forestry University and the University of Pretoria on the research. The greenhouse study involved a hybrid of two species, Eucalyptus grandis and E. urophylla, that is widely planted in the Southern Hemisphere; there are more than 700 species of eucalyptus, most of them native to Australia.
"Roughly 7% of the world's forests are plantations, and 25% of that plantation area contains nonnative species and hybrids," said Elorriaga, now a postdoctoral researcher at North Carolina State. "Eucalyptus is one of the most widely planted genera of forest trees, particularly the 5.7 million hectares of eucalyptus in Brazil, the 4.5 million hectares in China and 3.9 million hectares in India."
Those plantings, the scientists note, can lead to undesirable mingling with native ecosystems. Thus eliminating those trees' ability to sexually reproduce without affecting other characteristics would be an effective way to greatly reduce the potential for invasive spreading in areas where that is considered an important ecological or economic problem.
"This was the first successful application of CRISPR to solve a commercial problem in forest trees," Elorriaga said. "Research with CRISPR in forest trees to modify different traits is ongoing in many laboratories around the world. Global warming is having large impacts on forests of all kinds, and gene editing may be an important new breeding tool to supplement conventional methods."
Strauss points out that despite the promising findings, trees genetically modified as they were in this research could not legally be planted in Brazil, a nation with some of the largest economic value from eucalyptus tree farming.
"The trait could not be used there due to laws against modifying plant reproduction with recombinant DNA methods," he said. "It would also be disallowed for field research or commercial use under sustainable forest management certification in many parts of the world - something scientists have come together to severely criticize in recent years."
A little more than two years ago, Strauss was part of a coalition of forestry researchers to call for a review of what they see as overly restrictive policies regarding biotech research.
"Hopefully, studies like this one, that show how precise and safe the technology can be in modifying traits, and that help to promote ecological safety, will help to change regulations and certification rules," he said. "Happily, such discussions are well underway in many nations."
Monday, November 27, 2023
Natural products used in Ayurvedic treatments alleviate symptoms of depression in fruit flies
Mainz University and the US-American BENFRA Center have jointly demonstrated the effect of botanical products used in traditional Asiatic medicine on depressive states
Chronic exposure to stress can lead to the development of depression-like disorders that manifest as a lack of motivation – even in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. As a result, the insects show less courtship behavior, are less interested in stopping to ingest sweet nutrients, and are less willing to climb a gap in the experimental setup. Traditional medicinal plants, however, can – to some extent – alleviate some of the associated symptoms, as observed by researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany in collaboration with the BENFRA Botanical Dietary Supplements Research Center in Portland, Oregon. The researchers have shown that two plants used in Ayurvedic medicine can improve resilience to chronic stress when used prophylactically in the flies. Despite their stressed state, they then no longer displayed behavior consistent with depression. Papers on their studies of the two plant materials have been published in Nutrients.
Plants containing biologically active ingredients can help the organism deal with stress
The JGU research group led by Professor Roland Strauss has been using the Drosophila melanogaster model to analyze the underlying mechanisms involved in resilience to stress and the effects of stress on the nervous system. "Chronic stress can induce depression-like states also in the fruit fly, and these become apparent in changes to their behavior," explained Strauss. In this most recent research context, his group cooperated with the BENFRA Botanical Dietary Supplements Research Center in the United States of America. The center investigates botanicals that enhance neurological and functional resilience in aging.
The Mainz-based researchers focus on testing extracts of botanicals and natural substances that are known to be used in traditional Asian medicine and are also marketed as dietary supplements. The idea is that certain plants contain above average amounts of active constituents or substances that themselves demonstrate particularly high levels of biological activity. These so-called adaptogens can help our bodies adapt to increased physical and emotional stress.
"An advantage over conventional drugs could be that medicinal plants contain blends of various active botanical substances that act on different sites of the stress axis," said Helen Holvoet, a doctoral candidate in the team of Professor Strauss and lead author of the two papers. "Because they have a synergistic effect on counteracting stress, they may cause fewer undesirable effects than if the substances themselves were administered alone in pure form." Another potential advantage is that dietary supplements can be used as complementary medication in association with pharmacotherapies.
In the joint project, Strauss' team tested their approach for the treatment of stress using two Ayurvedic medicinal plants, namely Withania somnifera (known as ashwagandha or the sleep berry) and Centella asiatica (the Indian pennywort). The research partners were able to demonstrate that, when administered prophylactically, both plants enhanced the resilience to chronic stress so that the flies exposed to stress did not get into a depression-like state in the first place.
Chlorogenic acid identified as substance relevant to the treatment of stress
"In the case of Withania somnifera, we found that the way of preparing the root makes a difference – as aqueous extracts provided better prophylactic effects than extracts in alcohol," explained Dr. Burkhard Poeck, who was also involved in the experiments. This surprising result does indicate how important it is to pay attention to the production methods used for dietary supplements.
The team in Mainz and their cooperation partners in Portland obtained an even more impressive result when experimenting with Centella asiatica. They were actually able to identify a specific component, chlorogenic acid, acting as a prophylactic, anti-stress substance. Chlorogenic acid is present in many botanicals, in particularly high levels in coffee beans, for example. It is also found in traditional medicinal herbs such as valerian (Valeriana officinalis) and St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), the stress-relieving potential of which have long been known.
The analysis of such medicinal substances not only provides general information on their effects on neuronal stress, but it can also offer starting points for fundamental resilience research. "In this case, we were able to pinpoint a relevant target protein for chlorogenic acid in Drosophila, the protein phosphatase calcineurin," said Professor Roland Strauss, explaining additional research results. In humans, calcineurin is present in many body organs and there are exceptionally high concentrations in the nervous system. There it interacts with numerous other proteins and mediates many signaling pathways.
The uptake of sugar and adaptogens can alleviate and even prevent depression-like states in the fruit fly Drosophila.
H. Holvoet et al., Chlorogenic Acids, Acting via Calcineurin, Are the Main Compounds in Centella asiatica Extracts That Mediate Resilience to Chronic Stress in Drosophila melanogaster, MDPI Nutrients, 16 September 2023, DOI: 10.3390/nu15184016 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/18/4016
H. Holvoet et al., Withania somnifera Extracts Promote Resilience against Age-Related and Stress-Induced Behavioral Phenotypes in Drosophila melanogaster; a Possible Role of Other Compounds besides Withanolides, MDPI Nutrients, 22 September 2022, DOI: 10.3390/nu14193923 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/19/3923
Chlorogenic Acids, Acting via Calcineurin, Are the Main Compounds in Centella asiatica Extracts That Mediate Resilience to Chronic Stress in Drosophila melanogaster
Wednesday, May 04, 2022
Studying wealth inequality in animals can reveal clues about how their societies evolved
A new review creates a framework for learning about animal societies by drawing inspiration from studies of inequality in humans.
Wealth inequality is a research topic typically reserved for humans. Now, research from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests that studying wealth inequality in animals can help shed light on social evolution. Adapting approaches from the study of wealth inequality in humans, the researchers show how wealth—in the form of material goods, individual attributes, or social connections—occurs broadly across animal species and can be distributed equally or unequally. This framework offers the opportunity to unite different corners of evolutionary biology under the umbrella of wealth inequality, exploring the idea that the unequal distribution of value, whatever form that value may take, has important consequences for animal societies.
Inequality is one of the greatest challenges of modern society and plays a prominent role in social and political debate. In the fields of economics and sociology, scholars study inequality in order to understand where it comes from, what are its consequences, and how we might implement policies that produce more productive, healthy, and equitable societies. An insight from this work is that inequality can have potent consequences for those of us living in these societies.
It was this finding that captured the attention of Eli Strauss, from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany (MPI-AB), and Daizaburo Shizuka, from University of Nebraska-Lincoln—two behavioral ecologists who study social evolution in non-human societies. “Reading these fascinating sociology and economics papers, it struck me that this work shares a common goal with my work in animal behavior, which is that we both want to understand how inequality arises and affects outcomes for individuals and groups,” says Strauss, first author on the paper and a post-doctoral researcher at MPI-AB.
A new framework in the study of social evolution
It’s not that inequality hadn’t been studied in animals before. Animal researchers have long explored differences among animals in their physical traits, the territory and resources they acquire, the structures they construct, or the social power they wield. However, what was missing was the overarching view that these different dimensions of animals’ lives are linked under the umbrella of inequality. “As we read, we wondered how the scholarship on the causes and consequences of inequality in humans could help biologists like us better understand animal societies,” says Daizaburo Shizuka, an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In a review paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Strauss and Shizuka gather work from different academic fields to bridge the divide between inequality research in human and animal societies. Their focus was on what might be learned about animals by drawing inspiration from studies of inequality in humans. Their review is among the first studies to unite these different areas of research as a means to understand how the unequal distribution of value—in whatever form it takes—shapes animal societies.
Can animals have “wealth”?
First, however, the researchers had to find common ground across humans and animals. In humans, “inequality” exists when something of value is distributed unequally among individuals. Usually, that value is defined as their wealth.
“Animals don’t have bank accounts, so how can they be wealthy?,” says Strauss. To answer this question, the scientists turned to research in evolutionary anthropology that explores inequality in hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, and other small-scale human societies. “These societies show varying degrees of wealth inequality, but wealth isn’t limited to bills and coins,” he adds. Instead, anthropologists view wealth as more broadly made up of material goods, individual characteristics like knowledge or hunting ability, and social connections. For instance, a woman could be wealthy by owning many cows, being skillful at growing crops, or having influence in her society.
The review highlights the ways in which these same human dimensions of wealth very clearly operate in animals. Territory ownership and access to food are types of material wealth that are widespread in animals. For instance, squirrels and acorn woodpeckers build food caches and stock them with hordes of nuts and seeds. In dolphins and New Caledonian crows, tool use techniques are valuable chunks of information that open up new foraging opportunities.
Social relationships are also a critical source of wealth in many species, such as in spotted hyenas and ravens, which form alliances with their group-mates that help them rise through the ranks in their societies. Interestingly, like wealth in humans, wealth in animals is sometimes transferred from parents to offspring. Just as money can vary in how unequally it is distributed among people, these types of wealth can be spread fairly evenly among individual animals or can be concentrated in the hands of just a wealthy few.
CAPTION
Figure from the paper demonstrating how wealth inequality (center circle) in animals arises from different types of wealth (top left). This inequality can have consequences for individuals that are independent of wealth (top right), and both behavioral processes and ecological processes can shape the amount of inequality in societies (bottom left). Social mobility, or changes in wealth in individuals and lineages over time, is predicted to impact individual and group traits (bottom right).
CREDIT
Proc B
Shedding light on social evolution
Armed with this broad view of wealth inequality, the authors then explore the ways that inequality research in humans can help us better understand how animal societies work. They discuss theories about what make some societies more unequal than others, the consequences of inequality for individual health and group success, and the ways that individuals and lineages change in wealth over time through social mobility.
Says Shizuka: “The structure of a society has a lot of different influences on all individuals that live within it. In many cases, the differences between individuals arise from the various ways in which unequal societies affect them. In turn, individuals try to exert control over or navigate these unequal systems in different ways. The biology of animal societies includes these types of dynamics, and we can’t understand the evolution of social animals without recognizing this feedback between the individual and the society.”
“Our hope is that this paper will guide future research into wealth inequality across species, which will ultimately lead to a better understanding of the evolution of traits that help animals get the most out of living socially,” adds Strauss.
The authors acknowledge that studying inequality in animals could also shed light on how inequality operates in human societies, but advise that caution is needed when looking to animals to understand ourselves. Humans are a particular animal species with unique social and cognitive traits. While it’s unlikely that inequality operates completely differently in humans than in other animals, there are also no other societies that operate at the scale of the modern human global economy.
“We can look to other species to understand the general evolutionary processes that produce all animals, ourselves included,” says Strauss, “but the question of what makes an ethical human society is fundamentally a moral question where the social lives of animals can’t guide us. This is something we need to figure out on our own.”
JOURNAL
Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences