Dating: Finding a Potential Partner
Most people believe they have the freedom to choose anyone they want as a potential partner or mate, but there often constraints related to such factors as religion, culture, or propinquity. Humans have a tendency to gravitate to those who are attr...
Sociology of Warfare, The
Professor of Sociology and History Craig Calhoun observes that whether people are working at a job or fighting a war, they usually achieve more when they share a common purpose.
Different Strokes: Cultural Influences on Development
Culture sets forth the explicit rules, beliefs, assumptions, and social norms that organize people. At a very basic level, culture affects how parents interact with their children, as shown in a comparative study of American and Japanese mothers a...
Can We Know God Through Experience?: Religious Experiences Reflect Cultural Differences and Traditions
Followers from different religions proclaim their own visions of the Divine. In Christianity, the person in prayer comes in contact with God or Jesus Christ, whereas in Eastern traditions the experience is a meeting with nothingness, an impersonal s...
Cultural Identity
Philosopher Charles Taylor talks about the role that social and cultural groups play in the formation of one's identity.
Does the Mind Shape the World?: Does the Mind Shape the World?
Immanuel Kant, born in 1724 sought to resolve a controversy that had been brewing for over a century. Rationalists argued that knowledge is based on reasoning inside our minds. Empirists disagreed saying that all knowledge must come from the senses....
What Justifies the State?: Communitarian Ideal: Hegel, The
German philosopher Georg Hegel, like Aristotle, sees the family as the most basic human group. When children grow up and move beyond the family they form new bonds that attach them to the values of their culture. It is within the state, Hegel assert...
People to People: Biological Precursors to Violence and Aggression
Relations between people can be marked by aggression and violence, conditions that have both biological and psychological undertones. Jean Chen Chi has conducted experiments with the MAO-A gene that when missing in males results in aggressive behavi...
Matching the Individual to the Organization
The first step for a prospective employee to take in assessing whether he or she is a good fit for an organization is understanding his or her own values. It's critical to choose a line of work and to find a company whose values are consistent with ...
Managing Change Case Study: Fluor Corporation, The
The Fluor Corporation was for years one of the largest engineering and construction companies in the world, employing close to forty thousand people. But by the mid 1980s, faced with crippling financial losses following the collapse of its engineeri...