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In the present paper, we have briefly reviewed Sznajd's sociophysics model and its variants, and we also have proposed a simple Sznajd-like sociophysics model based on Ising spin system to explain the time evaluation of resistance probability of a closed community against occupation. Using a numerical method, we have shown that the time evaluation of resistance probability of community has a nonexponential character, which decays as stretched exponential, independent of the number of soldiers in one-dimensional model. Furthermore, it has been astonishingly found that our simple sociophysics model belongs to the same universality class of random walk process on the trapping space.

The time dependence of the survival probability of an opinion in a closed community has been investigated in accordance with social temperature by using the Kawasaki-exchange dynamics based on previous study in Ref. 1. It is shown that the survival probability of opinion decays with stretched exponential law consistent with previous static model. However, the crossover regime in the decay of the survival probability has been observed in this dynamic model unlike previous model. The decay characteristics of both regimes obey to stretched exponential.

Governance Framework for Biomedical Research in Singapore: A Risk-Based Account.

Global Bioethics and New Evolutionary Challenges.

Animal Experimentation: Right vs Rights.

Bioethics - A Plethora of Perspectives.

Clinical Ethics Committees in Western Europe: A Developmental Model for Asia.

Bioethics: An Overview.

Innovation is increasingly seen as best conducted in networks and understood through a synthesis of evolutionary economic and sociological perspectives. This article contributes to this understanding by seeking to apply a political process perspective to collaboration between organisations engaged in new product development. It argues that the building of collaborative networks is a power-process and requires political action. Contrary to conventional views, power and politics are treated as an omnipresent feature of the creation of collaborative networks. It is concluded that mastering the political is central element of the eventual success of any product development endeavour. This argument is illustrated by drawing upon the findings of an international study on collaboration in new product development (BiCoN). Here we focus on a UK and a Danish case of software development where two contrasting forms of collaboration between the software supplier, intermediaries and end user/customers are evident.

About 48 credit unions received capital injections as part of the financial sector bailout. The predicted probability of receiving bailout funds jumps from 29% to 81% for the typical credit union, if the institution's headquarters was in the district of a member of the U. S. House Financial Services Committee (HFS). The credit unions receiving funds were significantly less likely to lend, contrary to the goals of the program. These results indicate that political influence may be an important determinant of which institutions receive taxpayer funds.

The arrival of the Anthropocene entails an evolutionary tipping point that challenges basic precepts of political theory and modern science. Within this paper, emerging scholarship in political science, science and technology studies, and sustainability science are brought together to sketch out an approach for crafting more just and sustainable pathways in response to the crossing of critical thresholds in the Earth system. Accomplishing this task requires responding to the emerging reality of possibility, irreversibility, entanglement, and novelty that the Anthropocene and tipping points entail. I argue that grounding political projects in recognition of the unfolding and unpredictable terrain tipping points present allows for the opening of novel pathways toward a still possible just and sustainable planet.

Rise of China and increased Chinese engagement across the globe, have attracted mixed and varied reactions of approval and disapproval in a number of host countries. Against this background, this study brings into perspective rise of anti-Chinese sentiments in Africa, with a Kenyan case study, examining who, why and where anti-Chinese sentiments are most prevalent. The study finds anti-Chinese sentiments being most prevalent among Kenya’s small scale traders who have been displaced by Chinese capital flow and trade in the country. The finding is contextualized within broader framework of globalization and its resultant effects on free movement of capital, trade and investment. More precisely, Chinese capital flow and trade have had distributional consequences of winners and losers with potential to displace Kenya’s small scale traders hence the rise of anti-Chinese sentiments. The anti-Chinese sentiments are equally evident among section of Kenya’s politicians and intelligentsia, who have questioned the viability of Chinese built infrastructure. Further, anti-Chinese sentiments have been found among ordinary citizens who have experienced, albeit isolated, incidences of Chinese misconducts in the country. Notwithstanding these negative reactions, Chinese engagement in Kenya is still pronounced and has popular support from government, general citizenry and among classes of Kenyan who have benefited from Chinese involvement in the country. The segmented nature of anti-Chinese sentiments has not been strong enough to undo general goodwill, attitude and perceptions, that ordinary citizen hold towards Chinese engagement in Kenya.

In this article, the political–security relations between the United States and Pakistan in the Post-Cold War era are analyzed. The allied relationship between the two countries during the Cold War was abruptly disrupted following the conclusion of the Cold War in 1991 and the United States imposed a series of sanctions against Pakistan following the nuclear issue in 1990. However, the September 11 attacks of 2001 and the global anti-terrorism war launched by the G. W. Bush government resumed the relationship. Again, Pakistan became one of the principal allies of the United States and bilateral political–security relations were promoted unprecedentedly thanks to their collaboration against terrorism. The war against terrorism, however, has also produced many contradictions, which brought the relationship between the two countries into disputes and crises. This article discusses the U.S.–Pakistan relations in the Post-Cold War Era with special attention to the political–security aspects. Attempts will be made to clarify the nature, impacts and tendencies of the relationship. The U.S.–Pakistan relationship is a typical example of the international relationship between a superpower and a middle power, and it is also typical of the U.S.’s changing alliance relations.

There has been a surge in concern about political polarization and discrimination based on religious and political attitudes in the workplace. Using a nationally-representative sample of nearly 3,000 respondents, this paper presents new empirical evidence on the incidence of social hostilities in the workplace and the causal effects of providing information on consumer and labor market behavior across a range of indicators. Several empirical patterns emerge. First, nearly half of respondents have not shared their personal views about a social or political issue because of fear that sharing it would harm their career. Second, roughly a fifth of respondents have encountered discrimination for respectfully communicating their religious or political viewpoint. Third, these attitudes are negatively correlated with labor market and social media behavior: 40% of respondents say that perceptions of hostility against religious or political views make them much less likely to apply to a company, and 50% of respondents say that they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about adverse effects related with posting on social media about their religious and political attitudes. Finally, exposure to information about politicized topics is associated with a decline in respondents’ support for companies taking more activist stances. These results suggest that there are adverse and unintended consequences associated with religious and political discrimination, and companies could realize additional benefits by focusing on their core business activities.

In the post 9/11 era, there is growing interest in the complex relationship between religion, economics, finance, politics, law, and social behavior. This has brought with it a disagreement on how to investigate the impact of religiosity, whether religion affects the economic, political, and social outlook of countries or whether these factors affect religiosity? In other words, should religion be viewed as a dependent or an independent variable? In this paper we ask what we believe to be the precursor question to such linkages, namely, do self-declared Islamic countries, as attested by membership in the OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference), embrace policies that are founded on Islamic teachings? We believe that only once this question is addressed can one begin to estimate how Islam adherence to Islam may affect economic, political and social behavior. In the first part of the paper we present what we believe should be the characteristics and scaffolding of an “Islamic" country. We base our depiction on the Quran, and the life, practices and sayings of the Prophet Mohammad -- the two principal channels that provide Muslims with the road map. In the second part, we develop an index to measure the “Islamicity" of Islamic and non-Islamic countries. This IslamicityIndex (or I2) measures 208 countries adherence to Islamic principles using four sub-indices related to economics, legal and governance, human and political rights, and international relations.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the concept and state of the art of stakeholder management. The objectives include the coverage of the key aspects of stakeholder management from the perspective of the literature, the synthesis of some problems of implementing stakeholder management in developing countries and formulation of solutions to these problems, and guidance on implementation of stakeholder management in developing countries. Twelve semi-structured virtual interviews with practitioners in some developing countries informed most of the contents of the chapter: the problems and solutions concerning stakeholder management in developing countries where the traditional type of procurement is still commonly used for project delivery. The content analysis of the interview data showed that, apart from the internal stakeholders of clients, design consultants, contractors and their teams of professionals, and other workers, another set of project stakeholders would include community organizations, trade unions, non-government organizations and sundry individuals, or groups. These many stakeholders present high chances of conflicting stakes. Power influences the prioritization of stakes in developing countries, i.e., the interests of more powerful stake-holders are accorded higher priority. Government and public establishments are often considered to be powerful; hence, there is often a general reluctance to challenge their stakes and those of the stakeholders associated with them. Moreover, some traditions and cultures are strong in communities, regions, or nations, and stakeholder engagements follow these norms. Some details of traditional protocols that are observed while negotiating conflicting stakes are often not documented, and the knowledge needed is sometimes deployed tacitly. Meanwhile, some socio-cultural protocols and government bureaucracy may slow down project procedures, but claiming for time extensions and other reliefs by project participants is virtually never done on these grounds. Another major influence in some developing countries is land ownership, which tends to be a leveraging factor on which some external stakeholders either bargain for compensation and concessions or attempt to disrupt a project. As “knowledge is power,” there is scope for increasing the awareness and thus power of especially external stakeholders in developing countries.

In this chapter, we elaborate on how collaborations between Southeast Asian artists and academics in the region and the diaspora engage political and social issues in our respective countries, while projecting out towards the international community. As such, they are a form of trans-regionality that emanate from below and reach out to other parts of the world. We tackle how our collaborative work and multiple subjectivities unsettle various borders, while subverting and questioning power and authority in creative ways that respond to the urgency of issues related to censorship, repression of civil society, state-violence, violent othering, capitalist extraction, corruption, and labour migration. This is a process animated by co-learning, as the partners of collaboration learn from each other how to transcribe, translate, and transmit knowledge that is accessible to the public, and opens new ways of understanding, imagining, seeing, and feeling. Our method of inquiry and collaborative writing process are akin to quilting, where we recognise our similarities and differences in terms of discipline, forms, talents, politics, and contexts and draw comparative insights from these without glossing over differences, nor offering easy generalisations. We conclude by maintaining the importance of insights grounded in local knowledges, embodied experiences, and urgencies to inform collaborative works and transregional analyses, while highlighting the need for more spaces and opportunities for transregional knowledge exchanges that are mindful of imbalances in power relations between variously positioned actors in the global economy of knowledge production.

This chapter provides insights into varying perspectives on climate change which underpin the politics circumventing this subject. Several reports and experts have discussed the pitfalls of politicking around a subject as overpowering and overwhelming as climate change which has been the outcome of humanity’s unrelenting assault on the very resources which support life on this beautiful blue planet, Earth. Evidently, countries have been evading responsibilities as the pollutants that cause climate change mix across national borders. This blue planet has been warming at an unprecedented rate; especially so in the last 50 years and cooperative actions and mechanisms with the political will to implement these must be the way forward. However, whether governments will cooperate by investing in institutions and technologies and provide required financial support needed to reduce the carbon footprint of human actions depends on their chosen priorities. Countries clearly vary in population, affluence, technology as also in terms of their relative vulnerability to climate impacts — factors that, among others, affect how much they are willing to pay to address global climate change. Hence, in the first section this chapter interrogates the capacity of governments to pledge their commitment to climate action. The second section comprises the structure of the volume as it aims to deepen the debate and understanding of contemporary climate change narratives.

Mathematics is an art as old as civilization. Most of the time hidden and respected, sometimes appearing in bright light, mathematicians have always had a privileged role in society, as problem solvers, guardians of an art, deeply attached to values of intellectual freedom and opinion challenge. “The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom”, said Georg Cantor. But mathematicians are also accountable to society, which is in need of keeping a link to its most singular and respected science, especially at a time of algorithmic transformation. I was lucky enough to experience the role of mathematician as a public spokesperson, advocating for mathematical sciences as both an art and a technology creator. Later, as a member of Parliament, then head of the Scientific Parliamentary Office, I experienced the intensity and complexity of science in politics, at a time when public action needs to rest on science and when human factors are more challenging than ever.

This paper reviews the recent paradigm debates in marketing and reflects on the current pluralism of paradigms. It makes the case that a future important direction for marketing theory is multiple paradigm research; an avenue that has been widely explored in organisation studies, but as yet has had little extended treatment in marketing or consumer research. As a first movement in this direction, we review the debates that have taken place in organisation studies showing how the so-called "paradigm mentality" has been seen to hamper constructive debate across paradigms, whereby researchers from different paradigms can fail to agree on inter-paradigm standards of evaluation so that theory choice between the divergent outputs of two different paradigms cannot easily be resolved. We then turn to the incommensurability thesis. We question the veracity of the early incommensurability thesis apparent in Kuhn's writing and the subjectivism that follows from Feyerabend's interpretation of incommensurability, negotiating these arguments by drawing upon the Kuhnian concept of taxonomical lexicon, to suggest that learning alternative paradigms is similar to learning another natural language. By way of a conclusion, we reflect on the possibilities and problems associated with undertaking doctoral research using a multiple paradigmatic team brought together to contribute the distinct insights that each paradigm brings to the project.

The availability and ease of access of social media have allowed the general public to interact in political discussion. Social media are a widely-used instrument for political engagement. The purpose of this study is to understand Twitters users’ involvement in politics and in particular in political elections and to explore the use of Twitter as a tool to predict the opinion leaders that will influence the general users in the context of a political election. This study also explores the reliance of campaigns on Twitter as a tool to affect the voters’ opinions. The scope is the United States 2016 president election. The outcomes of this study indicated the importance of social media, specifically Twitter, as a tool to encourage Twitter users to participate in the elections and influence their opinions. The study revealed that the majority of opinion leaders were individual users rather than campaigns, organizations, or affiliations.

Leisure and consumption have become key features of post-Mao China being associated with economic reform, political change and stability, the legitimacy of the Communist Party and notions of modernity and post-modernity in China. This chapter offers an overview of the key characteristics of leisure and consumption in contemporary China with important historical contextualization. It identifies and introduces some of the most common analyses and understandings of consumption in China showing how they are often linked together. The chapter suggests that we need to treat the notion of consumption in China with caution to avoid oversimplification and neglect of the increasing complexity and diversification of Chinese leisure and consumption practices.