This article tests the general explanatory power of political opportunity theory for cross-national variations in protest throughout the world, and considers how opportunities influence individual-level characteristics crucial for coalition-formation and campaigns. This study constructs a multilevel model of protest potential, using survey data…[Read more]

The term ‘affective politics’ is sometimes used to dismiss political strategies as being directed merely at affects at the expense of rational analysis (Massumi 2015: 65f). While such uses are meant to criticize certain politics, appeals to the affects – and consequently, forms of propaganda or populism – do not have to be bad at all. The point h…[Read more]

Dawkins Fallacy – False Premise
The statement, “However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals best by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals.” Is a fallacy/false premise Historically, compassion and self-less behaviors are not a “limited form of alt…[Read more]

As the prominent social psychologists, Baumeister and Leary, point out, “Groups can share food, provide mates, and help care for offspring (including orphans). Some survival tasks such as hunting large animals or maintaining defensive vigilance against predatory enemies, are best accomplished by group cooperation…. Competition for limited res…[Read more]

This paper proposes that there are a number of historical television dramas which make use of the aesthetics of the Gothic in order to signal their focus on historical traumas which still have contemporary resonance. This is part of a wider use of a Gothic mode in these dramas in presenting and considering these traumas, not just as the individual…[Read more]

Television historical dramas take on a number of different modes, which inflect how they are interpreted. The Gothic mode, signalled in part by aesthetics and a focus on trauma, encourages audiences to engage with the past as a place of horror and darkness. Through intentional anachronism and the presentation of contemporary parallels, these…[Read more]

Functions of Religion
1. Fear of the unknown Fear of the unknown is a popular theory. The philosopher David Hume, the anthropologist Malinowski, and Einstein all emphasize the role of anxiety – or fear.
2. Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object, is another favorite theory. Xenophanes (…[Read more]