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Natural selection is the main mechanism that drives the evolution of species, including human societies. Under natural selection, human species responds through genetic and cultural adaptations to internal and external selection pressures for survival and reproductive success. However, this theory is ineffective in explaining human societal evolution in the Holocene and a cultural selection argument has been made to remedy the theory. The present article provides a critique of the cultural selection argument and proposes an alternative conception that treats human self-selection as an emergent mechanism of human societal evolution characterized by a new type of selection pressure and a separate fitness criterion. Specifically, the evolution of human societies is divided into two major periods, each driven by a different mode of selection: natural selection acting on genes and cultures for survival and reproductive success prior to the Neolithic Revolution, and human self-selection acting on cultures – and potentially genes as well – for thrival and prosperous living after the Neolithic Revolution. The conditions for the transition from the first mode of selection to the second and the implications of this transition for social research are also discussed.

In 1932, phenomenological sociologist Alfred Schutz provided a theory of mutual knowledge that explains how individuals come to understand one another in the increasingly differentiated lifeworld. Schutz's main argument was that the contemporaneous lifeworld consists of two distinct realms and human mutual knowledge is constituted differently in each realm: in the realm of consociates, people get to know each other by way of growing older together in corporeal copresence; and in the realm of mere contemporaries, people come to know each other based on ideal types constructed through generalized typification. This article extends Schutz's theory to an emergent realm of the lifeworld brought about by the advent of the Internet—the realm of consociated contemporaries. In this new realm, which is spatially divergent but temporally convergent, anonymous individuals become intimately familiar with one another through mutual biographical disclosure in telecopresence. This analytic extension not only expands the scope of Schutz's theory but also deepens our understanding of the essence and purpose of human mutual knowledge.

PurposeThe paper seeks to understand the formation of mutual knowledge in the online world using the phenomenological framework that Alfred Schutz and his associates constructed for the examination of the lifeworld.Design/methodology/approachThis study consists of three parts: reviewing Schutz's theory of the constitution of intersubjectivity in the lifeworld; extending Schutz's analysis to the acquisition of mutual knowledge in the online world; and applying the extended version of Schutz's theory to the booming blogosphere on the internet.FindingsSchutz divided the contemporaneous lifeworld into two realms – consociates and mere contemporaries. Schutz maintained that people came to know one another based on shared life experiences through "growing older together" in the realm of consociates and based on objectified schemes of interpretation through "ideal typification" in the realm of mere contemporaries. This article extends Schutz's analysis to human interaction on the internet, showing that in the emergent online world people become mutually familiar based on the biographic narratives they recount to one another through self‐disclosure. Mutual knowledge obtained online also contributes to the total stock of knowledge people come to accumulate in an increasingly distanciated lifeworld.Originality/valueThis article argues that the spread of the internet has changed the structure of the lifeworld Schutz depicted, and such changes have produced ways of getting to know others that were previously impossible. In light of those changes, this article seeks to update Schutz's theory of mutual knowledge.

This article examines the emerging phenomenon of humanoid social robots and human-humanoid interactions. A central argument of this article is that humanoid social robots belong to a special type of robotic technology used for communicating and interacting with humans. These robotic entities, which can be in either mechanical or digital form, are autonomous, interactive and humanlike. Some of them are used to interact with humans for utilitarian purposes and others are designed to trigger human emotions. Incorporation of such robotic entities into the realm of social life invariably alters the condition as well as the dynamics of human interaction, giving rise to a synthetic society in which humans co-mingle with humanoids. More research is needed to investigate the social and cultural impact of this unfolding robotic revolution.

AbstractThis article examines whether there is gender segmentation in civic participation in Latin America, and whether such segmentation is related to gender differences in political participation. Confirming the findings of other studies, this analysis indicates that there is gender segmentation in civic associational activities, and that men are more involved than women in political activities, except for voting. Among those involved in civic activities, however, women attend meetings more often than men or about equally in all types of activities under consideration, except for sports and recreational pursuits. This highlights the need to differentiate between type and intensity of civic participation and provides empirical evidence that Latin American women have strong community ties through a variety of organizations. The regression analysis shows that civic engagement has a positive effect on political participation but that the magnitude of that effect varies by gender depending on the activity.

More than 91% of 5,619 questions monitored in a general population telephone survey were asked exactly as worded, suggesting that centralized telephone interviewing produces greater adherence to question wording than in-person interviewing. Departures from exact wording increased with increases in question length & was higher on series items (those whose wording was largely identical to the preceding question), but were unrelated to the question's position in the questionnaire & the number of times it was asked. In addition, reading errors were unrelated to interviewer experience, efficiency, & refusal rate. 8 References. AA

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in cross-country comparative studies of multiple social networking site (SNS) platforms, and the aim of these studies is to uncover the impact of culture on the use of SNSs. The present article seeks to advance this line of research by drawing a distinction between platform difference and usage difference. It argues that culture affects both the design and use of an SNS platform. Through comparing and contrasting the personal profile settings of Facebook and Vkontakte, the article shows that the design features of these two SNS platforms reflect the cultural characteristics of the countries from which the platforms originated. The cultural patterns that are encoded in the design features of the platforms inevitably influence the use of the platforms. This finding suggests the need to control for platform difference while examining the impact of culture on usage difference in cross-country studies of multiple SNS platforms.