Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Strength In Numbers: A Field Experiment In Gender, Influence, And Group Dynamics, Olga B. Stoddard, Christopher F. Karpowitz, Jessica Preece

Faculty Publications

Policy interventions to increase women’s presence in the workforce and leadership positions vary in their intensity, with some including a lone or token woman and others setting higher quotas. However, little is known about how the resulting group gender compositions influence individuals’ experiences and broader workplace dynamics. In this paper, we investigate whether token women are disadvantaged compared to women on majority-women mixed-gender teams. We conducted a multi-year field experiment with a top-10 undergraduate accounting program that randomized the gender composition of semester-long teams. Using laboratory, survey, and administrative data, we find that even after accounting for their proportion of …

Signals From On High And The Power Of Growth Mindset: A Natural Field Experiment In Attracting Minorities To High-Profile Position, Jeffrey A. Flory, Andreas Leibbrandt, Christina Rott, Olga B. Stoddard

Faculty Publications

We conduct a large-scale natural field experiment with a Fortune 500 company to test several approaches to attract minorities to high-profile positions. 5,000 prospective applicants were randomized into treatments varying a portion of recruiting materials. We find that self-selection at two early-career stages exhibits a substantial race gap. Importantly, we show that this gap can be strongly influenced by several treatments, with some increasing application rates by minorities by 40 percent and others being particularly effective for minority women. The heterogeneities we find by gender, race, and career stage shed light on the underlying drivers of self-selection barriers among minorities.

Hinterlands To Cities: The Archaeology Of Northwest Mexico And Its Vecinos, Matthew C. Pailes, Michael T. Searcy

Faculty Publications

Tis approachable book is a comprehensive synthesis of Northwest Mexico from the US border to the Mesoamerican frontier. Filling a vital gap in the regional literature, it serves as an essential reference not only for those interested in the specific history of this area of Mexico but western North America writ large. A period-by-period review of approximately14,000 years reveals the dynamic connections that knitted together societies inhabiting the Sea of Cortez coast, the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, and the Sierra Madre Occidental. Networks of interaction spanned these diverse ecological, topographical, and cultural terrains in the millennia following the demise of …

Redating Paquimé And The Convento Site Sixty Years After The Joint Casas Grandes Expedition In Northwestern Mexico, Samuel Jensen, Michael T. Searcy, Meradeth Snow

Faculty Publications

Debates continue regarding the rise of the Late Prehistoric (post-AD 1200) city of Paquimé in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. Unfortunately, the established chronology of the site was flawed due to incorrect interpretations of dendrochronological samples that lacked cutting dates (i.e., outer rings). While Dean and Ravesloot (1993) were able to determine this mistake through a reanalysis of the original chronological sequence, no attempts have been made to revise the chronology using new dates. This poster reports the results of new radiocarbon dates analyzed from samples of human remains found at Paquimé during the Joint Casas Grandes Expedition from 1958 to 1961. …

A Letter From The Editor, Zeke Peters, Editor-In-Chief

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

This past year has proven to be different than expected. The COVID-19 pandemic still looms in the background of a domestic inflation crisis and international peace conflicts throughout EUrope and Asia. Uncertainty is high and the view of what tomorrow will bring consistently shifts, but there are some things that remain constant. Our interactions with one another—whether digitally or in person—matter. Our ability to sympathize and to come together in troubled times is what makes us human.

Beyond Diversion: Regime Security And The 1990–91 Gulf War, Drew Horne

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

Whether and to what degree internal threats could indeed lead to external conflict has been the focus of great swaths of International Relations scholarship. In their seminal work on International Relations, Haas and Whiting (1956) argue that state leaders “may be driven to a policy of foreign conflict—if not open war—to defend themselves against the onslaught of domestic enemies” (62). The default explanation for this connection, it seems, has been the widely touted diversionary war hypothesis, which supposes that domestically embattled leaders will seek to divert the public’s ire from their failures by provoking foreign conflicts (see Levy 1989; Oakes …

Colonialism And Indigenous Peoples Of Taiwan, Sabrina Wong

BYU Asian Studies Journal

Taiwan can be found about 100 miles off the southeastern coast of China in the Pacific Ocean. It consists of a main island and many smaller surrounding islands. Before the arrival of the Dutch, the only inhabitants of the island were the Taiwanese indigenous peoples, also known as the Formosan people, Austronesian Taiwanese people, or Gaoshan people, who had been there for thousands of years. For consistency, throughout this paper, I will refer to them as Taiwanese indigenous peoples. The Taiwanese indigenous peoples are made up of different tribes, traditionally with over 26, 16 of which are recognized today by …

Megaliths And Monumental Architecture At Coal Bed Village, An Ancestral Pueblo Site In Southeastern Utah, James R. Allison, Fumi Arakawa, Marion Forest, Katie K. Richards, David T. Yoder

Faculty Publications

Worldwide, megaliths are a common form of monumental architecture in Neolithic and later societies. Archaeologists in western Europe, and other parts of the world where megalithic monuments occur, have often discussed the meanings of megalithic features as well as their associations with ritual, territoriality, and social organization. In the Pueblo Southwest, most monumental architecture takes the form of large, unusually tall buildings (“great houses”), oversized ritual architecture (“great kivas”), or landscape features (roads and berms), all of which are most commonly associated with the Chaco system. Ancestral Pueblo people also occasionally built with ostentatiously large rocks, but megalithic features and …

Macroarchaeology, Epistomology, And The Quality Of The Archaeological Record, James R. Allison

Faculty Publications

Perrault (2019) combines a critique of current archaeological practice with a call to re-center research on questions of culture history as well as “macroarchaeology”, or the search for large-scale patterns of human behavior and cultural development. His arguments for what archaeologists should do (and stop doing) are driven by the way the quality of the archaeological record underdetermines the answers to questions that archaeologists often seek to answer. There is much to like in Perrault’s arguments, but there also are some problematic aspects. I agree that something like Perrault’s macroarchaeology should receive greater focus within the discipline, and that archaeologists …

Final Thoughts And Observations, James R. Allison, Heidi Roberts, Jerry D. Spangler

Faculty Publications

This chapter addresses three topics inspired by the discoveries made during Jackson Flat’s archaeological investigations. The first topic examines the implications of the discovery of early maize agriculture in the Far Western region. Our data suggest that the Far Western Basketmaker tradition developed on a trajectory separate from the Western Basketmaker groups associated with the White Dog Phase in the Four Corners region.

Fremont Smoke Mixtures: Botanical Analyses Of Pipes From Wolf Village, Goshen, Utah, Michael T. Searcy, Hannah Stefffensen, Scott Ure

Faculty Publications

Over several field seasons, ceramic and stone pipes were recovered from the Fremont site of Wolf Village (AD 1000-1100). Nine of the more complete pipes included residue and burned dottle that were analyzed for macrobotanical and microbotanical remains. Three were subjected to FTIR. These analyses represent the first Fremont pipes ever analyzed for botanical remains, and the results reported in this paper provide conclusions regarding possible smoke mixtures used by the Fremont. Contents of the pipes included remains of tobacco, plants from the Amaranthaceae family, maize fragments, grasses, and various fuel woods.

Book Review Of Early Farming And Warfare In Northwest Mexico (Robert Jarratt Hard And John R. Roney), Michael T. Searcy

Faculty Publications

Like many archaeologists working in northern Mexico and the US Southwest, I have eagerly anticipated this volume and its reporting of the Early Agricultural (Middle-Late Archaic) occupation in northwestern Chihuahua. Primarily, it documents the research conducted by the coauthors over several years at sites known as cerros de trincheras, or terraced hills. These were massive construction projects resulting in habitational terraces built by early maize farmers who began to settle in the Casas Grandes River Valley and surrounding areas more than 3,000 years ago.

Sr. Ciencia And El Mago: A Legacy Of Archaeological Discovery And Lifelong Learning, Michael T. Searcy

Faculty Publications

As partners in the pursuit of archaeological discovery, Paul Minnis and Michael Whalen developed an enduring professional relationship that resulted in productive careers marked by multiple field projects and numerous scholarly publications. While engaged in academic archaeology, they also fostered a new generation of archaeologists along the way. An integral part of their pedagogy was carried out in the field where students worked alongside Mike and Paul, learning not only how to carry out an archaeological project from beginning to end, but also how to collaborate in a field of study that has become increasingly interdisciplinary. This paper presents my …

A Reanalysis Of Population Dynamics In The Casas Grandes Region Of Northern Mexico Using Mitochondrial Dna, Meradeth Snow, Michael T. Searcy

Faculty Publications

The Casas Grades region in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, is ideally situated to explore the notion of contact between the Southwest/Northwest and Mesoamerica, as it lies geographically in the borderlands where traditions of both culture areas were practiced. In order to explain these ties, past researchers have suggested the flourishing Casas Grandes population in the thirteenth century AD was caused by migrants from Mesoamerica, as first suggested by Di Peso in his pochteca hypothesis. Others, such as Lekson and his Chaco Meridian hypothesis, suggest migration from the north. Mitochondrial genetic data from earlier and later time periods provides the ability to …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Thank You To Minna And Gordon Hewes: Friends Of The International Society For The Comparative Study Of Civilizations From The Ecumene, John Grayzel

Comparative Civilizations Review

The ISCSC is always extremely appreciative when it receives a special gift from those who support its intellectual and organizational endeavors. This certainly was the case when it recently received a generous bequest from the estate of Mrs. Minna Hewes, the most substantial financial donation in the history of this organization.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Is Music The Barometer Of Society? Exploring How Music Mirrored Society From The Ancient World, China To Central Europe In The 21st Century, Bibi Pelić

Comparative Civilizations Review

“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.” ― Confucius

“What music do you listen to?” Would this be a valid question to ask a presidential candidate or person looking for a high political office today? If mankind had followed the advice of Confucius, many disastrous episodes in history might have been prevented.

Music is one of the most wonderful achievements of mankind. As far back in history as we know, music has been part of man’s life. Whether it …

The Developing Global Crisis And Survival Of Human Civilizations, Michael M. Andregg Ph.D.

Comparative Civilizations Review

For over thirty years, we have used a phrase “the Developing Global Crisis” to identify a cluster of recurring causal factors of chaos that are especially difficult to deal with. These are: population pressure (not simply growth), corruptions of governance (hard to study in democracies much less in police-states), authoritarian political systems, and militant religions. The West has failed to control these recurring causes of chaos, often by imperial patterns of behavior instead of more enlightened governance. Civilizational scholars in Japan might be able to find better solutions to these problems for Asia and the world if they try hard. …

Strategy Vs. Humanity? American Corporations May Be Facing A Momentous Paradigm Shift In The Age Of Diversity, Equity And Inclusion, Mark Rennella

Comparative Civilizations Review

The business discipline of strategy was born at Harvard Business School in the America of the 1970s, an era of disorienting economic fluctuations and sometimes naked vulnerability that was punctuated by disturbing events like the OPEC oil embargoes and the Iran hostage crisis. By the end of the decade, strategy claimed the imaginations of business executives and relegated its predecessor, marketing, to a distant second place. Marketing, whose focus was serving customer needs to grow demand, was neither tough enough nor quick enough to deal with the sudden appearance of economic and cultural monsters invading American life.

The Russian Sphinx: Contemplating Danilevsky’S Enigmatic Magnum Opus Russia And Europe, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

The relations between Russia and the West have never been particularly easygoing or unambiguous, and, presently, they are yet again at an all-time low. The way to better understand, as well as to successfully communicate and cooperate with another society is through learning about evolution (and revolutions) of their (as well as one’s own) history and culture. Are there any important sources in the Russian cultural heritage that could illuminate these ages-old problems, tendencies, and trends? The year 2021 marks 150 years since publication of Nikolay Danilevsky's book Russia and Europe (1871), while the next one, the year 2022, denotes …

The Architecture Of The Universe: A Look Into Extraterrestrial Civilizations, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

The article advances a synthesized view of the world based on an intelligently communicated undivided Universe. It presents a fundamental component-based architecture and characterizes the controlling role of info-communication processes in the interplanetary system. The Fermi Paradox is then considered, which leads to a discussion about the concept of God as it pertains to Albert Einstein’s and Stephen Hawking’s theories. The article next introduces the author’s own understanding of God. The approach adopted in this study situates Earth’s civilization within the broader context of extraterrestrial civilizations, and it considers what this means for modern humans. Further research is also suggested …

An Attempt To Arrive At The Meaning Of Civilization As The Third Millennium Dawns, Mojtaba Sadeghi Independent Scholar

Comparative Civilizations Review

Civilizations may be understood as phenomena subject to differing perspectives. This article views civilization from the perspective of Geography. A civilization is a “Geographical Space” that arises from complex interactions over time. The core of civilization from a geographical perspective is this: every civilization is a geographical space, but not every geographical space is necessarily a civilization. A civilization has a “cultured soul” and an “advanced body.” We may use this approach to understand, measure, critique, and emancipate civilization in the third millennium.

Brandeis Psychology In The Late Fifties: Further Comment On Feigenbaum (2020), Jeffrey H. Golland

Comparative Civilizations Review

Recent articles in this journal spoke about A.H. Maslow and the Brandeis University Psychology Department of the 1960s (Feigenbaum, 2020, Lester, 2020), the first from a former junior faculty member, the second from a former graduate student. I learned from each of them, and they triggered my own memories as an undergraduate psychology major who went on to earn a PhD in clinical psychology. Maslow taught the introductory course in fall semester; I took it in the spring (1958) with Ricardo Morant, who succeeded Maslow as department chair, and held that position for decades.

A Brief Response To Dr. Jeffrey H. Golland, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

I have read with much interest the letter of Dr. Jeffrey H. Golland describing for the Spring, 2022, issue of the CCR his experience as an undergraduate student in the Department of Psychology at Brandeis University in the late 1950’s.

David Christian. Maps Of Time: An Introduction To Big History. University Of California Press, New Edition, 2004. Leonid E. Grinin, Andrey V. Korotayev, Barry H. Rodrigue, Eds. Evolution: A Big History Perspective. Volgograd: Uchitel Publishing House, 2011., Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

What is history? Or rather, what are the appropriate time-scales that can be constituted as “history”? The general consensus among scholars is that history is the study of approximately the last 5,000 years or so due to the existence of written records. Anything prior to that is generally considered pre-history, at least as far as it concerns the existence of human beings on earth. As for the creation of the earth we live upon, or the solar system our planet dwells within, or the universe as a whole these are considered outside the formal domain of historical …

Harry Redner. Beyond Civilization: Society, Culture And The Individual In The Age Of Globalization. Routledge, 2014., Mariana Tepfenhart

Comparative Civilizations Review

Harry Redner was a reader at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a visiting professor at Yale University, University of California-Berkeley and Harvard University. His book has three parts: An Overview of History, The Present Predicament of History, and The Future Prospects of Civilization.

The book addresses two major issues affecting our society today. One of them is globalization and its effect on civilization. The topic is analyzed not only from a cultural perspective but also from a political and cognitive standpoint. The second issue is technology and its place in a global society. Redner argues Western civilization’s development of …

Steven Pinker. Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, And Progress. New York: Penguin Books, 2018., Ashok Kumar Malhotra

Comparative Civilizations Review

Steven Pinker’s monumental work, Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress is an impressive volume. He presents his position so vividly that the book reached the New York Times Bestseller List, and received enthusiastic reviews from diverse scholars and readers. Even Bill Gates regards it as: “My new favorite book of all time.”

Ccr Style Guide For Submitted Manuscripts

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Power Of Concubines And Empresses, Emma Nymoen

BYU Asian Studies Journal

In official Chinese history, women were the ultimate scapegoat. The downfall of dynasties was often blamed, not on the weak character of an emperor, but rather on the wife or concubine that seduced him and monopolized his attention away from the empire. The accomplishments and influence of women were often erased or downplayed, often twisted in order to paint the women in a dark and problematic light. Emperors were usually isolated in the inner court of the palace to protect them, but in turn this insulated them from the officials and advisors of the outer court and gave the women …