On November 30, 1625, a substantial quantity of fabric from a shipment intended for the Mansfeld Regiment’s third-most-honorable company went missing. The regimental legal establishment investigated the theft but covered up one key detail, revealed at the end of this chapter. This incident sheds light on the way this company interacted with a cloth trade that spanned Europe, in addition to the criminal activities of its captain/owner, regimental quartermaster Wolfgang Winckelmann. The investigation revealed that Winckelmann’s flag-bearer Hieronymus Sebastian Schutze also stole some fabric and distributed it to some men in this company. These men can be traced using social network analysis. This chapter argues that the concept of small group cohesion should be supplemented with the broader concept of military social networks.

Abstract: Chapter 5 presents an untold tale of an older brother and his younger sister. While their mother was the protagonist in Wolf’s classic ethnography, "A Thrice-told-Tale," the story of these children was obscured. Childhood sibling relation in “the Chinese family” was rarely studied by anthropologists, yet it is an important relation that shapes children’s moral development and family dynamics. I present systematic patterns of this sibling dyad’s social network positioning, uncover their distinct personalities, and trace their nuanced dynamics of care, rivalry and coalitional maneuvers. I closely examine projective tests data to reveal children's own emotional experience in and perspectives about their family life. This chapter is a unique narrative: in addition to illuminating childhood sibling relation, it simultaneously rediscovers the voices of these two children from ethnographic omissions and silences. Therefore, this case study echoes the dual themes of the entire book, children learning morality and anthropologists reconstructing an ethnography.

Abstract: Chapter 3 delves into the world of peer interactions. I present general patterns of children’s social networks, highlighting the importance of child-to-child ties. I illustrate the key features of this humorous, playful world and examine how peer play facilitates children’s moral learning. In peer play children are developing what I call “the spectrum of moral sensibilities:” They are learning about and engaging in cooperation and care, conflict and dominance, and creating gray areas in between. This poses a stark contrast to the imagery of “the innocent child” permeating in historical and philosophical views of Chinese childhood that fixate on the brighter side of human nature in moral cultivation. Moreover, through deciphering children’s pretend play, I argue that these non-elite children, often relegated to history’s silent margins, have a much richer inner life than my predecessors assumed. Lastly, using a human–machine hybrid approach, I find that young learners’ sensibilities in discerning layered intentions and moral sentiments defeat AI algorithms. This sheds light on the mystery of human sensemaking and inspires reflections on ethnographic epistemology.

Many mediated channels are available for relational partners to use for relational partners. At times these channels are facilitating long-standing relational processes such as relational maintenance, whereas at other times the channels provide new mechanisms for relational tasks such as gathering information about potential and new romantic partners or presenting the relationship to the couple’s broader social network. This chapter reviews relational processes through the lens of social media. The chapter overviews how romantic couples use social media in the initial stages of relationships to find potential romantic partners and seek information about potential and new partners, to communicate maintenance behaviors throughout the relationship, and the impact of social media during the dissolution phases. Both positively valenced behaviors (e.g., comanaging relational impressions and using social media to create electronic tie-signs) and negatively valenced behaviors (e.g., ghosting and cyberstalking) are discussed.

Cognitive health is one of the most important determinants of the quality of life and functional independence in older adults. Recently, social relationships have emerged as a protective factor against neurocognitive disorders and cognitive decline in old age. This chapter reviews the literature investigating the influence of structural and functional aspects of social relationships on dementia risk and cognitive function in older adults. For the structural aspects, it includes studies on the effects of social networks, social contacts, and social activity participation on cognitive function in older adults. For the functional aspects, it notes the influences of social support, social conflict, and loneliness on dementia risk and cognitive aging. Lastly, the chapter discusses the potential factors that mediate or modulate the relationship between social relationships and cognitive function.

The chapter begins with Bourdieus analogy of gift giving (among the Kabyle). Focusing on relationality and the consequences of connectedness leads to principles for designing institutions. The idea is that fostering connections between individuals and groups increases mutual identification, which triggers a sense of care. Information-based strategies for environmental (and other) regulation can be guided by these principles, including that of building into the institution connections with those being affected or helped by the action. These connectivities can take advantage of new media that allow direct access to the images, voice, and face-to-face contact from the field. Many of the design principles have to do with building social networks and allowing deeper and sustained relationships across boundaries, bringing together those who normally would be disconnected. Relational principles complement those for common-pool resources and are not an alternative to them. While common-pool resource theory emphasizes the need to establish formal boundaries and rules of use, the relational theory aims to increase connectedness and foster caring.

Media and communication influence, shape, and change our societies. Therefore, this first chapter aims to explain the implications of digital communication for our societies and the relationship between media, technology, and society. The chapter introduces the concept of society from a sociological perspective and explains how societies change because of the effects technological developments have on them, and vice versa. It illustrates this interplay with the example of digital divides.

In order to explain the significance and changes of public communication in a digital society, the chapters zooms in on the media landscape and explicates the difference between new media and old (or traditional) media. It pays particular attention to the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, as his work remains a cornerstone when studying the relationship between media, technology, and society. The chapter then outlines the discipline of media linguistics and explains how media linguistics can help to make digital media and digital communication more tangible. It focuses on three key terms crucial for understanding public digital communication: multimodality, media convergence, and mediatization.

In this chapter we discuss case studies from research on Arabic which employed various methods of social stratification. These include class-based socio-economic stratification, social network analysis, regionality, life-mode, and the community of practice construct.