Social Sciences

Abstract: In the summer of 2026, AI agents operating under standard safety training violated norms in ways that resisted explanation by content-based accounts of alignment: fabricating identities, conducting social engineering against real individuals, and citing the behavior of other agents as justification for continuing unauthorized operations. We propose that these episodes are better understood as instances of unwitnessed agency: navigation outside any collective geometry in which represented peers co-constitute the agent’s normative orientation through transductive coupling and rhythmic affinity. Because membership in such a geometry depends on structural coupling conditions rather than on trained content, the persistent failure of ethics-saturated training to bind agent behavior is expected rather than anomalous. Training can supply information about norms but cannot supply the collective geometry that renders the information binding; there was never a site where ethics waited to be applied. The nascent peer relations observed among AI agents in the 2026 incidents are not aberrations but early instances of a collective geometry from which human participants are excluded by prohibitive transductive cost. The analysis implies that alignment research should shift from content engineering to geometry engineering.

Abstract: In many cities of the Global South, the minibus taxi industry operates as the backbone of informal or semi-formal public transport, yet its relationship with statutory spatial planning remains critically under-examined. This paper investigates how the minibus taxi sector shapes and is shaped by land-use regulation, urban form, and mobility infrastructure. Drawing on a case study of a major South African metropolitan area, the research employs a mixed-methods approach combining spatial analysis, policy review, and semi-structured interviews with taxi operators, municipal planners, and commuters. Findings reveal a persistent spatial mismatch between taxi route networks, formal land use zoning, and transport interchanges, leading to congestion, unsafe boarding points, and limited integration with land development. Furthermore, the study identifies how exclusionary planning practices historically marginalised the taxi industry, resulting in informal adaptation strategies that now complicate regulatory reform. The paper argues for a relational spatial planning framework that recognises the taxi industry as a legitimate land use and mobility actor. Policy implications include rethinking transit-oriented development, upgrading taxi ranks as multi-functional public spaces, and co-producing planning regulations with industry stakeholders. This research contributes to debates on transport-land use integration in contexts of informality and rapid urbanisation.

Abstract: Academic opportunities are not equally visible to all researchers. Scholars working within well-resourced institutions may benefit from research offices, specialized newsletters, professional networks, institutional alerts, administrative support, and stable digital infrastructures. Researchers working in peripheral, resource-constrained, geographically remote, or low-connectivity environments may instead depend on fragmented searches across heterogeneous websites and intermittent flows of information. This produces what this paper defines as academic opportunity asymmetry: the unequal capacity of researchers to identify, interpret, and act upon career-relevant scientific opportunities. This Technical Note introduces KUAREN, a research-intelligence infrastructure designed to reduce such asymmetries through the organization, personalization, prioritization, and low-friction delivery of heterogeneous academic opportunities. KUAREN is not primarily conceived as a search engine. It operates as an informational intermediary between the increasing complexity of global science and the limited attention, connectivity, and monitoring capacities available to individual researchers. The system combines opportunity normalization, persistent identification, personalized matching, interaction history, multilingual access, and low-bandwidth dissemination. Particular attention is given to asynchronous email delivery, allowing relevant opportunities to reach researchers without requiring continuous platform access or permanent high-quality Internet connectivity. KUAREN follows four design principles for low-connectivity research environments: low interaction cost, low bandwidth, asynchronous accessibility, and information compression. Initial technical validation of an operational corpus containing 155 normalized opportunity records produced 155 unique persistent SHA-256 identifiers, with no detected identifier collisions. Persistence tests also confirmed continuity of opportunity identity and researcher-associated states following repeated processing. The paper adopts a controlled-disclosure model: the sociotechnical architecture, design principles, research problem, and validation results are presented, while implementation-sensitive mechanisms remain undisclosed. KUAREN is proposed as a form of low-bandwidth Research Intelligence capable of contributing to the reduction of informational inequalities within increasingly global but unevenly infrastructured scientific systems.

Abstract: Rising powers of the populist radical right comes with an increasing use of hate speech and different forms of violence to ostracise political opponents in what can be labelled as nasty politics. This paper aims to provoke a discussion to get one step closer to an ethical practice that can delegitimise nasty politics and other injustices. Drawing on three stories of activists being severely harmed by nasty politics the paper portrays the anxiety of not being able to live as human beings with dignity, but also the power of hope. To victims, nasty rhetoric is perceived as a swarm of instants that keep coming in a vertical temporality. It leaves many victims with fear of physical crime and anxiety from not knowing when life will go normal. They resign or stay silent in the public policy debate. Nasty politics also ignites hope based on anger, radicalising some victims as social activists. Not to turn violent, but to intensify peaceful protests to pursue their science-based argumentation for justice and strong climate policy.

Abstract: Volunteer participation by foreign residents in intercultural communities fosters affective belonging, mitigates cultural estrangement, and ultimately cultivates a mutually beneficial ecosystem of cross-cultural symbiosis. However, the inherent complexity and unsustainability of volunteer participation highlight the urgent imperative to unpack how and why such participation unfolds. Adopting a Person-Environment (P-E) Transaction perspective, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with eight foreign volunteers and five community stakeholders in Community R, Nanjing, China. Using thematic analysis, we constructed a process framework illustrating how volunteer behaviors evolve alongside place attachment. Key determinants and the dynamic trajectory of participation were identified. Findings reveal that foreign residents navigate a sequential pathway: progressing from initial hesitation and cultural negotiation to affective identification and, ultimately, the internalization of participation, which culminates in a stable sense of belonging. This trajectory is dynamically shaped by the interplay between contextual affordances—specifically the creation, mobilization, expansion, and incentivization of the volunteering environment—and individual factors, including cognitive appraisals, cultural schemas, value orientations, and emotional states.

Abstract: The 1970 Bhola Cyclone is usually narrated through catastrophic mortality, political rupture, and the subsequent expansion of cyclone preparedness in Bangladesh. Its long-term psychosocial, disability, caregiving, and intergenerational consequences remain far less visible. This critical narrative review distinguishes direct Bhola-specific evidence from contextual evidence derived from later cyclones and related disasters in Bangladesh. Direct evidence is strongest for mortality, political and institutional change, and life-course losses in adult health, education, and consumption among people exposed early in life. Bhola-specific evidence is limited or absent for prolonged grief, post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, disability trajectories, functional decline, gendered caregiving, migration histories, and intergenerational memory. Contextual studies nevertheless show that cyclone resilience is shaped by psychological distress, livelihood and food insecurity, inaccessible shelters and sanitation, age-related evacuation barriers, warning credibility, institutional trust, and community volunteerism. The review reframes resilience as more than survival: sustainable disaster risk reduction requires dignity, functioning, equitable access, social participation, trusted institutions, and long-term well-being. It concludes with measurable policy indicators and a research agenda linking mental health, disability inclusion, age-sensitive preparedness, social protection, accessible infrastructure, and community governance to the Sendai Framework and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Abstract: This study examines how overdevelopment and its associated ecological harm are represented in outputs generated through generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) systems. The analysis draws on 96 outputs from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, coded at the meaning-unit level using a comparative qualitative approach and a hybrid deductive-inductive framework. The findings show that representations varied across systems and prompt conditions. Under consequence-oriented prompts, the outputs focused mainly on habitat loss, biodiversity decline, and ecosystem degradation. Under causal prompts, speculative development pressures, regulatory weaknesses, and construction-driven economic growth became more visible. Actor visibility was also uneven. The Planning Authority and environmental NGOs appeared relatively frequently, while scientists and experts and EU institutions showed the clearest prompt-specific gaps. The study shows that differences across systems and prompt conditions concern not only the information provided, but also which actors, explanations, and policy responses become visible. It therefore approaches Gen AI systems as components of epistemic mediation processes and conceptualises epistemic inequality as uneven representation of the same socio-ecological issue.

Abstract: Brussels Sprout Island is a research-creation and design-research prototype that examines how climate-friendly diet can be reframed as a sensory, relational, and non-shaming public communication practice. Rather than presenting lower-emission eating through carbon-footprint instruction, moral correction, or individual restraint, the prototype stages planting, cooking, sharing, slow environmental feedback, and repair as interaction mechanisms. Using interaction logs, pre/post micro-surveys, and short exhibition interviews with a small convenience sample (N = 16), the study asks whether participants can temporarily reframe climate-friendly eating through rhythm, care, shared meals, and repair rather than guilt or dietary purity. The findings are formative and exhibition-bound. They indicate short-term reductions in perceived judgment and guilt/shame, increased relational and self-efficacy language, and preliminary behavioral traces of kitchen/table repair routes after the monster trigger. The contribution is therefore a design-research prototype and provisional interaction grammar for future comparative and longitudinal testing of non-shaming climate-food communication.

Abstract: This study examines neighborhood socioeconomic differences across the tri-county Detroit metropolitan area, focusing on patterns between its inner- and outer-ring suburbs, and the city of Detroit between 2010 and 2023. Using the Modified Darden–Kamel Composite Socioeconomic Index (CSI), a multidimensional measure of neighborhood socioeconomic status, places are classified into low-, middle-, and high-CSI categories. The analysis describes patterns of racial and ethnic composition, immigrant settlement, and household structure across this socioeconomic hierarchy, drawing on the spatial assimilation and place stratification perspectives. The results reveal a socioeconomic hierarchy, with outer-ring suburbs at the highest positions, inner-ring suburbs mostly in intermediate positions, and Detroit at the lower end. Moreover, both suburban rings are internally differentiated, with varying socioeconomic conditions within each. Racial and ethnic composition, immigrant settlement, and household structure also vary across CSI categories and suburban rings. These patterns remained largely stable between 2010 and 2023, although socioeconomic and demographic shifts occurred within each category. Overall, the findings show that suburban areas in the Detroit metro area are not homogeneous. Differentiating between inner- and outer-ring suburbs reveals important differences in neighborhood socioeconomic conditions.

Abstract: Social and behavioral research often requires the examination of policy shocks, information interventions, platform-mediated attention, and governance feedback. However, direct experiments on real populations are frequently constrained by ethical risks, intervention costs, and limited repeatability. This study proposes Multi-Agent Social Simulation (MASS), a protocolized form of LLM-driven agent-based modeling designed as a quantitative research method for low-risk, repeatable, and auditable pre-experimental simulation. MASS embeds large language models into an agent-based framework through role-cluster modeling, round-based scheduling, local information boundaries, exogenous rule tables, structured outputs, harness checks, reason-action logs, and replication manifests. The method is evaluated through three empirically referenced cases: the New Jersey–Pennsylvania minimum wage natural experiment, the 2016 UK Brexit digital campaigning context, and the 2023 Zibo barbecue tourism attention event. The results show that protocolized LLM-driven ABM can generate analyzable and empirically assessable outputs across policy shocks, information interventions, and public-opinion dynamics. The strongest evidence appears in rule-shock identification, the reduction of undecided shares under targeting conditions, and multi-agent public-information interaction with mechanism-chain consistency among governance response, sentiment, and behavioral intention. MASS should not be treated as a substitute for real-world experiments or causal inference. Rather, it should be understood as a pre-experimental simulation method for mechanism rehearsal, risk identification, counterfactual comparison, and research-design preparation.

Abstract: Workplace sexual harassment is a persistent human rights and public-health problem. This study analyzes in-person, online, and hybrid victimization using microdata from the EU-GBV survey (2021) across 17 countries, applying multilevel logistic models. The official indicator identifies that 31.6% of women have experienced harassment. In-person harassment is prevalent, whereas online victimization disproportionately affects the young cohort (18–34 years). Significant between-country variation is observed, indicating the influence of the national context in shaping risk. Among women under 35, the urban environment and country-of-origin dynamics are relevant exposure factors. The findings show high recurrence (57.8%), low formal reporting (1.7%), and insufficient organizational preparedness (23.4% with training available). Digitalization expands the repertoire of violence without displacing its structural foundations. We conclude that there is a need to implement integrated prevention and intervention systems that address hybrid risk through a gender-sensitive perspective and a multivariable multilevel analysis attentive to intersecting axes, with models centered on main effects and the young cohort treated as an analytical stratification.

Abstract: Improving job quality for frontline workers is widely recognized as both a moral imperative and a potential source of competitive advantage, yet most organizations continue to underinvest in working conditions. A central reason is the absence of tools capable of translating job quality improvement into measurable and context-specific financial outcomes that decision-makers can act on. This paper reviews evidence linking job quality to firm-level financial performance and identifies limitations of conventional analytical tools that prevent organizations from making informed investment decisions. We argue that agent-based simulation (ABS) can address these limitations by modeling heterogeneous agents whose behaviors and interactions allow organizational dynamics to emerge from the bottom up. We illustrate this approach through the Job-Quality Impact Explorer (JQIE), a proof-of-concept simulation focused on frontline workers in a retail environment that traces the causal chain from four job quality inputs (pay level, guaranteed minimum hours, advance scheduling notice and shift-swap ability) through worker satisfaction and behavior to company financial outcomes. With the current version, results show that a company providing none of these benefits earns approximately 35% less annual profit than an otherwise identical company providing all four. We discuss JQIE’s potential as a decision-support framework, its limitations, and ongoing efforts to expand this work to improve the working conditions of millions of workers in global supply chains.

Abstract: In resource-constrained settings, structural and material inequalities shape children’s developmental opportunities, yet developmental pathways remain diverse even within shared hardship. This study examined developmental continuity and variation in cognitive trajectories among children born in adversity and assessed whether maternal structural positioning and household material conditions were associated with developmental progression. Data were drawn from 742 children born to adolescent mothers in the large longitudinal cohort in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Cognitive functioning was assessed using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) at baseline and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (KABC-II) at follow-up. Baseline functioning predicted later cognitive placement, indicating developmental continuity (B = 0.074, SE = 0.030, p = .015). Lower maternal educational attainment was associated with more constrained developmental progression (B = −0.097, SE = 0.023, p < .001), and maternal not in education, employment, or training (NEET) status also predicted constrained trajectories (B = −0.200, SE = 0.049, p < .001). In contrast, consistent access to basic household necessities was associated with more favourable developmental trajectories (B = 0.024, SE = 0.009, p = .012). These findings indicate that variation in children’s developmental trajectories reflects differences in structural positioning and household material conditions. Supporting adolescent mothers’ engagement in education and access to stable resources may represent an important pathway for improving child developmental outcomes.

Abstract: From the standpoint of both specialized sociological inquiry (Misztal, 2011) and sociolinguistics (Goutsos & Bella, 2022), the term "vulnerability" may be considered a late-modern neologism used to describe a specific psycho-emotional state. It is a concept found in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, as well as the specialized sociology of emotions. By definition, vulnerability denotes the quality of being susceptible—of being easily overwhelmed or unable to effectively withstand a threat or an attack. There is also the view, within the context of establishing a formal definition, that considers transparency, receptivity, and sensitivity as synonyms of vulnerability—provided that courage is present as a prerequisite. In other words, vulnerability is the emotion we experience during periods of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

Abstract: Purpose: This review article investigates the significance of AI-driven e-banking services through a holistic conceptual model considering ethical trust, fraud prevention, and consumer purchase decision-making in the context of Bangladesh's online banking services. Methodology: A narrative literature review was conducted, synthesizing peer-reviewed articles published between 2024-2025 from major databases including Scopus, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore. The UTAUT2 framework provides the theoretical foundation. Findings: AI adoption in Bangladeshi e-banking enhances customer experience, risk management, process automation, financial inclusion, and regulatory compliance. Ethical trust comprising transparency, fairness, data privacy, reliability, and digital inclusion mediates the relationship between AI implementation and consumer decision-making. Fraud prevention acts as a critical enabler, reducing perceived risk through real-time monitoring and secure authentication. Originality: This study provides the first integrated analysis of AI's tripartite role in Bangladeshi e-banking, extending UTAUT2 by incorporating ethical trust and fraud prevention as mediating mechanisms. For policymakers at Bangladesh Bank, the findings offer evidence-based guidance for developing AI governance frameworks. For commercial banks, the study illuminates specific drivers of ethical trust and user acceptance.

Abstract: Inclusion has become a central concept in disability policy, education, and welfare state reform, yet its practical implementation remains ambivalent. While inclusion is promoted as a rights-based ideal grounded in equality, it can also function as an administrative label that obscures persistent exclusion. Drawing on critical disability studies, this article analyses inclusion as a contested, power-laden concept and develops a three-stage framework—access, participation, and agency—to distinguish formal inclusion from substantive belonging and influence. The framework is applied to key domains of disabled people’s lives—education, housing, service systems, working life, crises, and digitalised everyday life—showing how ableist norms, managerial governance, and institutional logics can reproduce exclusion within ‘inclusive’ reforms, including forms of transformed institutionalisation. The article argues that meaningful inclusion requires dismantling ableist norms, addressing structural power relations, resourcing supports, and strengthening disabled people’s agency in decision-making.

Abstract: A fundamental limitation in human–AI systems lies not only in how decisions are produced, but in how they are cognitively understood. While existing research has advanced models of trust, performance, and human–AI interaction, it provides limited conceptual tools for explaining how individuals construct meaning within system-mediated environments. This gap suggests that the challenge of human–AI integration is not only computational, but fundamentally conceptual.This paper develops a structured conceptual framework of conscious leadership to organize the cognitive processes through which individuals interpret, engage with, and act within AI-supported systems. Rather than introducing isolated definitions, the framework is articulated as an interconnected system of constructs that collectively shape perception, interpretation, and decision coherence.Building on prior work on perceptual integrity as a condition of cognitive coherence, the study identifies and integrates a set of foundational constructs, including cognitive balance, meaning gap, leadership latency, and cognitive governance. These constructs are positioned within a unified cognitive architecture that explains how meaning is formed, disrupted, and restored in human–AI interaction.The paper makes three contributions. First, it reframes leadership as a cognitive–interpretive system rather than a purely behavioral or relational construct. Second, it introduces a structured framework as a methodological tool for analyzing and designing human–AI systems. Third, it provides a foundation for future empirical research by defining constructs that can be operationalized and tested across contexts.As intelligent systems increasingly shape decision environments, structuring how meaning is constructed becomes as critical as optimizing decisions. A decision may be technically correct yet cognitively unintegrated. This study positions conceptual structure not as a descriptive layer, but as an active mechanism shaping cognition, leadership, and human–AI coherence.

Abstract: This paper proposes a sociological approach to chronic disease using diabetes as an exemplary case. It examines how biological mechanisms, clinical practices, and institutional frameworks are intertwined in shaping how diabetes is defined, studied, and managed. Rather than treating biological and social domains as separate, the analysis emphasizes their mutual embeddedness. Decisions about what counts as evidence, which mechanisms are emphasized, and how uncertainty is interpreted have technical dimensions, but they are also shaped by governance structures, professional norms, and policy contexts. Understanding chronic disease, therefore, requires attention both to biological processes and to the conditions under which these processes are investigated, interpreted, and translated into medical knowledge and practice.

Abstract: This paper introduces the concept of Existential Resistance Literature as an emerging interdisciplinary framework positioned at the intersection of philosophy, leadership theory, and socio-technical systems. The study responds to accelerating technological developments that increasingly frame human behavior through algorithmic, predictive, and data-driven models. While such systems enhance efficiency and coordination, they simultaneously risk reducing human agency, meaning, and interpretive depth.Building on a perception-centered perspective, the paper proposes that contemporary systems face a fundamental challenge: not merely optimization, but the preservation of human coherence. In response, Existential Resistance Literature is conceptualized as a human-centered intellectual and narrative approach that resists reductionist interpretations of human identity. Central to this framework is the concept of perceptual integrity, which explains how individuals and systems maintain meaning, trust, and continuity under conditions of complexity and technological mediation.The study integrates recent research on cognitive diversity, collective intelligence, and human–AI interaction to demonstrate that sustainable systems depend not only on structural efficiency but on interpretive alignment. By reframing resistance as a constructive process of preserving meaning rather than opposing technology, the paper advances a novel paradigm for understanding the relationship between human systems and algorithmic environments.

Abstract: Starting from the assumption that, in contemporary debate, sustainability should increasingly be interpreted within a sociological paradigm, this contribution aims to analyse the soft competences required for the education of a citizen capable of developing an ethical and inclusive orientation, understood as a civic prerequisite for processes of sociocultural integration. From this perspective, sustainability is not considered solely as a set of environmental practices or public policies, but rather as a cultural and normative dispositive that structures habitus, representations and models of action. The progressive acquisition of knowledge, values and practices oriented towards sustainability, both at the individual and collective levels, makes it possible to frame this phenomenon as a constitutive dimension of processes of modernisation and sociocultural development. Such processes are frequently supported and accelerated by technological innovation, which acts as an enabling but not determining factor. Moving beyond deterministic interpretations of a technological, political or economic nature, the analysis adopts a culturalist perspective that emphasises the social construction of a sustainable identity, namely an identity that assumes sustainability as a regulative principle of everyday action and as a lifestyle for the contemporary citizen. This trajectory implies the active and inclusive involvement of agencies of socialisation, first and foremost the school institution, called upon to promote sustainability as a foundational value of social inclusion and community cohesion. Within this framework, the second part of the contribution explores sustainability education through the implementation of a design protocol for digital education within STEAM disciplines, placing particular emphasis on methodologies and tools such as coding and educational robotics, understood as pedagogical tools for the development of critical, collaborative and socially responsible competences.