Kieran Healy

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Kieran Healy is an Irish sociologist, a professor of sociology at Duke University, [1] a member of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke, [2] and a regular visitor to the Research School in Social Science (RSSS) at the Australian National University. [3] He earned his PhD in sociology from Princeton University, having begun his studies at University College Cork, in Ireland. His research interests include the social basis of self-interest and altruism, the organization of exchange in human goods (like blood, organs, eggs and genetic material), and the role of volunteering in the open source software movement. In 2002, he received the American Sociological Association's Dissertation Award for "Exchange in Blood and Organs." [4]

Contents

Healy was involved in debating while at UCC and won the Irish Times National Debating competition in 1993. [5] He was also a member of the UCC Philosophical Society.[ citation needed ]

He is a member of the Crooked Timber [6] [7] and orgtheory.net group blogs.

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

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A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift in a gift culture; although there is some expectation of reciprocity, gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money, or some other commodity or service. This contrasts with a barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily explicitly exchanged for value received.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social complexity</span> Conceptual framework

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In cultural anthropology, reciprocity refers to the non-market exchange of goods or labour ranging from direct barter to forms of gift exchange where a return is eventually expected as in the exchange of birthday gifts. It is thus distinct from the true gift, where no return is expected.

<i>Sociobiology: The New Synthesis</i> 1975 book by biologist E. O. Wilson

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Crooked Timber is a blog with a left-of-center political slant, primarily administered by academics from countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland. The blog's name is inspired by a quotation from philosopher Immanuel Kant, "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made," from his 1784 essay "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose". The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin alluded to the quotation in The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas. Crooked Timber frequently hosts online book events and includes contributions from a variety of experts in fields such as philosophy, political science, and sociology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UCC Philosophical Society</span> Debating society at University College Cork, Ireland

The UCC Philosophical Society, also known as the 'Philosoph', is the largest debating society at University College Cork, Ireland. The Philosoph was founded in 1850, making it the oldest society at UCC. The society carries out a number of functions, including weekly debates with guest speakers, participating in debating competitions, running workshops for the students of UCC to develop their public speaking skills and running debating competitions and workshops for schoolchildren. In the 1960s, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Seán MacBride described the Philosoph as "the centre of independent thought in Ireland". House meetings of the society are held every Monday evening during UCC's term time.

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Christian Stephen Smith is an American sociologist, currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Smith's research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents and emerging adults, sociological theory, philosophy of science, the science of generosity, American evangelicalism, and culture. Smith is well known for his contributions to the sociology of religion, particularly his research into adolescent spirituality, as well as for his contributions to sociological theory and his advocacy of critical realism.

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Several authors have used the terms organ gifting and "tissue gifting" to describe processes behind organ and tissue transfers that are not captured by more traditional terms such as donation and transplantation. The concept of "gift of life" in the U.S. refers to the fact that "transplantable organs must be given willingly, unselfishly, and anonymously, and any money that is exchanged is to be perceived as solely for operational costs, but never for the organs themselves". "Organ gifting" is proposed to contrast with organ commodification. The maintenance of a spirit of altruism in this context has been interpreted by some as a mechanism through which the economic relations behind organ/tissue production, distribution, and consumption can be disguised. Organ/tissue gifting differs from commodification in the sense that anonymity and social trust are emphasized to reduce the offer and request of monetary compensation. It is reasoned that the implementation of the gift-giving analogy to organ transactions shows greater respect for the diseased body, honors the donor, and transforms the transaction into a morally acceptable and desirable act that is borne out of voluntarism and altruism.

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Social preferences describe the human tendency to not only care about one's own material payoff, but also the reference group's payoff or/and the intention that leads to the payoff. Social preferences are studied extensively in behavioral and experimental economics and social psychology. Types of social preferences include altruism, fairness, reciprocity, and inequity aversion. The field of economics originally assumed that humans were rational economic actors, and as it became apparent that this was not the case, the field began to change. The research of social preferences in economics started with lab experiments in 1980, where experimental economists found subjects' behavior deviated systematically from self-interest behavior in economic games such as ultimatum game and dictator game. These experimental findings then inspired various new economic models to characterize agent's altruism, fairness and reciprocity concern between 1990 and 2010. More recently, there are growing amounts of field experiments that study the shaping of social preference and its applications throughout society.

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References

  1. Duke sociology people Archived 2013-01-24 at the Wayback Machine , retrieved 2013-01-20.
  2. KIE Faculty & Senior Fellows, retrieved 2013-01-20.
  3. Philosophers at RSSS in 2011, retrieved 2013-01-20.
  4. Kieran Healy Award Statement, American Sociological Association, retrieved 2013-01-21.
  5. "Roll of former champions". Irish Times . Archived from the original on 21 October 2012.
  6. The Decline and Fall of the Typing Wife, Dwight Garner, New York Times , August 9, 2007.
  7. How a literary list sparked an online craze, Irish Times , April 3, 2010 (subscription required).
  8. Grim Harvest (review of Last Best Gifts, Virginia Postrel, New York Times , January 28, 2007.
  9. Review of Last Best Gifts, International Herald Tribune , January 27, 2007 (subscription required).
  10. Review of Last Best Gifts by Jane Allyn Piliavin, Social Forces, March 1, 2008 (subscription required).