Introduction to Bordering Sciences

Recordability

The capacity of the internet to automatically save, archive, and retrieve interactions. Unlike face-to-face speech, digital communication often leaves a permanent proof (like screenshots)

Physical separation

Communicators are not in the same physical space. This lack of immediate physical presence removes social "brakes," often leading to disinhibition where people feel safer being rude or aggressive (e.g., flaming in comment sections).

Levels of synchronicity

The variation in timing during communication. The internet allows for asynchronous interaction, giving users control to delay their responses (from minutes to months), which allows for edited self-presentation but can cause anxiety for the receiver.

Reduced sensation

The lack of non-verbal cues (tone, body language, facial expressions) in text-based communication. This makes interaction "impersonal" and can lead to misunderstandings, forcing users to compensate with emojis or punctuation

Anonymity

The state of being unidentifiable or "invisible" online. It creates a sense of safety that can lead to both positive outcomes (self-disclosure) and negative outcomes (aggression/trolling).

Disinhibition

The loss or reduction of self-control, leading to impulsive, inappropriate, or unrestrained behavior that breaks social norms, often seen as rudeness, excessive flirting, or aggression

Technological Skills

Practical hands-on abilities, that help you navigate in the internet.

Computer usage

Using the desk, mouse, keyboard.

Personalized Technology

The ability to make everything under your preference, like wallpapers, icons, desktops and so on.

Content Generating

The ability to create documents, presentations, posters and etc.

Cognitive Skills

The set of skills allowing to understand, evaluate and criticize digital content.

Searching

The ability to successfully locate words and keywords needed for you at the moment.

Reproduction

The ability to create, remix, or share existing information ethically and effectively.

Quality Control

The critical thinking skill used to evaluate the reliability, bias, and authenticity of information

Enshittification

The process of platform dying by converting utility into futility for corporate greed

Individual Level

Virtual Identity, Online Self Presentation, Depression, Addiction

Interpersonal Level

Parent-Child Relationship (Sharenting), peer relationships, depression, addiction

Group Level

Pro-Ana Sites, Incel Groups (often stigmatized people who are gathered around the same idea)

Societal Level

Filter Bubble (your search history, preference, which does not show anything else, keeping you in a bubble), Political Polarization (Filter Bubble shows you the only political news, which you like or are more close to it an by that creates a polarization - not allowing you to interact with people who incline towards other political group)

CASA (Computers are Social Actors)

People unconsciously treating robots and media as social beings, even though they know it is not like that.

Uncanny Valley

A phenomenon where human-like figures (robots, CGI characters, dolls) that are almost but not quite perfectly realistic evoke feelings of eeriness, revulsion, or discomfort in observers, rather than empathy.

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the belief or practice of judging other cultures, people, and their practices based on the standards and values of one's own culture, often leading to a perception of superiority and misunderstanding

Cultural Relativism

The opposite of Ethnocentrism, the principle that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood within their own culture's context, not judged by the standards of another culture

Ethnography

The primary research method of anthropology (writing about people), usually involving participant observation.

Comparativism

Method using systematic comparison of cultures, societies, or traits to find patterns, similarities, and differences, moving beyond one's own perspective to understand universal human principles and diverse cultural meanings

Medicalization

Medicalization is the process by which social problems (like poverty or stress) are redefined as medical conditions to be treated.

Epistemology

The study of knowledge, how we know what we know. In anthropology, it asks whose knowledge counts 

Positivism

Views scientific knowledge (like a psychiatric diagnosis) as objective, neutral, and discovering "truth" out there.Empiricists

Constructivism

• Views knowledge as created by social and cultural forces (e.g., a diagnosis is a category created by a specific culture at a specific time).

Classification & Competence

 It is a tool for the powerful ones to decide who belongs in the society and who needs to be controlled. Jenkins & Competence: Richard Jenkins argues that "competence" is a social status, not just a biological fact. Being classified as "competent" grants you respect and rights. Being classified as "incompetent" strips you of your "moral personhood."

Normalcy

the state or fact of being normal

Critical medical anthropology CAT

• Analyzes how economic and political power shape health, disease, and access to care. Instead of just looking at individual behaviors, it looks at the structures (like capitalism or government policies) that make people sick.
  

• Marxist tradition: Health is a commodity, and sickness is often a result of inequality and exploitation.

• Causes of suffering are often obscured or hidden by the powerful form շարքային քաղաքացի 

• CMA does not take the world for granted. It refuses to accept that poverty, hunger, or unequal healthcare are "natural" or "inevitable." It assumes things could be different.

Biopolitics

Describes how modern states exercise power not just through laws or punishment, but by regulating life itself—health, reproduction, sexuality, and mental well-being. 

In mental health: Depression, disorder, risk, and other terms, these became tools for governing behavior. People are encouraged to monitor themselves, take medication, and seek help to become “productive” citizens. 

Structural Violence

Systemic social institutions (poverty, racism, gender inequality) that harm people by preventing them from meeting basic needs or accessing care. It is often not visible and normalized.

Walfare State and Neoliberalism

A dynamic where neoliberal policies (cutting government spending/privatization) dismantle the social safety net (Welfare State). Key Example: In Romania, because the state cut welfare funding, psychiatric hospitals were forced to function as "de facto" shelters. Doctors treated "social cases" (poverty/homelessness) as medical patients to save them from the streets. Implication: "Illness was often structural, not biological—the result of being abandoned by policy, not pathology".

Economics

Social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and how individuals, businesses, and governments make choices to allocate scarce resources.

Microecoonomics

Individual decisions of companies and individuals.

Macroeconomics

The economy as a whole.

Transaction

The most important part in economy.

Transaction Cost Theory

Transaction cost theory is an economic framework that analyzes the costs of exchanging goods and services, beyond the mere price of the good itself. It was developed by economists like Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson and posits that organizations make decisions, such as whether to produce internally or outsource, based on minimizing these costs. These costs include searching for information, bargaining and contracting, and policing and enforcing agreements

What does the transaction cost depend on?

Frequency, Asset Specificity, Uncertainty

Why do governments regulate the economy?

To protect people, investments, ensure market stability and have trust.

No trust leads to

Corruption, monopolistic behavior, nepotism, unstable prices, harmed consumers.

Homo Oeconomicus

Economic man represents a hypothetical person who is consistently rational, self-interested, and aims to maximize their own personal gain. They use it to understand market behavior, resource allocation, and design policies.

Bounded Rationality

As we are limited by cognitive constraints, time, and information, so we do not find the perfect choice (optimize), we find a good enough choice (satisfice)

Prospect Theory

The pain of losing $100 is stronger than the joy of gaining $100

Availability Heuristic

Judging probability by how easily an example comes to mind.

Representativeness Heuristic

People judge probabilities based on stereotypes/prototypes.

Nudges

Changes in the environment that guide people toward better choices without forbidding options. Organ donation, putting fruit at eye-level in cafeterias.

GDP

Gross Domestic Product

Fishers Concept

Does adding money increase prices?