Issue 385: Social Relationships

Posted by Martin on 16/2/2019

Dear All,

Here my attempt for the first kind of "state". Please comment!

SOxxx Formal Social Binding

Subclass of:        E2 Temporal Entity

Scope note:       This class comprises phenomena of formally defined and socially respected bindings between different instances of E39 Actors or between multiple actors and instances of E70 Thing. Instances of SOxxx Formal Social Binding come into being and end with an explicit act of declaration or indirectly through other publicly acknowledged events, such as via heritage at birth or death. Depending on their type, they are associated with characteristic rights and obligations, which are subject to the formal legal system of the respecting society, regardless whether this is based on written laws or oral tradition.

Formal Social Bindings are not observable as such, even though the behavior of involved actors may suggest their existence, such as being married. They are exclusively a consequence of the establishing event, which should be kept as social memory in a persistent documented form or as oral tradition, and the continued respect of this kind of binding by a target community. For instance, a community may declare a certain kind of marriage as invalid from some date on, and later redeclare it as valid. Their existence does not depend on the existence of social memory. Documents may be lost or involved actors may not have been aware of the respective establishing events, but later evidence of the establishing events may be found. In these cases, the society may not act according to the respective rights and obligations as long as the fact remains unknown, but is obliged to when the necessary evidence has been provided. Involved actors may have difficulties proving the existence of the binding to authorities when respective documents are lost, but that does not affect their actual existence. However, certain legal systems may require in certain kinds of cases the provision of evidence itself as part of the establishing event.

In some contexts, Formal Social Bindings are also called social institutions. Examples include memberships, employments, ownerships, rights of use, marriage, parenthood and others. In documentation practice, instances of Formal Social Bindings may by shortcut by simple binary relations, such as “is married to”.

Properties:

SPxx1 binds (is bound by): E39 Actor
I believe we need a “social binding type” which “is respected by” a Group.

Posted by Martin on 23/2/2019

Dear Robert,

Good question!

On 2/23/2019 1:21 AM, Robert Sanderson wrote:
>
> Hi Martin,
>
> Looks good overall to me.
>
> One question… is this E2 or E92?  In other words, should the social “state” be able to take into account the spatial extent as well as the temporal extent?

> As an example use case, the ownership by the Getty of a particular statue is being challenged by the Italian high court, so the ownership “state” would not be valid in all places.  Equally, some nations do not recognize same-sex marriage, and thus the marriage state could be excluded from those places.
> Otherwise, I imagine this could be modeled with a reference from the state to a Group (the society) that holds the state to be valid?

I've thought about that.

Yes, one of the conditions being, that the type of binding is respected by a Group. This does not mean, that I am only married as long as I stay within the jurisdiction of the respective country, e.g., being on holiday or in a spacecraft. Therefore, it is not the place. We will need to model this however explicitly.

Further, these kinds of binding themselves do not fill identifiable spatial volumes, as spaces of jurisdiction do. Therefore, to my understanding, they are not E92.

E92 is not just time and place, it is identifiable spacetime volumes.

Martin