Search results for "Cultural anthropology"

Acceptance and knowledge of evolutionary theory among third-year university students in Spain

2020

The theory of evolution is one of the greatest scientific achievements in the intellectual history of humankind, yet it is still contentious within certain social groups. Despite being as robust and evidence-based as any other notable scientific theory, some people show a strong reluctance to accept it. In this study, we used the Measure of Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution (MATE) and Knowledge of Evolution Exam (KEE) questionnaires with university students from four academic degree programs (Chemistry, English, History, and Biology) of ten universities from Spain to measure, respectively, acceptance and knowledge of evolutionary theory among third-year undergraduate students (nMATE = 9…

Un barrio marginado no es un barrio marginal. A propósito de Nazaret (Valencia)

2016

This article takes us to Nazaret, an outlying district on Valencia’s waterfront which we consider from three complementary perspectives: the synchronic vision of its current socio-spatial structure, the diachronic and processual contextualization of the changes it has undergone in the last century, and the perceptions and images which characterize the neighbourhood, together with the features, activity and incidence of its associative fabric. The analysis focuses on the behaviour of a set of interconnected factors, including the impact of the port and urban development policy, its socioeconomic make-up, the consistency of its associative fabric and its relations with government. Whereas the…

Odysseus the traveler: Appropriation of a chronotope in a community of practice

2020

Abstract In this article we analyze the role of chronotopes in the formation and negotiation of identities. In particular, we consider the case of a superdiverse community of practice formed by minors asylum seekers and teachers in a school of Italian in Sicily, Italy. In our analysis we stress the role of reciprocity on the ways in which the chronotopic figure of Odysseus is reinterpreted and appropriated by members of this community. We look at how through a process of mutual engagement the indexical values associated with the figure of Odysseus are recontextualized by both teachers and students in light of their present experiences. Data for the article come from interviews, narratives a…

Charitable food aid in Finland: from a social issue to an environmental solution

2019

Since the establishment of the first food bank in 1995, charitable food aid (CFA) has become entrenched in Finland as a seemingly irreplaceable solution to food poverty. Further, it has recently been suggested that the focus of food aid activities is shifting from food poverty and temporary hunger alleviation towards environmental sustainability through addressing food waste via organized re-distribution of expiring food from retail to charitable organizations. This potentially creates a mechanism that (1) solidifies food poverty and (2) fortifies the paradoxical situation where charitable organizations delivering food aid are dependent on food waste rather than trying to reduce it. To unde…

On some difficulties of putting in dialogue animal rights with anthropological debates: a historical view in three episodes

2018

In this paper, I try to identify the reasons why the dialogue between sociocultural anthropology and animal rights theories and movements continues to be difficult and scarce. At first sight this weakness of communication is surprising, if one looks at the amount of anthropological studies on human/animal relationships, in most cases pointing to how animals are considered in many cultures as non- human subjects or persons. For understanding the roots of this state of affairs, I compare the ways anthropologists and animal rights theorists and activists have engaged with the issue of the differences and commonalities between human beings and nonhuman animals. For this aim, I contrast the sear…

Deliberation favours social efficiency by making people disregard their relative shares: evidence from USA and India

2017

Groups make decisions on both the production and the distribution of resources. These decisions typically involve a tension between increasing the total level of group resources (i.e. social efficiency) and distributing these resources among group members (i.e. individuals' relative shares). This is the case because the redistribution process may destroy part of the resources, thus resulting in socially inefficient allocations. Here we apply a dual-process approach to understand the cognitive underpinnings of this fundamental tension. We conducted a set of experiments to examine the extent to which different allocation decisions respond to intuition or deliberation. In a newly developed app…

Heritage-making: Written Texts in the Transmission of Traditional Knowledge of Natural Dyeing

2022

Natural dyeing is an element of intangible cultural heritage which is gaining new relevance today. Heritage-making as a set of purposeful activities has become an object of interest for researchers relatively recently, and this study is reflective of that. The paper aims to focus on natural dyeing as a component of cultural heritage, its documentation process, and how written texts have influenced the living tradition of natural dyeing. One of the sources for the study was ethnographic material, which provides insight into the little researched tradition of natural dyeing. To understand how the tradition was described and explained, Latvian press publications on natural dyeing were evaluate…

Народная творчасць Латгальскага беларуса

1939

Population-based validation of a German version of the Brief Resilience Scale.

2017

Smith and colleagues developed the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) to assess the individual ability to recover from stress despite significant adversity. This study aimed to validate the German version of the BRS. We used data from a population-based (sample 1: n = 1.481) and a representative (sample 2: n = 1.128) sample of participants from the German general population (age ≥ 18) to assess reliability and validity. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted to compare one- and two-factorial models from previous studies with a method-factor model which especially accounts for the wording of the items. Reliability was analyzed. Convergent validity was measured by correlating BRS scores …

Probing birth-order effects on narrow traits using specification-curve analysis

2017

The idea that birth-order position has a lasting impact on personality has been discussed for the past 100 years. Recent large-scale studies have indicated that birth-order effects on the Big Five personality traits are negligible. In the current study, we examined a variety of more narrow personality traits in a large representative sample ( n = 6,500–10,500 in between-family analyses; n = 900–1,200 in within-family analyses). We used specification-curve analysis to assess evidence for birth-order effects across a range of models implementing defensible yet arbitrary analytical decisions (e.g., whether to control for age effects or to exclude participants on the basis of sibling spacing).…