The legacy of transnational lives: Beyond the first generation of Lebanese in Senegal

Definitions of transnationalism are modelled after first generation migrant communities in the west. Through presenting ethnographic detail on the Lebanese community in Senegal, this article applies the concept of transnationalism to the case of a historic South-South migrant community. Second and later generation ethnic groups maintain transnational ties through notions of self-identity and definitions by others, the importance given to the homeland, and political and religious ideologies. Race, geographic location, and changes in the structure of labour markets are factors that encourage continued ties with the country of origin. Furthermore, transnationalism cannot be limited only to sending and receiving countries. Colonial and former colonial powers can determine the destination of migrants, establish economic hierarchies, and offer a tertiary citizenship to transnational migrants in addition to the dual citizenship of country of origin and destination.     

Skin tone,biracial stratification and tri-racial stratification among sperm donors

Abstract

Conception through donor insemination is an attractive option for many couples and single women in the USA, being a relatively simple and inexpensive way of having a baby by a biological birth. Sperm banks provide online catalogues in which sperm donors can be selected according to their physical and social characteristics. One sperm bank's catalogue was analysed based on the pregnancy of selected donors. Three hypotheses were tested related to colourism, biracial stratification and tri-racialism. Specifically, the selection of donors did not reflect: (1) any general preference for a lighter skin tone; (2) a black–white polarity; or (3) any trend towards tri-racialism. Donors who could be identified as Jewish or Muslim were more likely to be selected. Donors whose major was law were less likely to be selected.     

Medieval monastic mortality: Hazard analysis of mortality differences between monastic and nonmonastic cemeteries in England

Scholarship on life in medieval European monasteries has revealed a variety of factors that potentially affected mortality in these communities. Though there is some evidence based on age‐at‐death distributions from England that monastic males lived longer than members of the general public, what is missing from the literature is an explicit examination of how the risks of mortality within medieval monastic settings differed from those within contemporaneous lay populations. This study examines differences in the hazard of mortality for adult males between monastic cemeteries (n = 528) and non‐monastic cemeteries (n = 368) from London, all of which date to between AD 1050 and 1540. Age‐at‐death data from all cemeteries are pooled to estimate the Gompertz hazard of mortality, and “monastic” (i.e., buried in a monastic cemetery) is modeled as a covariate affecting this baseline hazard. The estimated effect of the monastic covariate is negative, suggesting that individuals in the monastic communities faced reduced risks of dying compared to their peers in the lay communities. These results suggest better diets, the positive health benefits of religious behavior, better living conditions in general in monasteries, or selective recruitment of healthy or higher socioeconomic status individuals. Am J Phys Anthropol 152:322–332, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Christian nationalism and white racial boundaries: examining whites' opposition to interracial marriage

How does the convergence of national and religious identities potentially fortify white racial boundaries in the USA? Focusing on openness to racial exogamy as an indicator of racial boundaries, we examine the link between Christian nationalism and white Americans' views towards their hypothetical daughter marrying an African American, Latino, or Asian. Drawing on insights from social identity complexity theory, we argue that the convergence of religious and national identities serves to reinforce in-group boundaries, thereby fortifying notions of white purity, and consequently, strengthening whites' discomfort with potential race-mixing in marriage. Multivariate analyses of national survey data demonstrate that Christian nationalism is strongly associated with an increase in white Americans' discomfort with a daughter marrying any racial minority, and particularly African Americans. We demonstrate how the convergence of religious and national identities in Christian nationalism influences whites' regulating of racial boundaries (evidenced in intermarriage attitudes) above and beyond the independent effects of political conservatism or religious exclusivism.     

Outsourcing punishment to God: beliefs in divine control reduce earthly punishment

The sanctioning of norm-transgressors is a necessary--though often costly--task for maintaining a well-functioning society. Prior to effective and reliable secular institutions for punishment, large-scale societies depended on individuals engaging in 'altruistic punishment'--bearing the costs of punishment individually, for the benefit of society. Evolutionary approaches to religion suggest that beliefs in powerful, moralizing Gods, who can distribute rewards and punishments, emerged as a way to augment earthly punishment in large societies that could not effectively monitor norm violations. In five studies, we investigate whether such beliefs in God can replace people's motivation to engage in altruistic punishment, and their support for state-sponsored punishment. Results show that, although religiosity generally predicts higher levels of punishment, the specific belief in powerful, intervening Gods reduces altruistic punishment and support for state-sponsored punishment. Moreover, these effects are specifically owing to differences in people's perceptions that humans are responsible for punishing wrongdoers.     

Religious and secular death: a parting of the ways

Most organized religions have indicated a level of support for organ donation including the diagnosis of death by the brain criterion. Organ donation is seen as a gift of love and fits within a communitarian ethos that most religions embrace. The acceptance of the determination of death by the brain criterion, where it has been explained, is reconciled with religious views of soul and body by using a notion of integration. Because the soul may be seen as that which integrates the human body, in the absence of any other signs of human functioning, loss of integration is considered to be an indication that soul and body have separated. To some extent this view would seem to be informed by an Aristotelian notion of the soul, but it fits well enough with religious notions of the person continuing after death. There have been several developments internationally that indicate that the acceptance of so-called 'brain death' by organized religions has been challenged by new developments including the acceptance of a lesser standard than loss of all brain function and a rejection by the US President's Council on Bioethics of the notion of loss of integration as an explanation of death by the brain criterion.     

Jewishness as sui generis: extending theorizations beyond the debate of “race,ethnicity, or religion”

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on Jewishness has often assumed that race, ethnicity, and religion are discrete categories. This review article surveys the place of Jewishness within race literature, ethnicity literature, and sociological religion literature, and offers a new theoretical framework for considering Jewishness as sui generis – of its own unique quality. The categories of race, ethnicity, and religion must be theorized as a system of interconnected frames and processes that overlap, interact, and are co-constituted. This web of frames and processes must be situated within the larger social system and meanings that construct Jewishness alongside other subjectivities.     

Ethnic cohesion and division among American Jews: The role of mass‐level and organizational politics

Mass‐level and organizational politics contribute both to ethnic cohesion and division among American Jews. Political cohesion at the mass level, measured by location on the liberal side of the mass political structure, serves as a structural source of ethnic cohesion for many American Jews who are not characterized by alternative structural and cultural sources of ethnic cohesion, as measured by embeddedness in structural and cultural networks of interaction. However, political divisions among American jews converge with religious divisions and with variations in structural and cultural cohesion and assimilation; consequently, politics provides one of several reinforcing cleavages in the American Jewish community. Individual‐level data from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey are used to support these claims. A strong linkage exists between patterns of ethnic cohesion and division and the role of politics at the mass and organizational levels. Jewish organizations involved in politics share consensus across a wide range of political issues, contributing to political cohesion. However, political conflicts emerge among organizations representing different Jewish denominations, leading again to reinforcing religious and political divisions. These claims are supported by data collected from the published reports of an umbrella agency which seeks to coordinate political positions among American Jewish organizations     

Religious Coping with Chronic Pain

This study examined the role of religious and nonreligious cognitive-behavioral coping in a sample of 61 chronic pain patients from a midwestern pain clinic. Participants described their chronic pain and indicated their use of religious and nonreligious cognitive-behavioral coping strategies. Results supported a multidimensional conceptualization of religious coping that includes both positive and negative strategies. Positive religious coping strategies were associated significantly with positive affect and religious outcome after statistically controlling for demographic variables. In contrast, measures of negative religious coping strategies were not associated significantly with outcome variables. Several significant associations also were found between nonreligious cognitive-behavioral coping strategies and outcome variables. The results underscore the need for further research concerning the contributions of religious coping in adjustment to chronic pain. Practitioners of applied psychophysiology should assess their chronic pain patients' religious appraisals and religious coping as another important stress management strategy.     

Why aren’t we all hutterites?

In this paper I explore the psychology of ritual performance and present a simple graphical model that clarifies several issues in William Irons’s theory of religion as a “hard-to-fake” sign of commitment. Irons posits that religious behaviors or rituals serve as costly signals of an individual’s commitment to a religious group. Increased commitment among members of a religious group may facilitate intra-group cooperation, which is argued to be the primary adaptive benefit of religion. Here I propose a proximate explanation for how individuals are able to pay the short-term costs of ritual performance to achieve the long-term fitness benefits offered by religious groups. The model addresses three significant problems raised by Irons’s theory. First, the model explains why potential free-riders do not join religious groups even when there are significant net benefits that members of religious groups can achieve. Second, the model clarifies how costly a ritual must be to achieve stability and prevent potential free-riders from joining the religious group. Third, the model suggests why religious groups may require adherents to perform private rituals that are not observed by others. Several hypotheses generated from the model are also discussed. Richard Sosis is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut. His research interests include the evolution of cooperation, utopian societies, and the behavioral ecology of religion. In collaboration with Bradley Ruffle (Ben Gurion University) he is currently investigating the impact of privatization and religiosity on intra-group trust within Israeli Kibbutzim.