After the quiet revolution: Quebec anthropology and the study of Quebec

The Ahaggar Twareg are herders of camels and small‐stock who live in the desert of southern Algeria. Their society is divided into categories of noblemen, tributaries and slaves. This article, which deals with the colonial and pre‐colonial period, demonstrates how among the two first mentioned classes, male supremacy over women builds upon men's control over the process that create exchange‐value rather than use‐value. The author also describes how the gender‐based and class‐based forms of labour division interlock.     

Reduced distractibility in a remote culture

Background

In visual processing, there are marked cultural differences in the tendency to adopt either a global or local processing style. A remote culture (the Himba) has recently been reported to have a greater local bias in visual processing than Westerners. Here we give the first evidence that a greater, and remarkable, attentional selectivity provides the basis for this local bias.

Methodology/Principal Findings

In Experiment 1, Eriksen-type flanker interference was measured in the Himba and in Western controls. In both groups, responses to the direction of a task-relevant target arrow were affected by the compatibility of task-irrelevant distractor arrows. However, the Himba showed a marked reduction in overall flanker interference compared to Westerners. The smaller interference effect in the Himba occurred despite their overall slower performance than Westerners, and was evident even at a low level of perceptual load of the displays. In Experiment 2, the attentional selectivity of the Himba was further demonstrated by showing that their attention was not even captured by a moving singleton distractor.

Conclusions/Significance

We argue that the reduced distractibility in the Himba is clearly consistent with their tendency to prioritize the analysis of local details in visual processing.     

Onchocerca parasites and Wolbachia endosymbionts: evaluation of a spectrum of antibiotic types for activity against Onchocerca gutturosa in vitro

Background

In the Dominican Republic, a Latin American country with filariasis-endemic areas, more than 63,000 people have lymphatic filariasis and more than 400,000 people are at risk of future infection. In this paper, we explore the health beliefs, health-seeking behaviors and self-care practices of women with lymphoedema in filariasis-endemic areas to better understand the needs of women when developing lymphoedema morbidity control programs.

Methods

Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews of 28 women, 3 focus group discussions with 28 women, field notes and photographs.

Results

Women described exhaustive and expensive attempts at seeking a cure for their lymphoedema. Family members were influential in providing women with initial care seeking referrals to indigenous healers credited with influence over physical, mental, spiritual and supernatural properties of illness. When indigenous treatments proved to be ineffectual, the women sought care from trained healthcare providers. Most healthcare providers incorrectly diagnosed the edema, failed to adequately treat and meet the needs of women and were viewed as expensive. Most women resorted to self-prescribing injectable, oral, or topical antibiotics along with oral analgesics as a standard practice of self-care.

Conclusion

Healthcare providers must understand a woman's cultural perspectives of illness, her natural networks of support and referral, her behavioural practices of care-seeking and self-care and the financial burden of seeking care. In the culture of the Dominican Republic family members and traditional healthcare providers are influential advisors on initial health-seeking behaviors and self-care practices. For this reason family-oriented interventions, support groups for women and their families, community education and training on simple, low cost lymphoedema management techniques for indigenous healers are viable ways to influence the early detection, diagnosis and treatment of women with lymphoedema. The extensive use of injectable, oral and topical antibiotics by indigenous healers and women without medical supervision suggests a need for health education messages related to the risks of such practices.     

Gender Differences in the Motivational Processing of Babies Are Determined by Their Facial Attractiveness

Background

This study sought to determine how esthetic appearance of babies may affect their motivational processing by the adults.

Methodology and Principal Findings

Healthy men and women were administered two laboratory-based tasks: a) key pressing to change the viewing time of normal-looking babies and of those with abnormal facial features (e.g., cleft palate, strabismus, skin disorders, Down''s syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome) and b) attractiveness ratings of these images. Exposure to the babies'' images produced two different response patterns: for normal babies, there was a similar effort by the two groups to extend the visual processing with lower attractiveness ratings by men; for abnormal babies, women exerted greater effort to shorten the viewing time despite attractiveness ratings comparable to the men.

Conclusions

These results indicate that gender differences in the motivational processing of babies include excessive (relative to the esthetic valuation) motivation to extend the viewing time of normal babies by men vs. shortening the exposure to the abnormal babies by women. Such gender-specific incentive sensitization phenomenon may reflect an evolutionary-derived need for diversion of limited resources to the nurturance of healthy offspring.     

DuBois the pan-Africanist and the development of African nationalism

While W.E.B. DuBois's importance as a political activist and writer is well-documented, a ‘DuBoisian’ political theory has proved illusory. I argue that the key to change and continuity in DuBois's work is his pan-Africanism, which he used to develop a broad theory of anti-colonial nationalism. This reading of his legacy emphasizes DuBois's singular role in shaping anti-colonial discourse in the postwar era, especially in Africa, as well as in theorizing African nationalism and the African diaspora. It also allows us to understand the contradiction of the early, liberal DuBois's views on race and his later preoccupation with Communism. I suggest that across both positions, DuBois's actual political arguments remained over-determined by his positionality within the colonial world, producing a set of anti-colonial arguments that while rooted in the economic exploitation of the colonies, appeal to liberal universalizing standards of progress and modernity.     

Citizenship and stratification in an ethnic democracy

A theoretical framework of multiple citizenship discourses is proposed for analysing the transformation of the structure of ethnic relations in the yishuv and Israel. An historical overview indicates how Israel's 'incorporation regime' for its main ethnic and religious groups - ashkenazim, mizrachim, Orthodox-Jews, citizen and non-citizen Palestinians - was constituted through a hierarchical combination of three citizenship discourses: a collectivist republican discourse, based on the civic virtue of 'pioneering' colonization; an ethno-nationalist discourse, based on Jewish descent, and an individualist liberal discourse, based on civic criteria of membership. It is suggested that Israel's historical trajectory has consisted in its gradual transformation from a colonial to a civil society, and concomitantly in the gradual replacement of its republican citizenship discourse by a liberal discourse. Finally, the dilemmas of its ethnic and religious groups in choosing between the liberal and the ethno-nationalist citizenship discourses in the current period are charted.     

Thinking with relations in nature conservation? A case study of the Etosha National Park and Haiǁom

The area of the Etosha National Park in Namibia has been inhabited for many centuries by Haiǁom, a group of (now former) hunter-gatherers. In 1907, Etosha was proclaimed as a game reserve, although Haiǁom were still allowed to live in the area until they were expelled in the 1950s due to then-dominant ideas of fortress conservation. In recent years, Haiǁom have been provided with several resettlement farms by the Namibian government as a reaction to the colonial land dispossession. In this article, I explore the onto-epistemology of Haiǁom (i.e. their being in and knowing the Etosha area), focusing on their relations with the land and with human and beyond-the-human beings before their eviction. I argue that the eviction implies not only economic marginalization but also social deprivation, which is inadequately addressed with resettlement. I suggest that thinking with relations, illustrated with the Haiǁom case, would call for other solutions in the context of measures taken for past land dispossessions and would open new paths for Namibia's nature conservation initiatives.     

Ethnic heterogamy and the risk of partner violence in Mexico

A common stereotype holds that in Mexico male violence toward women is common among indigenous peoples and reflects cultural norms that sanction a male's domination of his female partner. We employ a recent Mexican survey to examine the relative risk of violence against women as a function of the couple's ethnic homogamy. Among couples in which both partners are either non-indigenous or indigenous the female's risk of partner violence is similar. Among heterogamous couples non-indigenous females in relationships in which the male is indigenous are at elevated risk of violence, while indigenous women in relationships with non-indigenous males are at a lower risk of violence. The stresses associated with heterogamy appear to be more salient in determining a woman's risk of violence than ethnicity per se. The implications for future research and the need to deal with the issue of ethnic homogamy in culturally heterogeneous populations are discussed.     

Women's absence,women's power: indigenous women and negotiations with mining companies in Australia and Canada

This article documents the agency of indigenous women in negotiations surrounding major resource projects on indigenous lands. The dominant view in the academic and activist literature is that indigenous women are excluded from negotiations, which helps explain their failure to share in project benefits. The author's experience as a negotiator for indigenous communities in Australia and his research in Canada reveals a different picture, indicating that indigenous women often play a central role in negotiations. The article seeks to explain the inconsistency between the findings reported here and much of the literature, in terms of a broader tendency in the latter to downplay the agency of women in relation to mining; and its failure to adequately recognize the multiple and complex ways in which indigenous women can influence negotiations, and the role of specific cultural, institutional and political contexts in shaping women's participation.     

Prehistory, Identity, and Archaeological Representation in Nordic Museums

In this article, I examine the variable representation of Saami (Lapp) prehistory in several Nordic museums. The analysis is situated at the intersection of (1) the examination of the ideology of archaeological practice, (2) the discourse about creation of indigenous identity, and (3) the visual culture of museum exhibitions. I describe and analyze displays about archaeology and prehistory from seven museums in Sweden, Finland, and Norway. The presentation of Saami prehistory differs significantly between majority community museums and those run by Saami communities. These presentations reflect ideologies implicated in building indigenous, nationalist, and pannational identities as well as in establishing legitimacy of Saami claims to land and heritage. Representations of the past are inevitably political because they are about linking people, place, and legitimacy. Ambiguities in these uses of prehistory are discussed, as is the globalizing role of the European Union.     

牧民对草地可持续利用的生态认知水平及其影响因素——以黄河源区5个县为例

牧民对草地可持续利用认知水平很大程度上影响了当地土地的利用状况,进而影响牧民保护草地行为的产生。基于黄河源区（玛多、玛沁、班玛、达日、甘德）的入户调查数据,在分析牧民生计方式和草地退化认知特征的基础上,运用Tobit模型探究影响牧民对草地退化生态认知的主要因素。研究结果表明：（1）黄河源区88%的牧民认为近5年草地出现了不同程度的退化,与学术界普遍认同的观点相一致;（2）联户放牧、子女受教育程度、新技术培训、牲畜养殖规模等对牧民关于草地退化的认知有正向引导作用;（3）户年均收入、国家草原奖补对牧民关于草地退化的认知有负向作用。为有效解决黄河源区牧民对草地的严重依赖性和源区内产业结构单一的问题,应（1）加强牧民专业技能培训、提升草原牧民整体文化水平;（2）鼓励中小牧民参与联户经营;（3）优化牧户生计方式,改善生计策略,减小牧民对草地的依赖程度,实现社会-生态系统的可持续发展。     

Female choice and extra-pair paternity in a traditional human population

Seeking out extra-pair paternity (EPP) is a viable reproductive strategy for females in many pair-bonded species. Across human societies, women commonly engage in extra-marital affairs, suggesting this strategy may also be an important part of women's reproductive decision-making. Here, I show that among the Himba 17 per cent of all recorded marital births are attributed by women to EPP, and EPP is associated with significant increases in women's reproductive success. In contrast, there are no cases of EPP among children born into 'love match' marriages. This rate of EPP is higher than has been recorded in any other small-scale society. These results illustrate the importance of seeking EPP as a mechanism of female choice in humans, while simultaneously showing it to be highly variable and context-dependent.     

What about cultural ecosystems? Opportunities for cultural considerations in the “International Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration”

The Society for Ecological Restoration's 2016 (SER) “International Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration” is a living document intended to guide restoration projects “anywhere in the world.” Given its intended global scope and in hopes of informing future editions, this document is critically assessed in light of the role people have played in ecosystems around the world. We argue that the Standards has an underlying nature–culture dichotomization that limits its applicability; in qualifying what it calls “cultural ecosystems” for rehabilitation, rather than restoration, the Standards privileges colonial visions of ecological restoration. We also discuss the Standards' representation of the ecological impacts and practices of indigenous groups. Whereas the Standards claims that preindustrial cultural ecosystems exist in states similar to unmodified areas, many historians, anthropologists, and paleoecologists would point out that preindustrial people sometimes had massive environmental impacts through agriculture, hydrological engineering, over‐hunting, living in dense urban environments, transporting species, burning on a scale capable of changing the climate, and other practices. Furthermore, the Standards does not discuss how the cultural goals of indigenous groups fit into the overall picture of ecological restoration. Future drafts of the Standards should more accurately frame the diverse roles people play in nature, and create global standards that account for the validity of cultural goals for ecological restoration.     

Problems of Visual Culture in the Light of Modern Investigations of Visual Perception and Visual Thinking

The problem of visual and esthetic training has many facets, among which the psychological are obviously not the least important. The results of long years of studying the psychology of the child (2) lead to the conclusion that:

Human consciousness and the mechanisms of conscious control of human actions represe it a hierarchical system, like a building constructed of many superimposed psychophysiological levels, of many floors rising above one another. Somewhere in the basement are the prepsychological instinctive processes of receiving and using unconditioned reflex signals; the lower floors form the elementary sensations and implement the elementary types of individually discovered sensorimotor coordinations; the next floor is where the synthetic perceptions of space and time are formed along with the mechanisms for controlling locomotion and object manipulation; above them is the floor housing visual thinking and the processes for regulating play and productive activities; and, finally, above all these is the floor of symbolic, abstract, logical operations and the most complex instances of control exerted by the most complex information- seeking and labor activities. It should be emphasized that in its developed form this hierarchical system operates as a single entity, and the control of complex operations requires agreement between the operations of the psychophysiological mechanisms located at all these levels or floors. Each age level in the child's development erects the next floor of the overall psychophysiological building, and our task is mainly to build it in the best possible way, without senseless haste and taking heed not to erect the next floor before the one below is finished. (4)     

Ungrateful predators: capture and the creation of Cofán violence

In this article, I explore the history, logic, and practice of capture among the Cofán people of Amazonian Ecuador. Rather than acting as the subjects of capture, Cofán people have primarily been its objects. Centuries of pre‐Conquest, colonial, and postcolonial violence have exposed Cofán communities to repeated seizures by indigenous and non‐indigenous aggressors. Although capture by enemy others is a feared prospect that typically brings disaster, it also serves as the Cofán nation's central means of acquiring violent powers, which are essential to its defence. By investigating the uncertainties of capture as a productive process, I question dominant representations of native Amazonians as wilful participants in a cosmos of generalized predation, and I issue a plea for openness when considering the diversity of the region's peoples.     

Influencing factors of the grassland ecological compensation policy to herdsmen's behavioral response: An empirical study in Hexi corridor

Ecological protection of grassland is an important part of the construction of ecological civilization in China. Grassland ecological compensation and reward policy is an important policy for grassland ecological protection in China. As the main participants in the grassland ecological compensation and reward policy, herders' behavioral response largely affects the effect of policy implementation. In this study, 550 herders in two regions with different compensation standards were selected as samples, and the comparative analysis of herdsmen's response to policy behavior and influence factors was carried out. The results showed that the grassland area owned by herders, ethnic group and perception of policies were important factors to affect the response of herdsmen's behavior in the two regions, but larger differences existed in the two regions. The grassland area and family size owned by herders are important factors that affect the response of herdsmen's behavior in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; However, the ethnic group, the understanding of policy and family income are the important factors in the western desert area.     

基于草地生态系统服务认知的牧民生计选择——以新疆喀拉峻天山世界自然遗产地为例

牧民对草地生态系统服务的重要性认知成为推动牧区生态环境保护以及牧民生计可持续发展的重要前提。以喀拉峻180份牧户实地调研数据为基础,在分析牧民对草地生态系统服务的认知程度和生计选择的基础上,运用灰色关联分析探究生态认知与生计选择的总体关联性,并采用多元Logistic模型探究生态系统服务认知对生计选择的具体影响。结果显示：(1)生态系统服务认知水平依次为调节服务(79.83%)>支持服务(78.21%)>文化服务(77.06%),且对气体调节的认知度最高(82.67%),对科研教育的认知度最低(72.11%);(2)生态系统服务认知与生计选择的总体关联度均在0.47以上,处于中等关联水平;3)生态系统服务认知对选择旅游畜牧兼业生计影响相对显著,其中气体调节和土壤保持正向影响旅游畜牧兼业生计选择,而废物处理对其产生负向影响。     

From the Waters of the Empire to the Tanks of Paris: The Creation and Early Years of the Aquarium Tropical,Palais de la Porte Dorée

From May to November 1931, the Exposition coloniale internationale was held in Paris. Publicized as a trip around the world in a single day, it was designed to stimulate investments and general enthusiasm for the colonies. Along with exotic temporary pavilions representing the various colonies, model villages inhabited by colonial natives, and pavilions representing commercial product brands and other colonial powers, the exposition included a zoo and an aquarium featuring animals from the colonies. Installing a large aquarium had been a costly and difficult process, and construction was plagued by many delays and problems. But when the aquarium finally opened a few months into the exposition, it quickly became a favorite of the public. With the double mission to provide a living synthesis of the products of the warm waters of the French empire and give visitors a sense of the diversity, beauty, and economic resources of their colonial possessions, the aquarium functioned as a panorama that presented a striking visual metaphor for the empire. This article follows the aquarium during the exposition and in the years that followed. We explore its place in the history of aquaria in general and pay particular attention to its role in the exposition and within the French colonial context of the 1930s and onward. Here, both the scientists in charge of the site and the aquatic animals living in its tanks and terrariums provide a window into the relationship of marine biology, public education, consumerism, and colonialism at mid-twentieth century.     

社区对普氏原羚的保护态度和意愿及其影响因素

普氏原羚(Procapra przewalskii)是我国的特有种,青海湖地区是其唯一的分布区,青海湖国家级自然保护区对普氏原羚的有效保护、社区发展与保护之间矛盾的协调,对于生物多样性保护具有重要意义。了解青海湖国家级自然保护区周边社区对普氏原羚的保护态度、意愿及其影响因素,可以为自然保护区开展生物多样性保护工作,维持当地生态和平发展提供保障。基于问卷调查法对自然保护区周边社区的牧民和居民进行了调查,研究表明:(1)受访者认为草场质量退化(n=92,65.25%)和草场围栏设置(n=80,56.74%)是威胁普氏原羚的主要因素;在以保护普氏原羚和给予生态补偿为前提下,牧民拆除围栏的意愿有所提高(由20.78%分别提高至34.21%和40.79%);(2)管理部门的宣教活动(79.43%)、手机(31.91%)和电视(28.37%)等媒体报道是受访者了解野生动物保护相关政策法规的主要渠道,可以增进受访者对政策法规的了解,积极影响受访者对普氏原羚的认知(P < 0.01)、保护态度(P < 0.01)和保护意愿(P < 0.01);(3)受访者一致认为自然保护区的严格管理与保护(牧民94.81%,居民96.87%)、当地牧民对普氏原羚的包容与保护(牧民97.40%,居民87.50%)是普氏原羚能够在自然保护区周边生存的主要原因;(4)受访者对普氏原羚的保护态度和意愿均较高,且愿意参与宣传教育(92.91%)和社区共管(87.94%)工作;(5)除了受访者的文化程度、年龄、宗教信仰和家庭年收入的影响,对政策法规的了解及拆除围栏认同度是影响受访者对普氏原羚保护态度和意愿的关键因素(P < 0.01)。因此,建议自然保护区以国家公园建设为契机,加强协调保护与发展的科学研究,深入开展宣传教育,增进社区对自然保护区生物多样性的认识,提升社区共管参与度。     

Anthropology,Politics and the Changing World of Aboriginal Australians

Essentialism has become a fundament of Aboriginal activism in modern Australia, with the result that informed, first-hand empirical observations of anthropologists who chronicle the deterioration of life in many Australian Aboriginal communities tend not to be taken seriously simply because their authors are not ethnically ‘Aboriginal’. This problem has contributed to a relative absence of analysis of the economic history of Aboriginal Australians, fostering instead an approach that prioritises the political and cultural rights of indigenous people above the kinds of life-enhancing circumstances that are necessary for them to participate in the economy and create wealth. This kind of essentialism has also resulted in a disregard for the rights of indigenous people as individuals, rather than as communities seeking self-determination, especially with regard to the rights of women and children. The work of Professor Ronald M. Berndt and Dr Catherine Berndt should serve as an example for today's anthropologists in encouraging broader expert participation in debates on indigenous disadvantage, despite the threat of admonishment or criticism by Aboriginal rights activists wielding the weapon of racial priority or essentialism.