Identities in conflict: The Aboriginal question and the politics of recognition in Quebec

The will to have one's own particular identity universally acknowledged and respected is now one of the most significant determinants of the sociopolitical dynamic of contemporary modern societies. However, the actual recognition of difference is more often than not an unsatisfactory and disappointing experience for many of the groups and communities striving for that recognition. The recent experience of Canadian Aboriginal peoples is a case in point. This article looks at the struggle of Aboriginal nations for recognition in one particular region of Canada, the province of Quebec. Indeed, Quebec offers a revealing case‐study of the peculiarities of the politics of recognition. For over three decades now, the French‐speaking majority of Quebec has striven to assert its ethnocultural distinctiveness and laid claims to a special status within the Canadian political and constitutional framework. Today, both Quebecers and Aboriginals are recognition seekers within the Canadian polity. As a result, their relationship is inevitably marked by their respective but competing attempt to draw the attention of the Canadian state to their particular identity claims. In recent years, this has led to a highly conflictual dynamic which considerably strains any hope of social and cultural coexistence. The article examines the particularities of the politics of recognition in the Quebec context. Its objective is twofold. First, it should serve to shed some light on the manifestations of Aboriginal ethnonationalism in Canada. Secondly, it seeks to illustrate the limitations and paradoxical nature of the politics of recognition within a liberal framework.     

Rewards and the evolution of cooperation in public good games

Properly coordinating cooperation is relevant for resolving public good problems, such as clean energy and environmental protection. However, little is known about how individuals can coordinate themselves for a certain level of cooperation in large populations of strangers. In a typical situation, a consensus-building process rarely succeeds, owing to a lack of face and standing. The evolution of cooperation in this type of situation is studied here using threshold public good games, in which cooperation prevails when it is initially sufficient, or otherwise it perishes. While punishment is a powerful tool for shaping human behaviours, institutional punishment is often too costly to start with only a few contributors, which is another coordination problem. Here, we show that whatever the initial conditions, reward funds based on voluntary contribution can evolve. The voluntary reward paves the way for effectively overcoming the coordination problem and efficiently transforms freeloaders into cooperators with a perceived small risk of collective failure.     

Ethnic minority identity and movement politics: The case of the Roma in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

The level of political mobilization among ethnic minorities in Central and Eastern Europe has often been regarded as directly dependent on the strong or weak ethnic identity of the groups involved. Less attention has gone to the role of ethnic leaders in creating ethnic group identities for political purposes. This article explores the influence of political mobilization on ethnic group formation in the case of the Roma (Gypsies) in the contemporary Czech and Slovak Republics. It examines the various ways in which Romani activists in these two countries have “framed” Romani identity. The article suggests that activists’ conceptions of Romani identity are closely tied to their political strategies. At the same time, Romani activists have not been able to gain complete control over the production of Romani identity. They have had to deal with powerful schemes of ethnic categorization promulgated by the media, public officials and policy documents.     

Bacterial contamination on touch surfaces in the public transport system and in public areas of a hospital in London

Aims:  To investigate bacterial contamination on hand-touch surfaces in the public transport system and in public areas of a hospital in central London.
Methods and Results:  Dipslides were used to sample 118 hand-touch surfaces in buses, trains, stations, hotels and public areas of a hospital in central London. Total aerobic counts were determined, and Staphylococcus aureus isolates were identified and characterized. Bacteria were cultured from 112 (95%) of sites at a median concentration of 12 CFU cm⁻². Methicillin-susceptible Staph. aureus (MSSA) was cultured from nine (8%) of sites; no sites grew methicillin-resistant Staph. aureus (MRSA).
Conclusions:  Hand-touch sites in London are frequently contaminated with bacteria and can harbour MSSA, but none of the sites tested were contaminated with MRSA.
Significance and Impact of the Study:  Hand-touch sites can become contaminated with staphylococci and may be fomites for the transmission of bacteria between humans. Such sites could provide a reservoir for community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA) in high prevalence areas but were not present in London, a geographical area with a low incidence of CA-MRSA.     

Making (mixed-)race: census politics and the emergence of multiracial multiculturalism in the United States,Great Britain and Canada

Abstract

During the same time period, the United States, Great Britain and Canada all moved towards ‘counting’ mixed-race on their national censuses. In the United States, this move is largely attributed to the existence of a mixed-race social movement that pushed Congress for the change – but similar developments in Canada and Britain occurred without the presence of a politically active civil society devoted to making the change. Why the convergence? This article argues that demographic trends, increasingly unsettled perceptions about discrete racial categories, and a transnational norm surrounding the primacy of racial self-identification in census-taking culminated in a normative shift towards multiracial multiculturalism. Therein, mixed-race identities are acknowledged as part of – rather than problematic within – diverse societies. These elements enabled mixed-race to be promoted, at times strategically, as a corollary of multiculturalism in these three countries.     

The western psychic as diviner: Experience and the politics of perception

Divination has been a well‐studied subject in the field of anthropology. Yet diviners within Western societies have been curiously ignored. Van Dijk's and Pels’ (1996) concept of the ‘politics of perception’ is discussed as a means of under‐standing why this is the case. Redressing this gap, I study the practices and experiences of an American psychic. This ethnographic material helps to move us beyond the patient‐client dialogue to address the internal processes of the diviners themselves. The reflexive exegesis of Elizabeth, an American diviner, reveals the spontaneous, visual nature of her practice and also highlights the role of the senses and emotions in divination. Other examples of sensory experience, such as in cases of blindness, show that those senses deemed lower down’ in the hierarchy of perception can be accurate modes of gaining knowledge of the world.     

The odour of things: Smell and the cultural elaboration of disgust in Eastern Indonesia

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of calls for anthropology to devote more attention to non‐visual modes of perception. Frequently, the implicit suggestion of these calls has been that the acknowledgement of different ways of organising the senses could help us escape the supposed malaise of modern ‘ocular‐centrism ‘. This paper explores the sense and symbolism of smell in Buli, a village in eastern Indonesia, to argue that smell is part of an ontology that catches Buli people in a malaise of their own. ‘Bad’ smell attests to an ambiguous moral order that can be traced across myth, ritual and everyday life. Ambiguity is ever‐present because ‘bad’ or disgusting smells destabilise the very conceptual order they also help support. The analysis of smells as they relate to local notions of disgust is therefore suggested as an alternative way to conceptualise the contradictory nature of power.     

Resolving the tragedy of the commons: the feedback between intraspecific conflict and population density

Competition and conflict among individuals can favour exploitative strategies that undermine the common good. Theory suggests that this can lead to a tragedy of the commons and ultimately population extinction, a phenomenon known as evolutionary suicide. Here, I present a model of the evolutionary tragedy of the commons that explicitly considers the population dynamics where individuals invest in individually costly competitive traits. In the simplest form, this supports the notion that selection for high levels of conflict can cause evolutionary suicide. However, as competition comes with survival and fecundity costs, a feedback between the investment in competition and population density can act to reduce the level of conflict and prevent the population from going extinct. This suggests that the interaction between population ecology and the evolution of competition and conflict among individuals may be an important mechanism in resolving the level of competition and conflict among individuals.     

Living krill, zooplankton and experimental investigations: a discourse on the role of krill and their experimental study in marine ecology

Krill occupy critical positions in a many marine ecosystems and have been the subject of a number of concerted studies yet there are large areas of their biology that still remain a mystery. Most species of krill are open ocean animals, which makes direct observation and sampling difficult. Krill also exhibit a number of physiological and behavioural attributes which frustrate attempts to understand their life history. Krill are conceptually difficult to come to terms with; they are obviously different from larger marine organisms such as squid, fish, whales and fish yet they are also quite distinct from those animals classed as zooplankton such as copepods. Despite these differences they have most often been grouped with zooplankton and have been studied using techniques developed for animals which are orders of magnitude smaller than they. This mismatch has affected our view of their interactions with the physical world and also affects their perceived trophic interactions. Their size and mobility also interferes with our ability to sample them effectively and thus to develop our appreciation of their true role in the marine ecosystem. Understanding how intermediate-sized animals, such as krill, function in aquatic ecosystem is critical to better management of the marine environment.     

Living krill,zooplankton and experimental investigations: a discourse on the role of krill and their experimental study in marine ecology

Krill occupy critical positions in a many marine ecosystems and have been the subject of a number of concerted studies yet there are large areas of their biology that still remain a mystery. Most species of krill are open ocean animals, which makes direct observation and sampling difficult. Krill also exhibit a number of physiological and behavioural attributes which frustrate attempts to understand their life history. Krill are conceptually difficult to come to terms with; they are obviously different from larger marine organisms such as squid, fish, whales and fish yet they are also quite distinct from those animals classed as zooplankton such as copepods. Despite these differences they have most often been grouped with zooplankton and have been studied using techniques developed for animals which are orders of magnitude smaller than they. This mismatch has affected our view of their interactions with the physical world and also affects their perceived trophic interactions. Their size and mobility also interferes with our ability to sample them effectively and thus to develop our appreciation of their true role in the marine ecosystem. Understanding how intermediate-sized animals, such as krill, function in aquatic ecosystem is critical to better management of the marine environment.     

Beyond expertise: Ecological science and the making of socially robust restoration strategies

A distinctive feature of ecological restoration is that the human presence in the natural landscape can be perceived as beneficial and not necessarily as harmful. Consequently, negotiations between heterogeneous actors involved and reactions to developments in different ecosystems become part of the scientific practice of restoration. This paper discusses some implications of restoration practice for the science of ecology in connection with recent debates about a new mode of knowledge production in science. I illustrate how different types of expertise from several backgrounds can be fed into each step of restoration implementation via alternate phases of selection and of corroboration by use to expose it to further observation in order to develop more scientifically and socially robust restoration strategies.     

Risks and benefits of sun exposure: implications for public health practice based on the Australian experience

Over recent years, evidence has been accumulating that vitamin D has a positive impact on our overall health. This may have an impact on the future of our public health advice related to skin cancer prevention. This paper explores, from a public health perspective based on Australian experience, how skin cancer prevention messages should be managed in light of new information about vitamin D and, in particular, the times when sun protection advice should be provided and how the vitamin D message can be complementary to the sun protection message.     

Philosophy of science, policy sciences and the basis of decision support with LCA Based on the toxicity controversy in Sweden and the Netherlands

Current LCA implicitly assumes that a single rational truth can be found. Mainstream policy sciences has taken a different starting point when analysing decision making in complex and controversial societal debates for already several decades. In such debates, in general, more than one reasonable conceptualisation or ‘framing’ of the problem is at stake which forms the core of the controversy. This paper analyses the Dutch chlorine debate and the Swedish PVC debate and shows that (three) frames also play a role in toxicity controversies: the risk assessment frame, the strict control frame, and the precautionary frame. The latter frame, adhered to by the environmentalists, seeks to judge substances mainly on their inherent safety. The cases show that this logic may be defended as at least being equally reasonable to the emission-effect calculations that form the core of Risk Assessment and Life-cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). As predicted by policy sciences, this finding implies that the political neutrality of tools like LCIA is questionable. In summary, the approaches and procedures developed for LCA have to be reconciled with key lessons from policy science and philosophy of science, i.e. considering the fact that multiple realities play a key role in many decision making processes. This paper suggests some alternative indicators for toxicity evaluations, and indicates the implications of LCA method development.     

The Lateral Hypothalamic Area: Peculiarities of Aging and the Effect of Chronic Electrical Stimulation on the Lifespan in Rats

Age-related morphological and functional changes in the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) were studied in experiments on young adult (6-8 months) and old (26-28 months) male Wistar rats. It was found that during aging the neuronal density in the LHA decreased, and significant qualitative destructive and dystrophic changes in the neuronal population developed. The background impulse activity of LHA neuronal units, the mass background electrical activity recorded from this structure, and the Na⁺, K⁺-ATPase activity decreased during aging. In old rats, the rate of LHA self-stimulation was lower, and the range of reinforcing current amplitudes, which provided self-stimulation intensity close to the maximum, was narrower than in adult animals. Chronic electrical LHA stimulation in old rats ensured an increase in the lifespan and maximum life expectancy in these animals. In addition, the lifespan positively correlated with the duration of LHA stimulation. It is concluded that lowering of the functional activity of the LHA neural systems is one of the substantial aspects of the aging process, and activation of this structure in old animals by its chronic electrical stimulation can exert a geroprotective effect.