Marriage and the maintenance of ethnic group boundaries: the case of Mauritius

Research on how cognitive and cultural biases shape marital decisions in Mauritius suggests that ethnic endogamy will remain the norm and maintain ethnic group boundaries. Results of a pile sorting exercise of Mauritian university students intimates that preferences for ethnic endogamy are paramount and override class-based considerations. Thus, despite socio-economic stratification within each ethnic group, inter-ethnic marriage is not common. Results from in-depth interviews suggest that individuals and their parents prefer to marry within their ethnic group to ensure that their spouse will abide by ethnically-specific norms and conventions, increasing the chances of coordinating reciprocal exchanges within a marriage. The presence of some inter-ethnic marriage does not weaken the boundaries between groups because children of inter-ethnic marriages tend to take on the ethnic identity and corresponding cultural norms of a single parent as a strategy to better negotiate social relations, and to marry someone of that same ethnicity.     

Creating the conditions for peacemaking: theories of practice in ethnic conflict resolution

Establishing the conditions for effective intergroup peacemaking is a formidable task in severe ethnic conflicts. Conflict resolution practitioners argue that a critical first step is developing preconditions which convince competing groups that there are opponents to whom it is worth talking, that it is possible to create structural changes conducive to a stable peace, and that an agreement is possible which can meet each side's basic concerns and needs. This article compares six theories of practice of ethnic conflict resolution: community relations, principled negotiation; human needs; psychoanalytically rooted identity; intercultural miscommunications and conflict transformation, examining how each understands ethnic conflict; the goals it articulates; the effects of good practice on participants in interventions; the mechanisms by which the project achieves its impact; and the dynamics of transfer affecting the course of a wider conflict. It is argued that clearer articulation of these assumptions will improve both theory and practice in the search for settlements to severe ethnic conflict.     

State and minority in Israel: the case of ethnic state and the predicament of its minority

The connection between ethnicity and democracy has been the subject of much debate among scholars in various disciplines. This article deals with the ethnic divisions and the debate over democracy in Israel. How Israel should be defined, with regard to the democracy-ethnic affiliation nexus, has long been debated by scholars in the field. Some present Israel as a consociational democracy. Some Israeli scholars consider Israel to be a liberal democracy. Others define it as an 'ethnic democracy' that balances the ethnic and democratic components in its dealings with its Arab-Palestinian citizen. In this article I claim that Israel, like many other countries (Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Canada until the sixties, Malaysia) is not a democracy, if our criterion is the ethnic preference it shows for Jews. It is, instead, a textbook example of an ethnic state, applying sophisticated policies of exclusion and discrimination towards the Arab minority. In principle, it invites its Arab citizens to participate in its life; but under no circumstances does it offer them equality. It maintains Jewish superiority in all fields and grants them preference symbolically, structurally and practically.     

The manipulation of ethnicity: from ethnic cooperation to violence and war in Yugoslavia

The story of the failure of bargaining among ethnic élites and of international diplomacy is well known. What has not been well explained is the spread and support for xenophobic nationalism and ethnic violence among people who had lived cooperatively for thirty-five years. I draw on key ideas of four views on ethnicity and ethnic conflict, and add the concept of cognitive frame in ethnic relations. Yugoslavs possessed two ethnic frames in their minds, an ethnic cooperation and peace frame for normal times, and a crisis frame anchored in World War II memories. Élite contention and mass media propaganda awakened the dormant crisis frame, suppressed the normal frame, and spread insecurity and fear. I explain why ethnic manipulation succeeded, people believed falsehoods, voted for nationalists, how moderates were purged and why men in militias killed innocent civilians.     

Between votes and bullets. Conflicting ethnic identities in the Basque Country

With settlement of the Northern Irish conflict, the Basque Country hosts the most threatening nationalist conflict in the European Union. After the breakdown of the ceasefire late in 1999, a return of intensive and indiscriminate ETA violence has provoked a political and social crisis for Basque (and Spanish) society, and, according to all recent opinion polls, the issue of terrorism now ranks first among citizens' worries. This article focuses on the historical origins of the Basque conflict, its evolution during the Francoist dictatorship (1939–75), and the reasons for its continuity in the new political context of democracy. Special attention is paid to the attempt of kick-starting a peace process in 1998, comparison with the Northern Irish experience, and factors which contributed to the collapse of that attempt of peaceful accommodation. Finally, in the light of the most outstanding theoretical approaches towards the explanation of political violence in the Basque Country, several proposals for the necessary rethinking of this problem are presented.     

Robust estimation of microbial diversity in theory and in practice

Quantifying diversity is of central importance for the study of structure, function and evolution of microbial communities. The estimation of microbial diversity has received renewed attention with the advent of large-scale metagenomic studies. Here, we consider what the diversity observed in a sample tells us about the diversity of the community being sampled. First, we argue that one cannot reliably estimate the absolute and relative number of microbial species present in a community without making unsupported assumptions about species abundance distributions. The reason for this is that sample data do not contain information about the number of rare species in the tail of species abundance distributions. We illustrate the difficulty in comparing species richness estimates by applying Chao''s estimator of species richness to a set of in silico communities: they are ranked incorrectly in the presence of large numbers of rare species. Next, we extend our analysis to a general family of diversity metrics (‘Hill diversities''), and construct lower and upper estimates of diversity values consistent with the sample data. The theory generalizes Chao''s estimator, which we retrieve as the lower estimate of species richness. We show that Shannon and Simpson diversity can be robustly estimated for the in silico communities. We analyze nine metagenomic data sets from a wide range of environments, and show that our findings are relevant for empirically-sampled communities. Hence, we recommend the use of Shannon and Simpson diversity rather than species richness in efforts to quantify and compare microbial diversity.     

Warlords,priests and the politics of ethnic cleansing: a case-study from rural Bosnia Hercegovina

There is a tendency among social scientists and others to interpret the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia Hercegovina as the result of a political policy carefully orchestrated from above and systematically carried out. Whatever eruptions of war violence might deviate from this interpretation are generally viewed as primitive balkanism, pointless acts, banditism or mental aberrations. Terms of this kind reflect an uncritical acceptance of a central or national leader perspective, dismissing as deviant everything that fails to go according to plan, and denying the significance of specific local and regional circumstances or failing at any rate to problematize and examine them. This article describes a process the final result of which can be seen as the ethnic homogenization of a region, but only part of its dynamics can be attributed to a policy implemented from above. Rather, its course can largely be traced back to local vendettas and a long-standing conflict between Franciscan friars and diocesan priests. The case illustrates that a systematic study "from below" is crucial to a better understanding of the dynamics and the developmental logic of the processes of ethnic cleansing. The article concludes with some theoretical thoughts which fit into the current debate on civilizing and decivilizing processes.     

Ethnic groups and biological diversity in medieval Spain: analysis of a Jew Necropolis from Sevilla

The skulls and mandibles of adults individuals from a Jewish necropolis of Sevilla (La Buhayra), (V–IX Cent. A.D.) have been analyzed. The results show that Sevillian Jews, both males and females, present narrow skulls with a notable dolichocrany. Sexual differences in both the height of the skull and the mandible robustness have been found. A comparison between Sevillian Jews and other Iberian samples from different epochs (Neolithic-Bronze to Centuries A.D.) has been carried out by means of a principal component analysis taken only into account the variability between groups. Results of the analysis showed a certain degree of biological differentiation between Sevillian and Catalonian Jews (XI–XIVth Centuries A.D.) which can be justified not only by the geographical distance and the temporal gap between the two groups, but also by the intrinsic heterogeneity of Jews (Nathan, 1961a, b; Nathan et al., 1963; Arensburg et al., 1980). The existence of some degree of biological variability between several ethnic-religious groups (Jew, Christians and Moslems) can be detected although they share a common Mediterranean background. Paper presented at the 4^th congress of the European Anthropology Association (Florence, Sept. 1984).     

The ethnic question in an environment of insecurity: the Kurds in Turkey

This article examines the effect that a poor structural context, what we term an "environment of insecurity", has on the Kurdish ethnic nationalist mobilization in Turkey. The empirical evidence for this analysis is based on data from the 1993 Turkish Demographic and Health Survey [TDHS]. The data provide, to the best of our knowledge, the first reliable and representative figures on the situation of Kurds in Turkey. Our key claim is that the Kurdish population in Turkey is relatively much worse off than the Turkish population in the country. This claim is strongly supported by the data. Many other factors also account for the ethnic nationalist mobilization, but we argue that the Turkish Kurds' environment of insecurity, materially and non-materially, stands out as a key package of both causal and intermediate variables behind the ethnic revival.     

Ethnic mobilization and the state: the Roma in Eastern Europe

The political mobilization of marginalized ethnic groups is a process indispensable for the realization of their political objectives. This article identifies the key criteria and conditions that promote and impede successful ethnic mobilization and analyses the determinants of state policy towards newly mobilizing ethnic minorities. The theoretical arguments receive empirical support from the findings of a comparative study of the Romani (Gypsy) minority in seven East European states.     

Towards a unifying approach to diversity measures: bridging the gap between the Shannon entropy and Rao's quadratic index

The diversity of a species assemblage has been studied extensively for many decades in relation to its possible connection with ecosystem functioning and organization. In this view most diversity measures, such as Shannon's entropy, rely upon information theory as a basis for the quantification of diversity. Also, traditional diversity measures are computed using species relative abundances and cannot account for the ecological differences between species. Rao first proposed a diversity index, termed quadratic diversity (Q) that incorporates both species relative abundances and pairwise distances between species. Quadratic diversity is traditionally defined as the expected distance between two randomly selected individuals. In this paper, we show that quadratic diversity can be interpreted as the expected conflict among the species of a given assemblage. From this unusual interpretation, it naturally follows that Rao's Q can be related to the Shannon entropy through a generalized version of the Tsallis parametric entropy.     

Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in three ethnic populations from the South-west Iran: a preliminary study

To investigate the genetic structure of human populations in the South-west region of Iran, mitochondrial first hypervariable DNA sequences were obtained from 50 individuals representing three different ethnic groups from Khuzestan Province. Studied groups were Shushtari Persians and Chahar Lang Bakhtiyaries from Indo-European-speaking populations and Bani Torof Arabs from Semitic-speaking linguistic families. Genetic analysis of mtDNA data showed high similarity of Chahar Lang Bakhtiyaries with other Iranian Indo-European-speaking populations while Shushtaries and Bani Torofs had a closer affinity with Semitic-speaking groups rather than to other Iranian populations. The relationship of Chahar Lang Bakhtiyaries and Bani Torof Arabs with their neighbor populations can be explained by linguistic and geographic proximity. Whereas, the greater similarity of Shushtari Persians with West Asian Arabs is probably according to high gene flow between them. This article represents a preliminary study of three major ethnic groups of South-west Iran which investigates the potential genetic substructure of the region.     

Prejudice and tolerance in a period of increasing ethnic diversity and growing unemployment: Denmark since 1970

Abstract

Since the end of the 1960s Denmark, once an ethnically homogeneous country, has become more heterogeneous as a result of immigration by foreign workers and refugees. The question is how has this development influenced the attitudes in Denmark towards immigrants? The saliency of the immigrant issue has certainly grown, but contrary to expectations, the level of ethnocentrism has changed very little. If anything, the Danish population has become less prejudiced and more tolerant during the last thirty years. This conclusion, based on a number of national surveys, is even more conspicuous as the level of unemployment has increased in the same period.     

The role of the state in the transformation of the nationalist movements of the 1960s: Comparing Wales and Quebec

This article examines the dynamics of ethnicity in Nigeria. It argues that ethnic debates and disputes are not just about the possession of power but also about the morality of power and the empowerment of civil society. Ethnicity is represented as the quest for dominance and the voice of civil society and accountability. The acute mistrusts and fears that condition ethnic conflict are analysed in the context of these rival visions of ethnicity as dominance and resistance.     

Niche and metabolic principles explain patterns of diversity and distribution: theory and a case study with soil bacterial communities

The causes of biodiversity patterns are controversial and elusive due to complex environmental variation, covarying changes in communities, and lack of baseline and null theories to differentiate straightforward causes from more complex mechanisms. To address these limitations, we developed general diversity theory integrating metabolic principles with niche-based community assembly. We evaluated this theory by investigating patterns in the diversity and distribution of soil bacteria taxa across four orders of magnitude variation in spatial scale on an Antarctic mountainside in low complexity, highly oligotrophic soils. Our theory predicts that lower temperatures should reduce taxon niche widths along environmental gradients due to decreasing growth rates, and the changing niche widths should lead to contrasting α- and β-diversity patterns. In accord with the predictions, α-diversity, niche widths and occupancies decreased while β-diversity increased with increasing elevation and decreasing temperature. The theory also successfully predicts a hump-shaped relationship between α-diversity and pH and a negative relationship between α-diversity and salinity. Thus, a few simple principles explained systematic microbial diversity variation along multiple gradients. Such general theory can be used to disentangle baseline effects from more complex effects of temperature and other variables on biodiversity patterns in a variety of ecosystems and organisms.     

Preventing the reintroduction of malaria in Mauritius: a programmatic and financial assessment

Sustaining elimination of malaria in areas with high receptivity and vulnerability will require effective strategies to prevent reestablishment of local transmission, yet there is a dearth of evidence about this phase. Mauritius offers a uniquely informative history, with elimination of local transmission in 1969, re-emergence in 1975, and second elimination in 1998. Towards this end, Mauritius's elimination and prevention of reintroduction (POR) programs were analyzed via a comprehensive review of literature and government documents, supplemented by program observation and interviews with policy makers and program personnel. The impact of the country's most costly intervention, a passenger screening program, was assessed quantitatively using simulation modeling.On average, Mauritius spent $4.43 per capita per year (pcpy) during its second elimination campaign from 1982 to 1988. The country currently spends $2.06 pcpy on its POR program that includes robust surveillance, routine vector control, and prompt and effective treatment and response. Thirty-five percent of POR costs are for a passenger screening program. Modeling suggests that the estimated 14% of imported malaria infections identified by this program reduces the annual risk of indigenous transmission by approximately 2%. Of cases missed by the initial passenger screening program, 49% were estimated to be identified by passive or reactive case detection, leaving an estimated 3.1 unidentified imported infections per 100,000 inhabitants per year.The Mauritius experience indicates that ongoing intervention, strong leadership, and substantial predictable funding are critical to consistently prevent the reestablishment of malaria. Sustained vigilance is critical considering Mauritius's enabling conditions. Although the cost of POR is below that of elimination, annual per capita spending remains at levels that are likely infeasible for countries with lower overall health spending. Countries currently embarking on elimination should quantify and plan for potentially similar POR operations and costs.     

Characterization and Developmental Expression of Lactotriosylceramider: Galactosyltransferase for the Synthesis of Neolactotetraosylceramide in the Nervous System

Abstract: Neolactoglycolipids are derived from neolactotetraosylceramide (nLcOse₄Cer). They are found during the embryonic and neonatal developmental periods in the rat cerebral cortex and disappear shortly after birth. These glycolipids are, however, abundant in the adult cerebellum. Lactotriosylceramide (LcOse₃Cer):galactosyltrans- ferase (GT), which catalyzes the terminal step in the biosynthesis of nLcOse₄Cer, was characterized in mammalian brain. The enzyme was highly specific for LcOse₃Cer, with a terminal GlcNAcβ1 -3Gal-residue, and it did not catalyze the transfer of galactose to other glycolipids studied with alternate carbohydrate residues. The microsomal membrane enzyme required Mn²⁺ and a detergent for in vitro activity. The optimal pH was 7.4, and the K_m value for LcOse₃Cer was 34 μM (V_max=～2 nmol/mg/h). The LcOse₃Cer:GT was shown to be different from the GM2:GT and the soluble enzyme lactose synthase A. The specific activity of LcOse₃Cer:GT was enriched fivefold higher in the white matter than in the gray matter of young adult rat brain, whereas GM2:GT was enriched only about 1.5-fold higher in the white matter. The developmental expression of LcOse₃Cer:GT in the cerebral cortex and cerebellum was not correlative with the levels of nLcOse₄Cer in these neural areas. Despite the complete absence of nLcOse₄Cer in the cerebral cortex of animals older than 5 days, significant activity of the LcOse₃Cer:GT was found even in the adult cortex. In cerebellum, the levels of nLcOse₄Cer increased with development, but the specific activity of the enzyme was reduced by 50% soon after birth and then remained practically the same with development. The results indicate that LcOse₃Cer:GT is not a regulatory enzyme that controls the expression of nLcOse₄Cer and its derived neolactoglycolipids in the brain.