The Role of Gender in Public Perception of Whether Animals Can Experience Grief and Other Emotions

Gender plays a significant role in influencing people's attitudes toward animals, however, little is known about how it influences their attribution of emotions to animals. To investigate the role that gender plays in public attitudes toward animals' experience of emotions and beliefs about whether animals can grieve, a face-to-face survey of 1,000 members of the general public was carried out in Brisbane, Australia. Potential respondents were asked to complete a 10-min “social attitudinal” survey. Males were significantly less likely than females to believe that animals experience complex emotions, including depression (p < 0.05), anxiety (p < 0.05), love (p < 0.01), and grief (p < 0.05), but did not differ in regard to basic emotions including distress, fear, happiness, anger, sadness, and fear. Males were also less likely to believe that animals show some behavioral (eating p < 0.05; vocalizing p < 0.01) changes when they experience grief (p < 0.05) and that animals grieve as a result of separation from a conspecific (p < 0.005). These results demonstrate a greater skepticism in males, compared with females, regarding the attribution of emotions to animals.     

Violence,solace, and ritual: A case study from Island Southeast Asia

Most headhunting traditions in island Southeast Asia link ritual violence to grief and mourning. Some of the more persuasive analyses of these practices pivot on notions of rage and catharsis, arguing that turbulent emotions motivate persons to take up cleansing acts of violence. This paper seeks a more complex understanding of how ritual may connect bereavement and violence through a look at case materials from highland Sulawesi (Indonesia). Ritual practices there suggestthat the resolution of communal mourning is more significant than personal catharsis in motivating violence; that individual affect is refigured collectively as political affect; and that varied discursive forms, such as vows, songs, and noise mediate the ways in which people put grief behind them and resume their lives. Indeed, such discursive forms appear to be generative sites for violence and solace.     

Transnational politics and the politics of the Russian diaspora

This article sketches out a conceptual framework for exploring the diasporic politics of the Russians in the post-Soviet borderlands. Specific consideration is given to the Russians within Estonia and Latvia, the only two postSoviet states not to grant automatic citizenship to all those resident within their sovereign spaces in 1991. The essay not only examines the Russians in relation to the homeland regimes or nationalizing states in which they are located but also looks at the role of transnational political actors- specifically, the state patron (Russia) and Western transnational political institutions (notably the OSCE)- in shaping diasporic politics. It is argued that by examining the relationships among 'the ethnic patron', 'the West' and 'nationalizing state', we are better placed to understand the ways in which the differing representations of homeland by the Russian minorities themselves are being reconstituted as part of a diverse and unravelling community of identity politics, limited political opportunities and survival strategies.     

A Sheep Herder's Rage: Silence and Grief in Contemporary Mongolia

This paper explores the role of silence in contemporary rural Mongolia's mourning practices. It shows how silence may come as a response to the expression of extreme grief, when the mourner's behaviour goes beyond the frame of conventional mourning practices. Analysing the collective responses to a man's expression of extreme grief, this paper argues that mourning practices might not always be intended to make death meaningful: faced with the rage provoked by some particularly unbearable losses, there might be nothing else to do than to say nothing, do nothing, and give up on meaning.     

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.     

Human Grief Resulting from the Death of a Pet

Abstract

This study investigated antecedents of the human grief response which was associated with the death of a pet cat or dog. The sample included 207 voluntary subjects who experienced this type of loss within a one-year time period prior to participating in the study. Data for the predictor variables were obtained from two validated instruments and a questionnaire developed by the author. Data for grief outcome were obtained from another validated instrument on three clinical and three validity scales. The results indicated that level of attachment to the deceased pet, perceived understanding from others and other stressful events combined to have significant predictive ability in grief outcome. Other analyses indicated qualitative differences in grief outcome according to gender of owner and the presence of children and/or more than one other adult in the household. No significant difference was found between single and multiple pet ownership in grief outcome.     

Eugenist politics in the United States of America in the first xxth half-century

The United-States were the first country which had devised eugenist politics. The applications of theories had taken place as far as the end of the 1960's. They were placed one's reliance on two points: on the one hand, immigration's limitation and on the other hand an obligatory sterilisation of criminels and feebleminde people.     

Beyond co-ethnicity: the politics of differentiating and integrating new immigrants in Singapore

This essay joins the ongoing debates about the role of co-ethnic ties in the making of diaspora identity by examining Singaporean Chinese perceptions of new immigrants from the mainland and the state's strategies in integrating the newcomers. The public discourses on new Chinese immigrants have produced three interlinked narratives: (1) newcomers are socially and culturally different from the mainstream and earlier immigrants; (2) newcomers have intensified the competition for scarce resources; and (3) newcomers are politically attached to China, whose rise as a global power only serves to reinforce such linkages. I argue that co-ethnicity and common cultural heritage play little role in shaping local Singaporeans' view of the new diaspora; instead, political pragmatism and new identity politics that prioritize the nation above ethnicity are the key factors influencing public attitudes and policy options regarding new immigrants. Furthermore, intra-diaspora differences/conflicts have reinforced interracial solidarity and contributed to the nation-building project.     

Emotions and the intergenerational embodiment of social suffering in rural Bolivia

In this article, I take the embodied manifestations of distress across generations as the lens from which to illustrate the subtle articulations between the political restructuring of the Bolivian state and the private anxieties women experience under enduring political and economic instability. Emotions such as rage and sorrow generated by economic hardship, domestic violence, and social conflict played a fundamental role in how market- and working-class women perceived not only their own health problems but also many of the health problems that affected their infants. Mother's bodies and emotions are seen as the vectors through which gestating babies and breastfeeding infants develop transient and enduring ailments and debility.     

Improving the politics of biotechnological innovations in food security and other sustainable development goals

The unwarranted interference of some environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) in decision-making over genetically modified (GM) crops has prompted calls for politics to be removed from the regulatory governance of these products. However, regulatory systems are inevitably political because their purpose is to decide whether the use of particular products will help or hinder the delivery of public policy objectives. ENGOs are most able to interfere in regulatory decision-making when policy objectives and decision-making criteria are vague, making the process vulnerable to disruption by organisations that have a distinct agenda. Making regulatory decision-making about GM crops and other green biotechnology more resistant to interference therefore requires better politics not the removal of politics. Better politics begins with political leadership making a case for green biotechnology in achieving food security and other sustainable development goals. Such a policy must involve making political choices and cannot be outsourced to science. Other aspects of better politics include regulatory reform to set policy aims and decision-making criteria that encourage innovation as well as control risk, and engagement with civil society that discusses the values behind attitudes to the application of green biotechnology. In short, green biotechnology for sustainable development needs better politics to counter well-organised opposition, to encourage innovation, and to build the trust of civil society for these policies. Removing politics from regulatory governance would be a gift to ENGOs that are opposed to the use of biotechnology.

     

Religion,ethnicity and politics: Hindu and Muslim Indian immigrants in the United States

This article focuses on the political struggles between Hindu and Muslim Indian immigrant groups in the United States over the definition of "Indianness". Hindu Indian American organizations define India as a Hindu society and are strong supporters of the Hindu nationalist movement in India. Muslim Indian American organizations, on the other hand, view India as a multi-religious and multicultural society. They are striving to safeguard India's secularism and towards this end, have entered into coalitional relationships with lower caste groups. Both types of organizations are working to influence American and Indian politics in line with their respective interests, leading to an exacerbation of the conflict between the two immigrant groups. This article examines the reasons for this development and its implications, both for the development of an Indian American community in the United States and for religion and politics in India.     

The Correlates of Grief after Death of Pet

ABSTRACT

The correlates of degree of grief after death of dogs and cats were determined. With both animals, retrospectively reported grief was associated with present death depression and positive attitude toward pets. Grief after the death of a dog was associated with living alone at the time of death, higher death depression, and female gender. Grief after the death of a cat was associated with higher death depression, female gender, and was inversely correlated with the person's age at the time of the pet's death. These psychological and psychosocial variables were more associated with pet grief than behavioral variables such as amount of time spent with the pet.     

Sex,gender, and pharmaceutical politics: From drug development to marketing

Background: Biological sex differences and sociocultural gender norms affect the provision of health care products and services, but there has been little explicit analysis of the impact of sex differences and gender norms on the regulation of pharmaceutical development and marketing.Objectives: This article provides an overview of the regulation of pharmaceuticals and examines the ways that regulatory agencies account for sex and gender in their review of scientific data and marketing materials.Methods: The primary focus is on the US context, but information is also included about regulatory models in Europe, Canada, and Japan for comparative purposes. Specific examples show how sex differences and gender norms influence scientific and policy decisions about pharmaceuticals.Results: The United States and Canada were found to be the only countries that have explicit requirements to include women in clinical trials and to perform sex-based subgroup analysis on study results. The potential influence of politics on regulatory decisions may have led to an uneven application of standards, as seen through the examples of mifepristone (for abortion) and sildenafil citrate (for erectile dysfunction). Three detailed case studies illustrate the importance of considering sex and gender in pharmaceutical development and marketing: Phase I clinical trials; human papillomavirus quadrivalent vaccine; and tegaserod, a drug for irritable bowel syndrome.Conclusions: Sex and gender play important roles in pharmaceutical regulation, from the design of clinical trials and the approval of new drugs to advertising and postmarketing surveillance. However, regulatory agencies pay insufficient attention to both biological sex differences and sociocultural gender norms. This disregard perpetuates inequalities by ignoring drug safety problems that predominate in women and by allowing misleading drug marketing that reinforces gender stereotypes. Recommendations have been made to improve the regulation of pharmaceuticals in regard to sex and gender.     

Aboriginal youth,hip hop and the politics of identification

This paper explores the identity work taking place around contemporary subcultural hip hop amongst Australian indigenous youth in two disadvantaged urban locations. Previous work on Aboriginal hip hop has been attentive to the interface between tradition and modernity. However, existing scholarship has lacked a deeper ethnographic understanding of the dynamics between youth and parent cultures, and the tensions between the two generations. This article is based on research with young hip hop enthusiasts, community activists and educators. It deals with the cultural politics of identification and sees hip hop practice as associated with a process in which Aboriginality is crystallized as a principal affiliation and as offering an account for experiences of social marginalization. Far from being an outlet for expressing a prior or essential Aboriginality, hip hop as cultural practice is associated with the production of particular identifications.     

Racial regimes,comparative politics,and the problem of judgment

This review essay examines the practice of judgment that characterized the subfield of comparative politics from its origins in openly racist ideas of the capacity for self-rule through to its twentieth-century behavioralist and positivist iterations. Though continually faced with new political phenomena that called into question its inherited criteria of judgment, comparative politics tended to practice determinative rather than reflective judgment, that is, to subsume the particulars of other cultures under known rules. Further, the essay examines the racialized conception of self-rule described by Michael Hanchard as embedded in a larger problem of Western political thinking: the flight from action into rule and tendency to think of politics wholly in terms of ruling and being ruled.     

An evolutionary approach to grief-related rumination: Construction and validation of the Bereavement Analytical Rumination Questionnaire

There has been little evolutionarily oriented empirical research on the intense, repetitive thoughts—ruminations—that often occur during grief. We used evolutionary theory to develop a new instrument for evaluating grief-related rumination titled the Bereavement Analytical Rumination Questionnaire (BARQ) operationalized by two dimensions: root cause analysis (RCA), the analysis of the cause of the loss; and reinvestment analysis (RIA), the analysis of how to reinvest time and effort in meaningful (presumably fitness enhancing) activities. We administered the BARQ to a sample of people seeking help for grief from non-profit organizations (619 completers) and tested several evolutionary predictions about grief-related rumination. The sample had several signs of severe grief, making it clinically relevant (sleep disturbances, chronicity, psychotropic drug use). Rumination was higher among antidepressant users, suggesting that rumination is related to depression. We also found evidence that grief-related rumination is modulated by circumstances (e.g., type of loss, age and gender of the participant, age of the deceased, traumatic death), which suggests adaptive regulation. Our most important results are consistent with inclusive fitness theory. Specifically, the pattern suggests that as people grow older, they spend less time ruminating about the causes of direct fitness losses (the loss of their own children), and they spend more time ruminating about the causes of indirect fitness losses (e.g., the loss of young non-parental, non-offspring relatives). We also found a sex or gender difference in grief-related rumination that is consistent with other evidence that women have a greater impact on the survival of close relatives (particularly, children and grandchildren), as well as evidence that women have more to lose with the loss of a close social partner. Overall, we found little support for the hypothesis that grief-related rumination is disordered.     

The spatial distribution of asymmetry coefficients of the brain bioelectric activity while experiencing negative emotions

Statistically significant differences were revealed in the spatial distribution of the asymmetry coefficients in the brain bioelectrical activity for different negative emotions. In case of the asthenic emotion (anger) the asymmetry coefficients in the beta-2 band were positive and greater in the frontal part of the brain as compared to the background. When the subjects experienced (imagined) the asthenic emotion (grief), the asymmetry coefficients were negative in the beta-1 band and a generalized growth of slow-wave activity was observed.     

Black politics and social change in Birmingham,UK: An analysis of recent trends

Over the past two decades the racialization of key aspects of British political life has become apparent both locally and nationally. This article seeks to examine the dynamics of this process by analysing the changing patterns of racial politics in Birmingham, UK. It addresses two main issues. First, the process through which ethnic minorities have mobilized in the context of local politics. Second, the responses of political parties to racial and ethnic questions within Birmingham. At a broader level the article utilizes the case study of Birmingham to illustrate how constructions of race need to be located within particular discursive fields.     

My Reflections on Understanding Animal Emotions for Improving the Life of Animals in Zoos

ABSTRACT

Scientists are often reluctant to attribute emotions to nonhuman animals that are similar to human emotions. When the author published her early studies, reviewers prohibited the word fear. Fearful behavior had to be described as agitated. The core emotional systems described by Panksepp may provide a useful framework for people who work hands-on with animals. The core systems are fear, rage, panic (separation distress), seek, lust, nurture, and play. Some scientists who deny that animals have real emotions often fail to review important areas of the literature. The areas that are sometimes left out are the effects of psychiatric medications on animals and genetic influences on differences in animal behavior. In both people and animals, genetics has an influence on both fearfulness and novelty seeking. Visualizing the seven core emotional systems as separate volume controls on a music mixing board may help zoo professionals determine the motivation of both normal and abnormal behavior. It may also help them to design more effective environmental enrichments.     

Essay review: Science and politics in the nineteenth century

Essay review: Science and politics in the nineteenth century