Structural and Narrative Reconstruction of Rural Residents’ Representations of ‘Nature’, ‘Wildlife’, and ‘Landscape’

The objective of this paper is the structural and narrative reconstruction of representations of ‘nature’, ‘wildlife’ and ‘landscape’, held by rural residents of the Dadia Forest Reserve. Data collection involved in-depth interviews. Employing a social representations’ approach, we recovered representational elements that are expected in the case of rural belief systems, such as negative dispositions towards wolves and foxes, as well as elements of an urban adherence, such as nature’s independence. Representational elements refer to visual aspects of the countryside, which seem compatible with the figurative nucleus of the rural idyll. Concerning ‘wildlife’, residents focused on vultures, which comprise the main tourist attraction of the reserve. Scientific knowledge adds to the complexity of the narrative schema, which corresponds to the representation of ‘wildlife’. Interviewees perceived the rural landscape as an interface between the natural and the human-conditioned environment. Our study shows that interviewees make no reference to environmental conservation or quality of life issues, as it could be expected according to relatively wide definitions of the term ‘environmentalism’. Environmental messages reinforced by ecotourism development seem to be recalled primarily in terms of their compatibility with the perceived economic benefit of local people. Despite ecotourism development, representational elements that diverge from a tourist version of ‘nature’, ‘wildlife’ and ‘landscape’ were not pronounced within rural belief-systems. Further interventions within the study area are needed, in order to address a variety of topics under the environmental conservation discourse and raise the environmental awareness of rural residents.     

From ‘Norwegian citizens’ via ‘citizens plus’ to ‘dual political membership’? Status,aspirations, and challenges ahead

The Norwegian citizenship regime has gradually changed to accommodate some of the demands voiced by or on behalf of the Sami. This article describes and analyses these changes in terms of changing citizenship status for the Sami as a gradual move from ‘Norwegian citizens’ via ‘citizens plus’ to ‘dual citizens’. Sami who are registered in the electoral roster for elections to the Sami Parliament possess political rights connected to two different political systems in Norway: one with membership based on territoriality, the other with membership based on descent. The author argues that the ‘people-to-people’ approach that currently seems to guide Sami aspirations for the political future ignores the condition of dual political membership and is thus ill-suited as a point of departure for discussions of the desirable scope of the future constitutional space of the Sami Parliament in Norway.     

Local Environmental Knowledge,Talk, and Skepticism: Using ‘LES’ to Distinguish ‘LEK’ from ‘LET’ in Newfoundland

The actual evidence observed in studies of LEK (local environmental knowledge) is nearly always talk about the environment, or what we refer to as LET (local environmental talk), with the claim of studying LEK usually being built upon the implicit assumption that talk about the environment is the expression of knowledge about the environment. We suggest that it is critically important for researchers to question this assumption, especially when the distinction between LET and LEK is also emphasized by local people themselves. In the case we present here, residents of small fishing villages on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland are routinely skeptical about what other local residents say about the environment; that is, they engage in LES (local environmental skepticism). We suggest that paying explicit attention to LES can help distinguish LEK from LET.     

Morphology, severity, and distribution of growth anomalies in the coral, Montipora capitata, at Wai‘ōpae, Hawai‘i

This study investigated the morphology, severity, and distribution of growth anomalies (GAs) in the coral, Montipora capitata, from Wai‘ōpae tide pools, southeast Hawai‘i Island. A macro-image analysis of skeletal microstructure placed GAs into two definable categories; Type A and Type B. Type A GAs had polyp density reduced by 43.05 ± 0.80% (mean ± SE) compared to healthy M. capitata tissue, with many fused and protrusive tuberculae. Type B GAs had no discernable polyps or calices and fused protuberant coenosteum. The prevalence of Type A and Type B GAs among all M. capitata colonies (n = 1,093) in 8 tide pools at Wai‘ōpae was 22.1% (range 2.8–33.7%) and 8.2% (range 0.0–16.9%), respectively. The proportion of colony surface area occupied by GA (relative GA cover) was quantified to assess the severity of this disease among all surveyed colonies. The relative GA cover was significantly greater on colonies larger than 1 m in diameter than smaller colonies and in the central portion of colonies than in the periphery. Furthermore, relative GA cover was negatively related to water motion (R ² = 0.748, P < 0.01). Developing field diagnostic criteria of M. capitata GA allowed for a detailed epizootiological assessment that determined several cofactors associated with disease severity. Such epizootiological analysis is applicable to future studies of GAs elsewhere.     

‘Race’, community and ongoing conflict

This review explores Rex and Moore's (1967) study of Birmingham as an enduring model of ethnic segregation, stratification, conflict and cooperation. The commentary focuses on the legacy of this research for understanding ethnic segregation, community and the city as a barometer of social change.     

‘Mental’ in ‘southie’: Individual,family, and community responses to psychosis in South Boston

The deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients is a deeply cultural as well as political task. It entails the sharing of responsibility for human distress with family and community. Consequently, the locus of social control has also shifted from psychiatric and medical expertise to community and legal institutions. Diagnosis and treatment models must be more compatible with lay explanatory models. This paper explores the various meanings of going mental and being mental in the white, working class, ethnic neighborhood of South Boston. The data are extracted from a study of the impact of deinstitutionalization on a cohort of middle-aged, psychiatric patients discharged from Boston State Hospital in the attempt to return them to community living. Individual, family, and community responses to, and interpretations of, the symptoms of mental distress are discussed. The study indicates that even seriously disturbed individuals are sensitive to cultural meanings and social cues regarding the perception, expression, and content of psychiatric episodes. While madness invariably disenfranchises, it does not necessarily deculturate the individual.     

Differences between migrasome,a ‘new organelle’, and exosome

The migrasome is a new organelle discovered by Professor Yu Li in 2015. When cells migrate, the membranous organelles that appear at the end of the retraction fibres are migrasomes. With the migration of cells, the retraction fibres which connect migrasomes and cells finally break. The migrasomes detach from the cell and are released into the extracellular space or directly absorbed by the recipient cell. The cytoplasmic contents are first transported to the migrasome and then released from the cell through the migrasome. This release mechanism, which depends on cell migration, is named ‘migracytosis’. The main components of the migrasome are extracellular vesicles after they leave the cell, which are easy to remind people of the current hot topic of exosomes. Exosomes are extracellular vesicles wrapped by the lipid bimolecular layer. With extensive research, exosomes have solved many disease problems. This review summarizes the differences between migrasomes and exosomes in size, composition, property and function, extraction method and regulation mechanism for generation and release. At the same time, it also prospects for the current hotspot of migrasomes, hoping to provide literature support for further research on the generation and release mechanism of migrasomes and their clinical application in the future.     

Unemployment,deindustrialization, and ‘community economy’ in eastern Germany

Drawing from an evening of fieldwork at an eastern German Protestant churchin the rapidly deindustrialized city of Leipzig, this article finalyzes a discussion among church leaders, former ‘dissidents,’ and unemployed workers on the subject of ‘community economy’ (Gemeinschaftsökonomie), a concept people interpret to represent a potential solution to the crisis of mass unemployment. Such local debates on unemployment offer a frame for understanding the re-negotiation of labor and social welfare in eastern Germany following socialism's end. finalyzing this discussion within the context of theoretical debates on ‘civil society,’ I follow Burawoy's and Gramsci's lead in fillustrating that the imagined economic sphere of ‘community economy’ is an ideological battle ground, where hegemonic discourse supporting economic neoliberalism may be either reinforced or subverted.     

Contesting the ‘model minority’: racialization,youth culture and ‘British Chinese’/‘Oriental’ nights

While racialized youth are often central in debates on citizenship, multiculturalism and belonging, those ascribed as ‘British Chinese’ are constructed as model minorities, lacking a hybridized culture but insulated from racism, and thus invisible in these discussions. This article argues, however, that the model minority discourse is itself a specific form of contemporary racialization that revives ‘yellow peril’ discourses on the capacities of particular ‘Oriental’ bodies. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it examines how young people challenge these constructions, by drawing on popular culture to organize and participate in what they call ‘British Chinese’ and, more provocatively, ‘Oriental’ nightlife spaces. It analyses how through these spaces participants forge a sense of identity that allows them to reimagine themselves as racialized subjects. It demonstrates how these spaces constitute transient sites of experimental belonging, facilitating new cultural politics and social identifications that at once contest reified conceptions of British Chineseness yet also create new exclusions.     

Are the oldest ‘fossils’, fossils?

A comparative statistical study has been carried out on populations of modern algae, of Precambrian algal microfossils, of the organized elements of the Orgueil carbonaceous meteorite, and of the oldest microfossil-like objects now known (spheroidal bodies from the Fig Tree and Onverwacht Groups of the Swaziland Supergroup, South Africa). The distribution patterns exhibited by the >3000 m.y.-old Swaziland microstructures bear considerable resemblance to those of the abiotic organized elements but rather markedly differ from those exhibited by younger, assuredly biogenic, populations. Based on these comparisons it is concluded that the Swaziland spheroids could be, at least in part, of non-biologic origin; these oldest known fossil-like micro-structures should not be regarded as constituting firm evidence of Archean life.Given at the International Seminar Origin of Life, 2–7 August 1974, Moscow, U.S.S.R.     

Bdelloid rotifers: ‘sleeping beauties’ and ‘evolutionary scandals’, but not only

Bdelloid rotifers are mostly known for two peculiarities, continuous parthenogenetic reproduction and dormancy in response to habitat desiccation, a phenomenon named anhydrobiosis. These uncommon traits earned them the names of ‘evolutionary scandals’ and ‘sleeping beauties’, respectively. Relevant aspects of bdelloid biology have recently been described that connect parthenogenesis to anhydrobiosis and that might account for their evolutionary survival in spite of the conservative reproduction. In the present study, I explore recent literature, in the attempt to disentangle the apparent incongruency between the apomictic reproduction and the presumed long-term evolutionary survival of bdelloid species. Recent results remarkably improved our knowledge of bdelloid population biology, genetics, and molecular biology. The most relevant findings concern (i) acquisition of foreign genes through horizontal transfer, (ii) presence of divergent sequences possibly corresponding to ancient gene duplications and (iii) capacity to escape parasites: events that appear to be connected with dormancy. I also address the results of recent studies on the relationships between bdelloids and other rotifers, including acanthocephalans, in an attempt to highlight similarities and differences that should be clarified to better understand phylogenetic relationship among the Rotifera sensu lato.

     

‘After the break’: re-conceptualizing ethnicity,national identity and ‘Malaysian-Chinese’ identities

Focusing on ethnic Chinese as cultural citizens of the nation, this paper examines national identity in the context of generational change. In so doing, it connects to colonialist conceptions of identity the dominant framework of ethnicity that operates in Malaysia. It argues that this framework allows for the nationalist imagining of ‘Malaysian-Chinese’ as ‘outsiders’. In probing the complex conceptual relationship between ethnicity, national identity and cultural citizenship, this article asks: How does ‘ethnicity’ enter into negotiations over the ‘national’ in the cultural realm? What are the notions of cultural difference and national otherness that operate in the negative dualisms by which nation and ethnicity are defined? How are these dualisms tied to notions of authenticity and cultural citizenship? Using the novel The Harmony Silk Factory by Malaysian author Tash Aw to address these questions, this paper argues the need to rethink current policies and narratives of ethnic and national identity in Malaysia.     

‘Islamophobia never stands still’: race,religion, and culture

Abstract

Islamophobia bundles religious, ethnic and cultural prejudices together even though a narrow definition of the term flags religion as playing the central part. Calls for decoupling religion from ethnicity and culture appear justifiable: religions are increasingly disconnected from the cultures in which they have been embedded. But established political discourse infrequently makes such distinctions and may go further to racialize cultural and religious attributes of non-Europeans through essentialist framing. Islamophobia becomes a cryptic articulation of race and racism even if overtly it appears as religiously-based prejudice. Islam has been culturalized and racialized by its adherents and antagonists alike. Survey data on attitudes towards Muslims confirm such framing: the most common grounds given for experiencing discrimination was race or ethnic origin; religion and belief system were cited less often. Racialization, race and differential racism have become more endemic to Islamophobesã stigmatizing of Muslims, but to categorize Islamophobes as racists is bad politics.     

Sociologists,Archbishops, and ‘making a verb of a noun’

ABSTRACT

Contemporary discussion about race has a tendency to set off out without first checking the rear view mirror. In Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives, in contrast, Murji and Solomos identify what has and has not been covered, and so appeal at the outset for a ‘more sustained’ account of changing research agendas of race and ethnic relations. Taken as a whole, the collection allows the editors to contemplate ‘what factors explain the mobilizing power of ideas about race and ethnicity in the contemporary environment?' and whether indeed ‘it is the “real” rather than race that should be placed in quotation marks’.     

‘Steps’ to Agency: Gregory Bateson,Perception, and Biosemantics

Gregory Bateson was welcomed into Biosemiotics as one of its precursors along with C. S. Peirce and Jacob von Uexküll He certainly endorsed Peirce pragmatic concern with learning as an essential characteristic of mammalian life, and also endorsed von Uexküll’s notion that the fundamental unit of animate existence is organism plus econiche. But he was at odds both with the subjectivism and with the cognitivism that connects Peirce to von Uexküll. Bateson rests his case on information theory which, he believes replaces many metaphysical notions that were the background to Peirce and von Uexküll’s approaches to ‘meaning.’ His idea of cybernetic ‘feedback’ in information circuits or networks yields a new understanding of recursiveness. Yet biofeedback in mammalian interaction had to be wrestled away from technical cybernetics and its thermodynamic rules about information, for the latter payed no attention to ‘meaning’ (“Bioentropy” section). Of the contrasts between Peirce and Bateson, the most significant is that Bateson regards ‘difference’ as primary to perception, while Peirce is concerned with continuity as primary from perception to cognition. This contrast is at the heart of Bateson’s Korzybski Lecture (see “On the Title of ‘Steps’” section), and shows how ‘difference’ in Learning develops orders and levels (see “Memory and Learning” section) leading to different categories of learning. With regard to perception, Bateson argues that the processes of perception do not bind perception to conscious awareness in any exclusive sense. Further, patterns of perception are not bounded by the skin for they include all external pathways along which information can travel. This recursive activity develops ‘agency’ (“Perception and Consciousness” section). We are ourselves interact with living mental ‘things’ but interactions with animate ‘creatura,’ is not the same as the objective interactions we purse in measuring inanimate material ‘things’ (pleroma) (“How Bioentropy Informs Bateson’s Notions of Pleroma and Creatura ” section). The grasping of context in communicative interaction, for example, is unique to creatura (“Context in Recursive Communication” section). Recognition of ‘difference’ occurs through communicative interactions and is meta-physical (without dimension). The pattern of interaction is the ‘thing,’ and ostensive aspects of communication are contextual, inclusive of all ‘external’ aspects vital for interpretation of ‘signals’ between initiators and responders to messages. Towards the end of his life, Bateson’s concerns with non-human conditions of ‘meaning’ and ‘mind’ in nature, resulted in his dropping several of the Peirce’s conditions of semiosis, as he looks at ‘meaning’ without language. He rests his method the propositional order of Peirce’s abduction rather than the latter’s full array of abduction, induction and deduction. Bateson is supported by the Biosemantics of Ruth Millikan, this paper will argue, who also believes that the derivation of meaning in animals through natural signs requires the stripping away of any ‘meaning rationalism’ (“Meaning Rationalism” section). Together they provide joint conclusions about as sign use in the ecosystems of creatura (“Conclusion” section).     

How can we meet ‘the demands of the day’? Producing an affective,reflexive, interpretive,public sociology of ‘race’

This article argues for a public sociology of ‘race’ that can respond to Weber's injunction that sociology should ‘meet the demands of the day’. While the author's version of these demands – for a society of autonomous individuals and groups, living as equals – is utopian, the main argument offered here is that a sociology of ‘race’ should be a modified version of Burawoy's ‘public sociology’. Adopting Bauman's notion of a sociology of interpreters, a further suggestion is that this type of sociology needs to be reflexive and affective. Based on an analysis of his own sociological education in the late 1960s, his participation in social and political movements in which ‘race’ was key, and with brief reference to the sociology of ‘race’, the author argues that the emotions that circulated in each arena need to be examined, acknowledged and incorporated if theoretical and practical progress is to be made.     

Sexual mores,promiscuity and ‘prostitution’ in Botswana

In Botswana there is a large, and increasing, number of women who do not marry but have one or several lovers simultaneously and have gifts from these menas an importantpart of their income. It is argued that the processual and practical character of traditional marriages, combined with weak social institutions, provides those who wish the basis on which to legitimise such informal sexual relationships. Such practices represent a new sexual morality, whose conditions are further explained by treating the term ‘prostitution’ in a comparative perspective. Tensions arise from the new constellation of sexual mores, generating fundamental social changes — most notably substantial economic transfers from men to women, loss of male power, and changing gendered identities. Lastly, the practices described are discussed in relation to the AIDS epidemic.