Asthma episodes: stigma, children, and Hollywood films

Asthma has been systematically stigmatized in Hollywood feature films, including films seen by children. Through content analysis of 66 movies containing one or more scenes showing asthma, and through informant interviews with a dozen U.S. children about representative scenes, the study explores how stigmatizing portrayals are interpreted, accepted, or resisted. Children suffering from asthma actively counterargued with incriminating excerpts, but in some respects their healthy friends were less critical. Overall, children viewed stigmatizing scenes in terms of the social interaction and the social ethics entailed. They did not scrutinize the characters for damaged selfhood, per se, but dwelled on the social processes out of which stigma is erected.     

Hollywood and the Travelogue

Although documentary films, in formats such as the travelogue-expedition film, are rarely considered as a basis for insight into the Hollywood cinema, the early 1930s provide one historical period during which travelogues produced by independent filmmakers achieved such public popularity that the Hollywood studios were forced to respond. Studios produced some feature-length documentaries themselves, began distributing others, and generated "hybrid" films, such as M-G-M's Trader Horn [1931], that demonstrate a surprising willingness to give up the priority of narrative for the advantage of providing audiences with digressive documentary interludes devoted to the spectacle of exotic cultures, landscapes and wildlife.     

Diagrammatic Icons and Historical Processes in Belau

In this paper I analyze the relationship between diagrammatic representations of social relations and historical processes in Belau (formerly Palau), Micronesia. Four diagrams, linear paths, balanced sides, quadripartition, and graded series, are discussed in terms of their lexical labels, schematic arrangements, prototypical embodiments, and semantic fields. Ethnographic and historical examples presented reveal the differential historical vulnerability of social institutions modeled by these diagrams. The use of Peirce's typology of signs is demonstrated to be an important corrective to the structuralist notion of transformation.     

Forest and Demons in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

The Wola people of the Southern Highland Province of Papua New Guinea believe that two kinds of demon spirit inhabit the montane forests of their region. They call them saem and iybtit. When people are attacked by these frightening creatures, they are injured or fall sick, and may die; their relatives perform rituals to drive the demons away and promote their recovery. The attitude of the Wola towards demon spirits expresses something of their ambivalent and enigmatic attitudes towards the forest that covers large areas of their region. They are neither innate conservationists nor reckless destroyers of forest, but something more equivocal, an antipathetic combination of both.     

Demons in Eden. The paradox of plant diversity

Jonathan Slilvertown is a natural communicator; he uses hisskills very effectively in this book. He tackles this interestingparadox in an approachable manner: if natural selection favoursabove all the individual that produces the most offspring (thepotential Darwinian ‘Demon’), why isn't the planetcolonized by that species alone? Why do we have such a wealthof plant diversity? But this is not primarily an accessibleaccount of academic principles. The author shows how we arecoming close to destroying the natural life-support system providedby the diversity of plant life, and what we need to do to     

Barrels XXIX: Barrels go Hollywood

Barrels XXIX brought together researchers focusing on the rodent barrel cortex and associated systems. The meeting revolved around three themes: thalamocortical interactions in motor control, touch in rodent, monkey, and humans, and the nature of the multisensory computations the brain makes. Over two days these topics were covered as well as many more presentations that focused on the physiology, behavior, and development of the rodent whisker-to-barrel cortex system.     

In Darkest Hollywood: Cinema and Apartheid/In Darkest Hollywood: Exploring the Jungles of South Africa's Cinema

In Darkest Hollywood: Cinema and Apartheid. 1993. 112 minutes, color. video by Daniel Riesenfeld and Peter Davis. For more information contact Nightingale Films, 5214 N. Lakewood Ave. Chicago, IL 60640.
In Darkest Hollywood: Exploring the Jungles of South Africa's Cinema. Peter Davis. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996.214 pp.     

Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New

Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New. Daniel T. Reff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 290 pp.