Visual aspects of perception of multimedia messages on the web through the "eye tracker" method

Since the dawn of civilisation visual communication played a role in everyday life. In the early times there were simply shaped drawings of animals, pictograms explaining hunting tactics or strategies of attacking the enemies. Through evolution visual expression becomes an important component of communication process on several levels, from the existential and economic level to the artistic level. However, there was always a question of the level of user reception of such visual information in the medium transmitting the information. Does physical positioning of information in the medium contribute to the efficiency of the message? Do the same rules of content positioning apply for traditional (offline) and online media (Internet)? Rapid development of information technology and Internet in almost all segments of contemporary life calls for defining the rules of designing and positioning multimedia online contents on web sites. Recent research indicates beyond doubt that the physical positioning of an online content on a web site significantly determines the quality of user's perception of such content. By employing the "Eye tracking" method it is possible to objectively analyse the level of user perception of a multimedia content on a web site. What is the first thing observed by the user after opening the web site and how does he/she visually search the online content? By which methods can this be investigated subjectively and objectively? How can the survey results be used to improve the creation of web sites and to optimise the positioning of relevant contents on the site? The answers to these questions will significantly improve the presentation of multimedia interactive contents on the Web.     

History and future of visual anthropology

Visual recording of communication processes between communities or individuals by means of filming of photographing is of significant importance in anthropology, as it documents on site the specific features of various social communities in their encounter with the researcher. In terms of film industry, it is a sort of ethno-documentary pursuing originality and objectivity in recording the given subject, thus fulfilling the research mission. However, the potential of visual anthropology significantly exceeds the mere audiovisual recording of ethnologic realities. Modern methods of analysing and evaluating the role of visual anthropology suggest that it is a technical research service aimed at documenting the status quo. If the direction of proactive approach were taken, then the term ,visual anthropology' could be changed to ,anthropology of the visual,. This apparently cosmetic change of name is actually significantly more accurate, suggesting the denoted proactive swift in perceiving visual anthropology, where visual methods are employed to ,provoke< the reaction of an individual or of the community. In this way the "anthropology of the visual, is promoted to a new scientific sub-anthropological discipline.     

Guidelines for the structure of methodological processes in visual anthropology

Vast majority of visual anthropologists of the 20th century were more focused on general phenomenology of visual anthropology, i.e. the content aspect of their works and their impact on scientific knowledge, leaving behind style of directing and practical principles & processes of creating anthropological film. So far, judging by the available literature, there are no strict guidelines for directorial procedures, nor the precise definition of determining of the methodical processes in production of an anthropological film. Consequently, the goal of this study is to determine the structure and forms of methodical processes as well as to define the advantages and disadvantages of each of them. By using adequate guidelines, the researcher, i.e. the author of the anthropological film, can optimize the production and post-production processes as soon as in preparation (preproduction) period of working on the film, by the technical choice of the approach to the production (proactive/reactive/subjective/objective...) and by defining the style of directing. In other words, it ultimately means more relevant scientific research result with less time and resources.     

Epilogue — Demography and anthropology

As a conclusion, this paper reviews briefly the content of the volume. The wealth of demographic data has not been adequately exploited in anthropology; this is why this publication is valuable in showing attempts to apply demographic data in a variety of anthropological problems. This symposium has explored many interesting points which we recall here. Yet it has also opened up a whole range of further questions on the material presented as well as in this broad field. Several directions of research could be developed, for instance, testing among human populations, over long periods, the ecological thoughts of ecosystems evolving as a cascade of instabilities, rather than a succession of equilibrium states. Let us also recall the pervasive nature of demographic facts in topics such as the energy cycle or the genetic structure and evolution of human populations.     

Toward a Marxian anthropology? Bare,abstract, mobile,global

Anthropology has conventionally taken as some of its most cherished foundational categories the precise opposites of the key concepts that animate this inquiry: rather than “bare life,” anthropology has tended always to emphasize the fullness and complexity of social and political life; instead of labor in the abstract, which we recognize in its commodified form as “labor-power,” anthropology has produced exquisite inventories of concrete laboring activities and the “cultural” content of productive work; against the impermanence and mutability of lives characterized by their mobility, the ethnographic enterprise has been deeply attached to the sedentarist presuppositions of lasting settlement, dwelling, and “community”; and contrary to the task of apprehending space on a global scale, ethnographic study has been overwhelmingly localized and place-bound. Rethinking these elementary premises of the ethnographic endeavor and situating these critical concepts at the center of our epistemological frameworks are crucial theoretical and practical tasks for any meaningful social inquiry today. In this regard, the Marxian theoretical arsenal is simply indispensable. But, in the derisive words of so many disciplinary forebears and overseers, is this properly “anthropological”? The prospective convergence of genuinely critical sociopolitical inquiry with the techniques and insights of anthropology must remain for us the locus of an urgent problem—an open question on an open horizon.     

Strange distance: towards an anthropology of interior dialogue

The capacity for a complex inner life--encompassing inner speech, imaginative reverie, and unarticulated moods--is an essential feature of living with illness and a principal means through which people interpret, understand, and manage their condition. Nevertheless, anthropology lacks a generally accepted theory or methodological framework for understanding how interiority relates to people's public actions and expressions. Moreover, as conventional social-scientific methods are often too static to understand the fluidity of perception among people living with illness or bodily instability, I argue we need to develop new, practical approaches to knowing. By placing the problem of interiority directly into the field and turning it into an ethnographic, practice-based question to be addressed through fieldwork in collaboration with informants, this article works alongside women living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda with the aim of capturing the unvoiced but sometimes radical changes in being, belief, and perception that accompany terminal illness.     

The reality of anthropology

The article concerns the continuity between anthropology and the reality it studies. Discovery and definition merge. This is substantiated by a discussion of ‘events’ and ‘worlds’. While the anthropologist becomes her own informant in the field, in the sense that her experience informs her ethnography, anthropology simultaneously shapes her discoveries. This simultaneity ultimately dissolves the distinction between subject and object, and from this point anthropology may recondition the conditions of science.     

The Tsimane Health and Life History Project: Integrating anthropology and biomedicine

The Tsimane Health and Life History Project, an integrated bio‐behavioral study of the human life course, is designed to test competing hypotheses of human life‐history evolution. One aim is to understand the bidirectional connections between life history and social behavior in a high‐fertility, kin‐based context lacking amenities of modern urban life (e.g. sanitation, banks, electricity). Another aim is to understand how a high pathogen burden influences health and well‐being during development and adulthood. A third aim addresses how modernization shapes human life histories and sociality. Here we outline the project's goals, history, and main findings since its inception in 2002. We reflect on the implications of current findings and highlight the need for more coordinated ethnographic and biomedical study of contemporary nonindustrial populations to address broad questions that can situate evolutionary anthropology in a key position within the social and life sciences.     

Changes in Visuospatial Perception in Emotional Pathology

In patients with maniacal-depressive disease, peculiarities of perception of sizes of horizontal lines and of depth of space as well as of reflection of space in drawings were studied. It was shown the maniacal state to be characterized by underestimation of distant object sizes and by preference of remote space field; this was manifested as moving objects away from an observer, i.e., overestimation of distances at depth perception and using an exaggerative linear perspective in drawings. The depressive state was characterized by overestimation of sizes of distant object or by constancy of their perception and by preference of the near space field; this was manifested as approaching objects to an observer, i.e., underestimation of the distances at depth perception and using an inverse perspective in drawings. The data obtained confirm the hypothesis that distortion of perception of space is based on a shift of balance of the interhemispheric activity.     

Looking at physiological anthropology from a historical standpoint

As one way of thinking about physiological anthropology, let us survey it from a historical viewpoint. At the beginning of the 19th century, Blumenbach, considered the father of Physical Anthropology, wrote his "Handbook of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology." The subsequent research conducted and papers written by researchers such as Broca and Martin pointed in the direction of physiological anthropology; furthermore, the research carried out by the American researchers Demon and Baker had a physiological anthropology "feel." The courses in Physiological Anthropology taught by Tokizane exerted a major influence on physiological anthropology in Japan. The precursor of the Japan Society of Physiological Anthropology, organized by Sato in 1978, was extremely significant in the effect that it had on the subsequent development of physiological anthropology. The holding of the biennial International Congress of Physiological Anthropology, along with the allocation of the Research sub-field of Physiological Anthropology in the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, would seem to suggest that the field of physiological anthropology is set to increasingly grow and evolve.     

Categories and gatherings: Group selection and the mythology of cultural anthropology

If the term “group selection” is to have any meaning beyond mere semantics, it must refer to situations where individuals live in groups. Although the terminology of cultural anthropology suggests that humans live in bounded and enduring gatherings that might serve as group “vehicles” of selection, we argue that none of the terms asserted to be such an entity (i.e., clans, lineages, villages, bands, tribes, populations, societies, and cultures) fulfill this requirement. This is because these terms refer to: (1) reified abstractions, (2) groups only in the sense of categories of people instead of groups in the sense of people gathered together, or (3) gatherings that are much too fluid and fuzzy in their membership to be “vehicles.” Following Murdock (1972), we refer to this obsession with groups as “anthropology's mythology,” and we suggest that it is the result of our evolved capacity for categorical perception. Although classifying phenomena into categories is useful in many situations, it has hindered our understanding of human social organization and human evolution.     

Family therapy and anthropology

There has been among family therapists a widespread belief that anthropology is at least useful if not kindred to their field. The belief springs from the assumption that families in different cultural milieus have different ways of expressing their experience of intimacy in everyday life. If this is true, family organization transcends culture, and the latter is a mere language or mode of expression of the more basic pillar of family organization. However, the assumption is also strong that different cultural contexts produce different types of families, and the natural consequence of this hypothesis is that family therapy as developed in the United States would be restricted to dealing with American families, while the problems of family life elsewhere should be meted by the local cultural ways. These two hypotheses, namely that of family universality and that of cultural relativism, are far ends of a continuum. The more interesting and real cases lie somewhere in the middle.In the following argument I will discuss this subject by presenting a brief overview of family therapy's theories and practices for those readers who know nothing about it, by reviewing a recent book that makes the claim that family therapists will benefit from some kind of anthropological knowledge, and finally by turning the question on its head and addressing the interest family therapy may have for anthropologists.     

Two Explanations of Evolutionary Progress

Natural selection explains how living forms are fitted to theirconditions of life. Darwin argued that selection also explains what hecalled the gradual advancement of the organisation, i.e.evolutionary progress. Present-day selectionists disagree. In theirview, it is happenstance that sustains conditions favorable to progress,and therefore happenstance, not selection, that explains progress. Iargue that the disagreement here turns not on whether there exists aselection-based condition bias – a belief now attributed to Darwin – but on whether there needs to be such a bias for selection to count as explaining progress. In Darwin's own view, selection explained progressso far as more complex organisms have the selective advantage whenselection operates unimpeded. I show that these two explanations ofevolutionary progress, selection and happenstance, answer for theirobjectivity to different standards, and for their truth or falsehood todifferent features of the world.     

Toward conservational anthropology: addressing anthropocentric bias in anthropology

Anthropological literature addressing conservation and development often blames ‘conservationists’ as being neo-imperialist in their attempts to institute limits to commercial activities by imposing their post-materialist eco-ideology. The author argues that this view of conservationists is ironic in light of the fact that the very notion of ‘development’ is arguably an imposition of the (Western) elites. The anthropocentric bias in anthropology also permeates constructivist ethnographies of human–animal ‘interactions,’ which tend to emphasize the socio-cultural complexity and interconnectivity rather than the unequal and often extractive nature of this ‘interaction.’ Anthropocentrism is argued to be counteractive to reconciling conservationists’ efforts at environmental protection with the traditional ontologies of the interdependency of human-nature relationship.     

Physical anthropology and ethnicity in Asia: the transition from anthropometry to genome-based studies

Initial physical anthropology studies into ethnic diversity were largely dependent on comparative whole body and craniometric measurements, and through time assessments of ethnic diversity based on these measures exhibited increasing statistical sophistication. Since the 1990s, in Asia as elsewhere in the world, human diversity studies have increasingly utilized DNA-based analyses, with Y-chromosome and mtDNA markers providing complementary perspectives on the origins and gene pool structures of different ethnic groups. This approach is illustrated in a study of population genetic structure in PR China, in which DNA samples from the Han majority and eight ethnic minorities were analyzed. The Y-chromosome and mtDNA data showed multiple paternal geographical and ethnic origins but restricted maternal ancestries. However, interpretive problems were apparent in the definition of a number of the ethnic study populations, which appear to reflect political as well as genetic influences. In all anthropological studies, whether based on anthropometry or genomic analysis, unambiguous and appropriate community identification is a prerequisite.     

A sensory approach for multispecies anthropology

This special issue suggests that the need to examine the entangled lives of species, selves and other beings through a multisensory perspective is crucial and timely. Developing on a sensory analysis, one that emerges through what Anna Tsing refers to as the ‘arts of noticing’ (2015), this introductory paper explores how both nonhuman and human lives are intertwined, and how their close examination can guide anthropologists in their ability to capture the subtleties of more‐than‐human engagement, connection and relatedness. Through articles within this issue from Australian anthropology and beyond, we ask how becoming‐with more‐than‐humans helps us to construct a post‐humanist analysis in the combination of sensory anthropology and multispecies anthropology. Through a combination of these two fields, the paper suggests, anthropology can take up the opportunity to think about animals as subjects, through our ability to communicate beyond language and to engage in a more meaningful way through interspecies knowledge‐making.     

Forensic social anthropology: an Australian perspective

If forensic physical anthropology is the science of biological processes and related medico-legal investigations, then forensic social anthropology is the science of cultural processes and related socio-legal investigations. This article lays out the terms, definitions, and application of forensic specialization in social anthropology as it is practised in Australia. The objective of this exercise is to equip both physical and social anthropologists with a consilient model for the joint engagement of their parent discipline in legal proceedings where cultural processes are deemed relevant by a court or other legally empowered body. As demonstrated in Australia, the potential applications of forensic social anthropology range across a variety of matters involving both civil and criminal investigation. Such matters include systematic land expropriation, child removal, forced population movement, modern-day slavery, unlawful detention, and other important social phenomena. The questionable legality of these kinds of phenomena is not isolated to Australia but is, rather, of international significance.