The limitations of ‘inter-racial contact’: stories from young South Africa

This paper argues that, while the demise of apartheid has led to many situations in which South Africans now come into closer contact with one another, this increased ‘contact’ does not amount to greater racial integration. Contact occurs within a context of unequal power relations in which ‘whiteness’ continues to be privileged over ‘blackness’. The result is that white people tend to benefit more from contact with the racial ‘other’ than black people, who often experience this contact as reinforcing their expectations of continued white dominance and privilege. While contact may undermine blatantly racist practices and overt racial conflict, racialized patterns of reasoning continue to exist, often unnoticed and unchallenged. These include the assumption that race is an incontrovertible fact of experience, the privileging of whiteness, the assumption that there exist different (biological) races which evince different forms of social behaviour and that these are essential properties of people rather than being historically or socially contingent.     

What can natural selection explain?

One approach to assess the explanatory power of natural selection is to ask what type of facts it can explain. The standard list of explananda includes facts like trait frequencies or the survival of particular organisms. Here, I argue that this list is incomplete: natural selection can also explain a specific kind of individual-level fact that involves traits. The ability of selection to explain this sort of fact (‘trait facts’) vindicates the explanatory commitments of empirical studies on microevolution. Trait facts must be distinguished from a closely related kind of fact, that is, the fact that a particular individual x has one trait rather than another. Whether or not selection can explain the latter type of fact is highly controversial. According to the so-called ‘Negative View’ it cannot be explained by selection. I defend the Negative View against Nanay’s (2005) objection.     

A levels-of-selection approach to evolutionary individuality

What changes when an evolutionary transition in individuality takes place? Many different answers have been given, in respect of different cases of actual transition, but some have suggested a general answer: that a major transition is a change in the extent to which selection acts at one hierarchical level rather than another. The current paper evaluates some different ways to develop this general answer as a way to characterise the property ‘evolutionary individuality’; and offers a justification of the option taken in Clarke (J Philos 110(8):413–435, 2013)—to define evolutionary individuality in terms of an object’s capacity to undergo selection at its own level. In addition, I suggest a method by which the property can be measured and argue that a problem which is often considered to be fatal to that method—the problem of ‘cross-level by-products’—can be avoided.     

Mechanisms underlying eating-drinking transitions in rats

McFarland (1969) suggested two mechanisms whereby a switch could occur from one activity to another: ‘competition’, which he depicted as a gradual increase in the causal-factor strength (CFS) of activity 2, and ‘disinhibition’, which he depticted as a sudden decrease in the CFS of activity 1. We postulate two further mechanisms: ‘satiation’, depicted as a gradual decrease in the CFS of activity 1, and ‘inhibition’, depicted as a sudden increase in the CFS of activity 2. We suggest that disinhibition may be a less common mechanism of behavioural switching than is usually supposed, and describe three experiments suggesting that eat/drink and drink/eat switches in the rat occur by competition and/or satiation rather than by disinhibition and/or inhibition. In experiment 1, varying degrees of water deprivation were found to affect the timing of eat/drink switches in food-deprived rats; in experiment 2, varying rates of food availability were found to affect the timing of drink/eat switches in water-deprived rats; in experiment 3, drink/eat switches were delayed by allowing rats to ‘drink’ air instead of water.     

The lapsed and the laity: discipline and lenience in the study of religion

This article cautions against an ‘earnest turn’ within the anthropology of religion, pointing up the tendency for anthropologists of religion to over‐emphasize the role of discipline in the construction of the religious subjecthood over mechanisms of leniency and compromise. Taking the Catholic Church as an example, I show how discipline and lenience have been co‐constitutive of Christian subjectivities, as different movements in a gigantic choreography which have spanned and evolved over several centuries. By looking at certain technologies of lenience that have emerged over the course of Catholic history, I trace an alternative genealogy of ‘the Christian self’; one in which institutional growth, power, and survival depended not only upon the formation of disciplined bodies and interior dispositions but also upon a carefully managed division of labour between clergy and laity, as well as upon a battery of legal commutations and practical avoidances aimed at minimizing the effort and pain of the ascetic approach. Taking the concept of ‘lapsedness’ as cue, I ask to what extent the ‘lapsed Catholic’, rather than indexing an ever‐increasing tendency towards secularism, might already be contained and accounted for within Catholicism as a living, evolving form.     

Enskillment inhibited: ‘industrial gardening’ in Britain

Horticulture – like many other traditional crafts in Britain – is said to suffer from a ‘skills problem’. A recent survey suggests that one of the reasons for this is increased outsourcing of horticultural work from public employers to private contractors. While anthropologists have generally acknowledged the politics of learning, they have had little to say about enskillment in work contexts which have been reconfigured in a way that leaves hardly any room for institutionalized methods of learning. Private gardening contractors are an example of such a work context, and in this article I scrutinize their practices to show the various ways in which enskillment is inhibited. Rather than referring to the concept of ‘deskilling’ – usually evoked in discussions of skills problems – I employ the notion of an inhibition of enskillment in order to emphasize that every feature that fosters skill also has a ‘shadow side’ to it which bears a potential to inhibit skill. Implicit in this argument is a critique of neoliberal work practices which shape enskillment as well as the natural environment.     

Mountain summer farms in Røldal,western Norway –; vegetation classification and patterns in species turnover and richness

This paper discusses vegetation types and diversity patterns in relation to environment and land-use at summer farms, a characteristic cultural landscape in the Norwegian mountains. Floristic data (189 taxa) were collected in 130 4-m² sample plots within 12 summer farms in Røldal, western Norway. The study was designed to sample as fully as possible the range of floristic, environmental, and land-use conditions. Vegetation types delimited by two-way indicator species analysis were consistent with results from earlier phytosociological studies. Detrended correspondence analysis and canonical correspondence analysis show that rather than being distinct vegetation types, the major floristic variation is structured along a spatial gradient from summer farm to the surrounding heathland vegetation. Species richness (alpha diversity) was modelled against environmental variables by generalized linear modelling and compositional turnover (beta diversity) by canonical correspondence analysis. Most environmental factors made significant contributions, but the spatial distance-to-farm gradient was the best predictor of both species richness and turnover. While summer farms reduce mean species richness at the plot scale, the compositional heterogeneity of the upland landscapes is increased, thereby creating ‘ecological room’ for additional vegetation types and species. Within an overall similarity across scales, soil variables (pH, base saturation, LOI, phosphate and nitrogen) differed considerably in their explanatory power for richness and turnover. A difference between ‘productivity limiting’ factors and ‘environmental sieves’ is proposed as an explanation. Species turnover with altitude is relatively low in grasslands as compared to heaths.     

Postcoloniality,National Identity,Globalisation and the Simulacra of the Real

The focus of this paper is a famous boys' boarding school in the North Indian city of Dehra Dun. The Doon School was founded in 1935 and was soon hailed by a wide cross section of post-colonial Indian intelligentsia as the site for the production of the ‘modern’ Indian citizen. The discussion below suggests that contemporary social analysis needs to focus on specific sites of the production of the discourses of the nation and citizenship rather than simply announce their dissolution as an ‘inevitable’ by-product of ‘globalisation’; this seems to be the stand taken by certain strands of theorisation in the so-called globalisation debate and in particular versions of cultural studies. I argue that rather than having simply dissolved, the ‘national’ emotion, at least in the Indian context, may have been transformed into the production of ‘post-coloniality’ as a differentiating category to distinguish the ‘progressive’ populations of the nation-state from its ‘backward’ counterparts. I employ Baudrillard's concept of the ‘real’ in order to argue for situated analyses of the contemporary global condition where analyses of the relationship between nation-states and of the asymmetries within them continue to be important political tasks.     

Selection explanations of token traits

The “negative view” is the claim that natural selection cannot explain why a particular individual has one trait, rather than another. Here, I modify an example from Lewens (2001) to show that this claim is sometimes false. I then advance a variation on the negative view. It is the claim that selection at the organism level within a lineage cannot explain why a particular individual in that lineage has one allele, rather than another. This formulation better describes the explanatory role of selection.     

Spencerism and the Causal Theory of Reference

Spencer’s heritage, while almost a forgotten chapter in the history of biology, lives on in psychology and the philosophy of mind. I particularly discuss externalist views of meaning, on which meaning crucially depends on a notion of reference, and ask whether reference should be thought of as cause or effect. Is the meaning of a word explained by what it refers to, or should we say that what we use a word to refer to is explained by what concept it expresses? I argue for the latter view, which I call ‘Darwinian’, and against the former, ‘Spencerian’ one, assuming conceptual structures in humans to be an instance of adaptive structures, and adaptive relations to an environment to be the effect rather than the cause of evolutionary novelties. I conclude with the deficiency – both empirically and methodologically – of a functionalist study of human concepts and the languages they are embedded in, as it would be undertaken in a paradigm that identifies meaning with reference or that gives reference an explanatory role to play for what concepts we have.     

The ethics of efficacy in North India's goonda raj (rule of toughs)

This study of goondas (gangsters or toughs) in North Indian politics comes by way of a comment on intellectual method in the anthropology of moralities. More especially, it offers critical remarks on the recent adoption of ‘virtue’ as the cardinal moral co‐ordinate of human life. Drawing on field research conducted across northern India, we show that when people celebrate goondas as leaders, they do so not because they see in them virtuous men, but because they think them capable of ‘getting things done’. This ethics of efficacy is neither merely instrumental nor is it but another variant of virtue ethics. It presents, instead, an altogether different moral teleology orientated towards effective action rather than excellent character. While challenging the self‐centred bent of the late anthropology of ethics, we also make preliminary remarks on the contrast between ‘moral’ and ‘practical’ judgement, and the limits of ‘the moral’ as such.     

How meiotic cells deal with non-exchange chromosomes

The chromosomes which segregate in anaphase I of meiosis are usually physically bound together through chiasmata. This association is necessary for proper segregation, since univalents sort independently from one another in the first meiotic division and this frequently leads to genetically unbalanced offspring. There are, however, a number of species where genetic exchanges in the form of meiotic cross-overs, the prerequisite of the formation of chiasmata, are routinely missing in one sex or between specific chromosomes. These species nevertheless manage to segregate these non-exchange chromosomes. There are four direct modes for associating achiasmatic chromosomes: (a) modified SC, (b) adhesion of chromatids comparable to somatic pairing, (c) ‘stickiness’ of heterochromatin or (d) specific ‘segregation bodies’, consisting of material structurally different from chromatin. There is also the possibility that the spindlepossibly joining forces with the kinetochores-carries out the faithful segregation of univalents which are not directly physically attached to one another. Finally, amphitelic orientation of univalents in metaphase I and pairing of the chromatids in meiosis II appear to ensure correct segregation as well.     

Genetic variation and the performance of a mass‐reared parasitoid,Trichogramma pretiosum (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae), in laboratory trials

During mass rearing, adaptation of biological control agents to the rearing environment is a potential problem. Using the parasitoid wasp Trichogramma pretiosum, the performance of 26 highly inbred lines, five composite ‘populations’ (created from the inbred lines) and one insectary‐reared population was compared using fertility life tables. Of the composite populations, three were created with maximal and identical genetic variation as a mixture of all 26 inbred lines, but these were then reared for a different number of generations (2, 6 or 17) before their performance was measured. The remaining two composite populations were created based on the performance of the individual inbred lines: one was a combination of two inbred lines with a high intrinsic rate of natural increase (rm), ‘high rm’; and the other was a combination of two lines with a ‘low rm’. High and low rm populations were reared for two generations prior to testing. Parameters measured were fertility, longevity and sex ratio. We found no difference between the maximally variable population reared for two generations and the ‘high rm’ population (rm = 0.285 and 0.282, respectively). ‘Low rm’ was the population with the lower performance (rm = 0.255). Genetically variable population reared for two generations for 48 h produced significantly more offspring than the populations reared for 6 and 17 generations. Hybrid population derived from the high‐rm lines did significantly better than that derived from the low‐rm lines. Low‐performance populations become more male based than high performance at 48 h. The potential benefits to improve population's performance using inbred lines for mass rearing are discussed.     

Mannitol metabolism of the epiphytic mangrove red alga Caloglossa leprieurii (Ceramiales): A long-term field study

The concentrations of mannitol and floridean starch were determined in a 1–year field study of the epiphytic red alga Caloglossa leprieurii (Montagne) J. Agardh from warm temperate waters of eastern Australia. Seasonal environmental data for air and water temperature, day length and rainfall were recorded. The mannitol content and the floridean starch content varied significantly between collections but no seasonal responses were observed, nor were the contents correlated with any of the abiotic factors. A possible function of the starch pool as a supply for respiratory substrates under emergent conditions is discussed. All data indicate that productivity and biomass of C. leprieurii are affected by short-term abiotic and/or biotic conditions rather than controlled directly by seasonally fluctuating environmental factors. In addition, the activity of three highly specific enzymes (mannitol-1–phosphate dehydroge-nase, mannitol-1–phosphatase, mannitol-dehydroge-nase) and one non-specific enzyme (hexokinase), all of which are involved in the mannitol cycle, were measured in cell-free extracts every 2 weeks. All enzymes showed marked changes in activity over the year, but again no clear patterns emerged, neither with season nor in relationship to one another. On the basis of the results here, C. leprieurii is considered to be a 'season responded rather than a ‘season anticipator’.     

Talking Pleasures,Writing Dialects. Outlining Research on Schmecka

This text is written in English so that it may reach an international academic audience. However, if all academic research comes to be outlined in English we are to lose a lot. Here, we argue this by presenting the case of schmecka. Drawing on fieldwork done in the Austrian region of Vorarlberg, we suggest that the word schmecka differs from the factual ‘flavour perception’ investigated in physiology; from the culturally informed ‘sensory experiences’ explored by anthropologists and even from the sociological ‘tasting in practice’. For one, schmecka is shared between modest good food and assembled eaters; two, it draws together the English ‘tasting’ and ‘smelling’; and three, it has positive overtones. This means that using schmecka is not just judicious when writing about ‘others’, here the people of Vorarlberg. It also, more interestingly, allows ‘us’ to write in another way: one that foregrounds valuing rather than facting.     

低温胁迫对水稻幼苗不同叶龄叶片叶绿素荧光特性的影响

以‘蜀恢162’(‘Shuhui 162’)、‘糯89-1’(‘Nuo 89-1’)、‘蜀恢162/糯89-1’(‘Shuhui 162/Nuo 89-1’)、‘奇妙香’(‘Qimiaoxiang’)和早黄矮(‘Zaohuang’ai’)5个水稻(Oryza sativa L.)品种(系)为研究对象,采用叶绿素荧光成像系统研究了低温(4℃)胁迫对水稻3叶期幼苗不同叶龄叶片叶绿素荧光特性的影响。结果表明:经低温胁迫处理后,5个水稻品种(系)幼苗3个叶龄叶片的各叶绿素荧光参数变化有明显差异,其中第一叶的各项参数均降至0。经低温处理后5个水稻品种(系)幼苗3片叶片的PSⅡ最大光化学量子产量(Fv/Fm)均明显小于对照(25℃),其中第一叶的降低幅度最大、第三叶最小。经低温胁迫处理后,5个水稻品种(系)幼苗第三叶的非光化学淬灭系数(qN)均显著大于对照,耐冷性品种‘糯89-1’幼苗第二叶的qN较对照显著增大,而其他水稻品种(系)幼苗第二叶的qN均显著小于对照;‘糯89-1’幼苗第二叶的光化学淬灭系数(qP)较对照略有增大,第三叶的qP显著大于对照;‘早黄矮’幼苗第三叶的qP也大于对照但差异不显著,而其余水稻品种(系)幼苗第二叶和第三叶的qP均显著小于对照。经低温胁迫后5个水稻品种(系)幼苗3片叶片的PSⅡ最大相对电子传递速率(rETRmax)和半饱和光强(Ik)均显著小于对照;除‘糯89-1’幼苗第三叶外,5个水稻品种(系)幼苗3片叶片的快速光响应曲线初始斜率(α)也均显著小于对照,总体上第一叶的rETRmax、Ik和α下降幅度最大、第三叶最小。研究结果揭示:受低温胁迫后,叶片自身生理差异是导致水稻幼苗不同叶龄叶片受伤害程度不同的主要因素。     

Trubs,but no trianas: filled and empty regions of angiosperm stem length‐diameter‐mechanics space

Discrete plant habit categories such as ‘tree’, ‘shrub’, and ‘liana’ belie continuous variation in nature. To study the evolution of this continuous variation, we gathered data on stem length, diameter and tissue mechanical stiffness across a highly morphologically diverse highland xerophytic scrub on a lava flow in central Mexico. With stem allometric and mechanical data from 1216 segments from 50 species, we examined relationships between stem length–diameter proportions and tissue mechanical stiffness using linear mixed‐effects models. Rather than a series of discrete clouds in stem length–diameter–tissue stiffness space, corresponding to traditional habit categories, the plants of this xerophytic scrub formed a single continuous one. Within this cloud, self‐supporting plants had stems that became predictably longer and tissues that became stiffer for a given diameter increase, and there was no paucity of intermediates between trees and shrubs (‘trubs’). Non self‐supporting plants had a steeper stem length–diameter slope and their tissues did not increase in stiffness with stem size. The area between self‐ and non self‐supporting plants was sparsely occupied as stem size increased. We predict that this ‘empty’ space between lianas and trees is developmentally accessible but of low fitness, meaning that there should be few ‘trianas’ in nature. © 2015 The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2015, 179 , 361–373.     

Temporal correspondence of intracranial,cochlear and scalp-recorded human auditory nerve action potentials

Conventional, vertex-ipsilateral ear records (‘A’), as well as 3-channel Lissajous' trajectories (3-CLTs) of auditory brain-stem evoked potentials (ABEPs) were recorded from the scalp simultaneously with tympanic membrane electrocochleograms (‘TME’) and auditory nerve compound action potentials (‘8-AP’) recorded intracranially using a wick electrode on the auditory nerve between the internal auditory meatus and the brain-stem. The recordings were made during surgical procedures exposing the auditory nerve.The peak latency recorded from ‘TME’ corresponded to trajectory amplitude peak ‘a’ of 3-LLT and to peak ‘I’ of the ‘A’ channel ABEP. Peak latency of ‘8-AP’ was slightly longer than the latency of peak ‘II’ of ‘A’ when ‘8-AP’ was recorded from the root entry zone and the same or shorter when recorded from the nerve trunk. ‘8-AP’ peak latency was shorter than trajectory amplitude peak ‘b’ of 3-CLT regardless of where the wick electrode was along the nerve. Peak latencies from all recordings sites clustered into two distinct groups—those that included N1 from ‘TME’, peak ‘I’ of the ‘A’ record and trajectory amplitude peak ‘a’ of 3-CLT, and those that included the negative peak of ‘8-AP’ and trajectory amplitude peak ‘b’ of 3-CLT, as well as peak ‘II’ of the ‘A’ record, when present. In one case, the latency of peak ‘II’ and trajectory amplitude peak ‘b’ was manipulated by changing the conductive properties of the medium surrounding the auditory nerve.These results are consistent with other evidence proposing: (1) the most distal (cochlear) portion of the auditory nerve is the generator of the first ABEP component (‘I’, ‘a’); (2) the proximal auditory nerve is the major contributor to the ‘A’ channel ABEP component ‘II’; (3) in addition to the auditory nerve, more central structures participate in the generation of the 3-CLT ‘b’ component.     

The wedding of two trees: connections,equivalences, and subjunctivity in a Tamil ritual

A wedding between two trees in a Tamil village reveals that a tree can be more than, while still remaining, a tree. It needs to be a tree because trees do certain things. It can be made more than a tree, however, through a logic of homological connections which temporarily create equivalences between trees and divinities. The wedding (kalyanam), a ubiquitous Tamil ritual form which pertains not only to marriage, creatively and subjunctively opens up new possibilities to change ‘it could be’ and ‘it should be’ to ‘let it be so’. The wedding of two trees seeks to materialize ideal situations and outcomes by mobilizing the aliveness of trees, a quality they share with humans and animals, without positing personhood, identity, or confusing categories. In making this argument, I question choices of comparators in anthropological analyses which posit a holistic ‘non-West’ against a dualistic ‘West’ and contrast a taken-for-granted ‘us’ with ‘our’ really rather different ‘others’.