The National Struggle Museums of a divided city

The article compares the two National Struggle Museums situated on either side of Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus. Their differences, it is suggested, reflect the differences of Greek and Turkish nationalism while their similarities are an outcome of their sharing the same form of historical representation: the past as a narrative of national struggle. The structural similarities of the two museums are thus utilized in order to highlight the specific ‘syntax’ of narratives of national struggle, as well as to discuss some of their implications for multi‐ethnic states in which the past is primarily conceptualized in this way. It is suggested that the notion of the nation as an ‘imagined community’ should be supplemented by a notion of the nation as the central actor and moral centre of a historical narrative that gives meaning to the past and indicates future orientations.     

Schizophrenia,Narrative and Change: Andalusian Care Homes as Novel Sociocultural Context

This study explores qualitative changes in the life narratives of persons diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia who were receiving recovery treatment in special care homes in Andalusia, Spain. These narratives are related to patients’ construction of social identity and the recovery process. Initially, 10 narrative interviews were performed. The first five patients (Group 1) had lived at the homes for only 3 months, while the other five (Group 2) had been there for 61.4 months. Two years after the initial interviews, three patients from Group 1 were interviewed once more. The qualitative analysis focuses on two topics: experience of illness and personal relationships. Long-stay patients create their identities by using more categories related to relationships and make fewer references to illness than Group 1 subjects. They also make fewer delusive or hallucinatory utterances, and their narratives have more elements that can be shared in the community than Group 1 narratives. Moreover, long-stay patients show significant language resources and greater capacity for agency. Results suggest that special care homes provide important emotional support and a rich, new network. These results are related to the sociocultural characteristics of special care homes and suggest that the analysis of life narratives could be a very useful instrument for assessing the recovery process.

Nation-building,masculinity and entrepreneurship: memories of the “liberation of Kosovo” in Switzerland

Since the end of the Kosovo War in 1999 and the “liberation” of the territory from Serbian forces, narratives about the “freedom struggle” have been crafted and defended both in Kosovo and abroad. The transmission of these memories forms part of a broader effort to create a “national” history of Kosovo and constitute an “Albanian imagined community”. This article scrutinizes the memories of the “liberation” produced by Albanian-speaking migrants who were active on behalf of their homeland in Switzerland. It explores the construction of masculinities within narratives collected via oral history interviews. In line with the literature on “nation” and gender in Kosovo, this research acknowledges the presence of two main forms of masculinity: the “heroic fighter” and the “pacifist”. However, it also demonstrates the crystallization of the “entrepreneur”, an alternative type who integrates the transnational “neoliberal” discourses and proposes a more positive image of “Albanian men” in Switzerland.     

May I be a sacrifice for my grandchildren—transgenerational transmission and women’s narratives of the Yezidi ferman

This paper addresses the (post)-memories of the generations of offspring of survivors of the genocidal processes in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. About 12,000 Yezidis managed to flee to Armenia and establish a diasporic community. Based on ethnographic fieldwork within this community, including interviews with members of subsequent generations, this article focuses on the narratives and experiences of women as well as gender-specific violence. The gathered empirical data makes it possible to elaborate on the hardly documented history, on its lasting effects, and on gender-specific differences in these narrations. Despite certain politics of silencing, memories of genocidal persecution were passed down from one generation to the next. The most recent case of genocidal persecution of Yezidis in Shingal (Iraq) 2014 affected the very foundations of the Yezidi community both in Armenia and the transnation—and at the same time revived their joint remembrance of the fate of their ancestors who had once sought refuge in Armenia.

     

Once upon a time in the West? Stories of migration and modernity from Kerala, South India

This article explores how members of an ex-untouchable, 'backward' community of South India – the Izhavas of Kerala – represent and make sense of their entanglements within 'modernity'. Izhava narratives suggest ambivalence: while failure stories remain individualized, narrated in terms of bad luck or others' cheating, success stories are presented as exemplars of a twentieth-century global master narrative of progress. We note many correspondences between this ex-untouchable community's optimistic master narrative and another powerful and pervasive meta-narrative – the global story of modernity as development, promoted by state government, reform movements, and development theorists alike. Life-history narratives forcibly bring us – European interlocutors – into the same space as the tale-tellers, speak of encounters between Indians and Europeans, and urge us to recognize that we live in 'one world'. Malayalis stake claims for equal participation in modernity's projects even as they point out ways in which coevalness is denied. This prompts us to suggest that narratives of modernity in India and the UK should occupy the same analytical space, contrary to moves to theorize multiple modernities. With our Malayali respondents, we are participating in a confabulation/confabrication of a shared story which appears to be one about the nature of global capitalism. Modernity produces dream and disillusionment, promising progress to all while delivering to a few. In its seemingly endless capacity for self-regeneration and reinvention it is, as a phenomenon in global history, far from over. Even as theorists try to write it off as a moment past or a project failed, it still holds out its promises and provides a structuring framework for contemporary life-stories.     

Struggling for cultural survival: Hungarian identity discourses in the face of assimilation

The Hungarian immigrant community in Australia is struggling with cultural survival. The diaspora has experienced a general decline in community participation as a result of the aging of the émigré population and the rapid assimilation of subsequent generations. Using data derived from the series of annual community‐organised conferences called Megmaradásunk Konferenciák, this article compares the different discourses articulated by community leaders in Australia seeking to preserve and strengthen the diaspora community. I examine how newly emerged narratives of ‘diaspora death’ and cultural survival are debated and how possibilities of strengthened connections with Hungary have impacted these discussions.     

喹啉与吲哚驯化的反硝化反应器的微生物群落结构分析比较

[目的]本研究旨在比较分析分别以喹啉和吲哚为底物,在相同条件下驯化的两个反硝化生物反应器的微生物群落结构.[方法]采用相同的种子污泥和相同的驯化条件,经过大约6周的驯化后,两个反应器均达到稳定而高效的污染物去除能力,通过16S rDNA克隆文库技术对两个反应器的微生物群落结构进行研究.[结果]研究发现,微生物群落结构表现出很大的差异.喹啉驯化的群落中所有的OTU都属于Betaproteobacteria,而吲哚驯化的群落中Betaproteobacteria占56.3%,吲哚驯化的群落具有更高的多样性.两个群落的优势OTU也不同,喹啉驯化群落中Thauera及其它Rhodocyclaceae科的微生物占整个群落的73%,而吲哚驯化群落中优势OTU为Comamonadaceae科、Alcaligenaceae科和Rhodocyclaceae科等类型的微生物,其中Comamonadaceae科的一个OTU占整个群落的28.7%.[结论]不同的驯化底物对微生物群落的组成具有较强的选择作用.首次报道并比较了可高效降解喹啉和吲哚的反硝化生物反应器的微生物群落结构.     

Educating beyond the Borders of Schooling

In our recent interviews with 154 poor and working-class young adults, male and female, across racial and ethnic groups, we hear whispers of hope amid the narratives of despair. In both jersey City and Buffalo, we have wandered through communities that have been ravaged by deindustrialization and a withering of the public sphere. Here we turn our attention to what Boyte and Evans call 'free spaces'—those spaces in which hope is nourished in spite of impoverished material circumstances. Offering a wider theoretical frame for understanding the social psychology of these spaces than has been offered in previous work, we provide two examples from ethnographic investigations (of an arts community and a spiritual community) as emblems of pluralistic sites. Our goal here is to deepen the theoretical lenses through which we assess such spaces as community-based educational sites, offering ethnographic data drawn from two sites situated in urban areas.     

Latina Mothers and Small-Town Racisms:Creating Narratives of Dignity and Moral Education in North Carolina

Within the context of relatively new immigration and settlement in North Carolina, this ethnographic study highlights Latina mothers' narratives and conversations about a moral family education. Their narratives involved the claiming of el hogar (the home space) in the midst of the English-speaking community's attempts to define their families and childrearing practices as "problem." With a race-based feminist perspective, this article examines the role of the mothers' counternarratives in contesting their deficit framing, producing "educated" identities, and creating community in the rural South.     

宜昌百里荒草山草坡群落物种分布的空间趋势分析

通过基于CCA的趋势面分析和空间插值方法,研究了宜昌百里荒山地草场的群落结构空间变化,以及群落结构空间趋势与主要环境因子的相关性。结果表明,该群落物种空间中的群落结构面和物理空间中的空间趋势面可以很好地吻合,说明该群落的结构由一种具有强烈空间结构化特征的机制控制。对群落结构和空间趋势影响最显著的环境因素是土壤有效磷。     

Webs of Legitimacy and Discredit: Narrative Capital and Politics of Ritual in a Timor-Leste Community

This article explores the interconnections among origin narratives, migration patterns and ritual authority in a Timor-Leste community. By recognising the dimension of rituals as sources of power, we analyse the different ways social actors negotiate their position in social space by either supporting or contesting the legitimacy of the ritual leaders. We suggest how, in a context with historical levels of high migration and immersed in rapid social change, precedence is not only challenged by modern ideals around individual rights and choices, but by the re-interpretation of mythical narratives and the access to ritual performance. The paper provides a discussion of the notion of narrative capital and shows how subordinated classes resulting from development policies from past state regimes articulate new forms of social mobility in the contemporary context of rural Timor-Leste.     

Desire,Envy and Punishment: A Matsigenka Emotion Schema in Illness Narratives and Folk Stories

Accumulating evidence suggests that folktales in some societies are characterized by a culturally constructed underlying emotional structure, or Cultural Emotion Schema. In this paper we argue that Matsigenka illness narratives and folk stories share an underlying emotion schema, in which death and suffering result from conflicts between strong-willed individuals prompting anger and aggression. Analysis of illness narratives collected by Izquierdo in the Matsigenka community of Kamisea in the Peruvian Amazon between 1996 and 1999 reveals a common pattern in which envy and frustration lead to the belief in sorcery as the main cause of illness and death. This pattern contrasts with the typical stories of a previous generation collected by the Johnsons among the Matsigenka of Shimaa and other Matsigenka researchers, where sorcery beliefs were virtually absent. Our argument is that important changes in ecology, community, politics, and religion have led to a systematic rise in feelings of envy and frustration, and that these have increased the likelihood that sorcery accusations will occur. We explore the likelihood that such beliefs increase as egalitarian peoples become more crowded into settlements where they are likely to experience greater inequality, more competition for resources and increased societal and personal stress.     

Influence of the period of existence of a biotope on the formation of the species structure of a marine psammophilous ciliate community

The community structure of psammophile (interstitial) ciliates was studied in three areas of the silty sand intertidal zone of the White Sea, the background (a natural community formed under conditions of high siltation) and two experimental areas (the first, unsilted sandy “island” formed in the autumn of 2006, was originally uninhabited and the second was a similar island formed in the autumn of 2008). The experimental biotopes were more aerated and less silted than the background. The principle difference of experimental sites was the duration of their existence. Despite the remaining biotope differences between the background and first experimental site after 3 years of the experiment, the communities were of the same structural pattern. The second experimental biotope, which existing for a short time period, had considerable biotopic similarity to the first experimental one, but significantly differed from it and from the background in the course of succession and structural pattern of the formed community. It was shown that quantitatively and qualitatively (by density and number of species) the community of ciliates formed rather quickly during the first seasonal cycle of development in the new created biotope. However, one annual cycle is not sufficient for the formation of a community species structure, including the species ratio reflecting its niche structure.     

Autism beyond pediatrics: why bioethicists ought to rethink consent in light of chronicity and genetic identity

Autism is a chronic neurodevelopmental disorder that presents unique challenges to bioethicists. In particular, bioethicists ought to reconsider pediatric consent in light of disparity between beliefs that are held about the disorder by parents and adults with autism. The neurodiverse community ought to be given some consideration in this debate, and, as such, there may be a role for autistic narratives in clarifying this problem.     

The politics of scorn in Syria and the agency of narrated involvement

Recent uprisings across the Arab world raise the question of how populations living under dictatorial regimes moved from apparent quiescence to active revolt. The question is particularly acute for Syria, where the Asad regime has ruled not simply through coercion, but also by enforcing a culture of everyday cynicism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Aleppo in 2008‐9, I argue that everyday Syrian narratives that lament or scorn the self are a way of radically identifying oneself with a contemptible situation, and inviting that fact to be witnessed and empathized with. I term the radical identification enacted in these narratives ‘involvement’. In order to understand why these narratives do not merely reproduce a cynical political culture in the same way that private mockery of the regime does, I propose a model of agency that develops the theme of authentic voice. I argue that the self‐scorning voice sounds authentically through the combined agency of the involved subject and the empathetic witness. By enacting involvement, narratives that scorn and lament the self defy the culture of political cynicism and prepare the ground for revolt.     

The Dreams of Blind Men and Women: A Replication and Extension of Previous Findings

Drawing on a sample of 372 dreams from 15 blind adults, we present two separate analyses that replicate and extend findings from previous studies. The first analysis employed DreamSearch, a software program designed for use with dream narratives, to examine the appearance of the five sensory modalities. It revealed that those blind since birth or very early childhood had (1) no visual imagery and (2) a very high percentage of gustatory, olfactory, and tactual sensory references. The second analysis found that both male and female participants differed from their sighted counterparts in the same ways on several Hall and Van de Castle (1966) coding categories, including a high percentage of locomotion/transportation dreams that contained at least one dreamer-involved misfortune. The findings on sensory references and dreamer-involved misfortunes in locomotion/transportation dreams are interpreted as evidence for the continuity between dream content and waking cognition.     

When the Tutelary Spirit Objected: Conflict and Possession among the Using of East Java,Indonesia

This article discusses a case of possession in East Java that took place in the context of an important customary ritual, the seblang dance. In the course of this ritual, villagers meet their obligations to the spirits of fertility that allowed them to use the land on which their village and fields are located. Considerable stress was caused by a potential dancer who, perhaps for religious reasons, declined to dance although she had been specifically chosen by the spirits. This was an unheard of situation, and was feared to put the welfare of the community at risk. Further stress was caused by perceived interference by government officials whose rejection of an alternate dancer for aesthetic reasons caused the village’s tutelary spirit to become angry, jeopardising the presentation of the ritual and thereby the welfare of the community. After two and a half hours of negotiation, during which narratives reflecting both tradition and the current situation were constructed and reconstructed, the village head resolved the immediate problem by appealing to the spirit’s civic position, though leaving the door open for further problems in the future.     

The politics of recognition in culturally appropriate care

Over the last 20 years, the concept of culturally appropriate health care has been gradually gaining popularity in medicine and public health. In calling for health care that is culturally appropriate, minority groups seek political recognition of often racialized constructions of cultural difference as they intervene in health care planning and organization. Based on interview narratives from people involved in community organizing to establish a federally funded community health center in a mid-size New England city, I chart the emergence of a language of "culturally appropriate health care" in language used to justify the need for a health center. An identity model of recognition underlies the call for ethnic resemblance between patient and provider seen in many culturally appropriate care programs. I contrast this model of health care with earlier calls for community access and control by activists in the 1970s and explore the practical and theoretical implications of each approach.     

Signs of truth: enchantment, modernity and the dreams of peasant women

This lecture is in three sections. The first discusses the role of classificatory practices distinguishing magic from religion in social life and in narratives of modernity. Concepts of enchantment have been reintroduced into theories of modernity as the Weberian notion of 'ridding the world of magic' has been questioned. The second part sketches some of the characteristic tensions in the Qur'an concerning the signs of truth in the Islamic community. The final section reflects on modern Egyptian denunciations and defences of the dreams of peasant women, dreams that are claimed as direct experiential proofs of the sacred. These dreams command visits to the shrines that are centres for mass ritual, social, and economic activity and whose powers are resistant to regulation by worldly authorities. Such dreams, and the denunciations of them by those self-perceived as religiously orthodox and modern, are part of continuing contests over state and patriarchal authority, citizenship, and exchange with the divine.