Moral Horizons of Land and Place

ABSTRACT

A recent ‘moral turn’ in anthropology has cast new light on morality as a subject of ethnographic inquiry, and on the making of moral meaning and judgment. This article, and the special issue it prefaces, contribute to this emergent literature through foregrounding and examining the moral dimensions of land and place. Taking up Didier Fassin’s injunction for a critical moral anthropology – rather than an anthropology of morality – we look to land and place as groundings for moral challenges and practices that are nevertheless not place-bound. A critical moral anthropology of land and place should be directed, we argue, to the interplay of mobility and emplacement, to the dynamics of landscape and ‘dwelling’, and to the multiplicities of expectation and meaning that surround the making and exploitation of resources. In contexts of global and local change, land and place offer productive grounds from which to consider the moral horizons – both spatial and temporal – of our world and our discipline.     

Making (mixed-)race: census politics and the emergence of multiracial multiculturalism in the United States,Great Britain and Canada

Abstract

During the same time period, the United States, Great Britain and Canada all moved towards ‘counting’ mixed-race on their national censuses. In the United States, this move is largely attributed to the existence of a mixed-race social movement that pushed Congress for the change – but similar developments in Canada and Britain occurred without the presence of a politically active civil society devoted to making the change. Why the convergence? This article argues that demographic trends, increasingly unsettled perceptions about discrete racial categories, and a transnational norm surrounding the primacy of racial self-identification in census-taking culminated in a normative shift towards multiracial multiculturalism. Therein, mixed-race identities are acknowledged as part of – rather than problematic within – diverse societies. These elements enabled mixed-race to be promoted, at times strategically, as a corollary of multiculturalism in these three countries.     

On evaluating the GM Nation? Public debate about the commercialisation of transgenic crops in Britain

Abstract

The public debate about GM crops that took place in Britain in 2002–03 was an unprecedented experiment for the UK in public engagement. The Government, which sponsored the exercise, made a pledge: to take into account lay perspectives, as well as the views of its expert advisers, when making a decision about the possible commercialisation of this controversial technology. As officially accredited but independent evaluators of the debate, we were given unique behind-the-scenes access to the organisation and execution of the debate process. In this paper we report on our findings, which reveal a debate process that, whilst innovative, suffered from a number of important flaws: in terms of both design and implementation. These shortcomings in part reflect constraints on time and budget, and the context of political pressure in which the debate took place. However, they also demonstrated a lack of design knowledge and availability of appropriate expertise: matters with an important bearing on future plans for such initiatives.     

Mandan and Hidatsa Pottery Making

Abstract

Two accounts of Mandan and Hidatsa pottery making, collected by Wilson in 1910, appear here for the first time. New information is provided on clay sources, and on manufacturing and firing times and techniques.     

Transgressing community: the case of Muslims in a twenty-first-century British city

Abstract

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in Birmingham, UK – a city significant for its sizeable Muslim population and its iconic role in the history of minority ethnic settlement in Britain – to consider how associations of place and ethnicity work in different ways to inform ideas about ‘Muslim community’ in twenty-first-century Britain. The paper charts happenings around a local event in an area of majority Asian settlement and how representations of the area as a place of Muslim community were used to implicate it in the ‘war on terror’. The paper goes on to show how this sensibility is disrupted by Muslims themselves through alternative engagements with space and ethnicity. The paper argues that these offer a ground for making Muslim community in ways that actively engage with histories and patterns of ethnic settlement in the city rather than being determined by them.     

Defining difference: the role of immigrant generation and race in American and British immigration studies

Abstract

This article reviews the ways in which Britain and the USA classify and analyse the integration of immigrants and their descendants. While both societies recognize racial differences in their official statistics and in the academic analyses of change over time, the USA tends to classify immigrants and their descendants by immigrant generation much more than Britain does. The importance of the concept of generation in American immigration research is highlighted and it is suggested that studies built on the importance of generation can illuminate social processes of integration in Britain. The complexities of defining and measuring immigrant generation are reviewed, including new developments in the measurement of generation that take into account age at migration, and historical period and cohort effects. Racial and ethnic minority groups formed through immigration may have very different characteristics depending on the average distance of their members from immigration – including the possibility of ‘ethnic leakage’, as more assimilated, later-generation individuals no longer identify with the group.     

Effect of nest-site microclimatic conditions on nesting success in the Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni

Capsule: Microclimatic conditions in the nests of the Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni, particularly the percentage of time of extremely low humidity, affect breeding success.

Aim: To study the effect of within-nest temperature and humidity on nest productivity, and the correlation between nest productivity and the order of dates on which nests were occupied by the parents. To compare microclimatic conditions in the nest, breeding success and order of occupation between nests under tile roofs and in artificial nest boxes.

Methods: Three different Lesser Kestrel colonies were monitored in Israel – one rural, one urban and one in an open country habitat. Data loggers were placed in 39 nests for the entire breeding period to measure temperature and humidity. The number of fledglings was recorded for each nest, as well as the date of occupation.

Results: Full microclimatic data from 35 nests suggest that percentage of time of extremely low humidity is the major predictor of nest productivity – low humidity is negatively correlated with nest productivity. Sites of more successful nests were occupied earlier. Considering only successful nests, the urban colony had the lowest breeding success of the three colonies. There was no significant difference in mean productivity between nests in roofs and nest boxes, but nests in roofs were occupied earlier.

Conclusion: Nest microclimate, particularly low humidity, affects nesting success in addition to colony location.     

The Genetics of Bene Israel from India Reveals Both Substantial Jewish and Indian Ancestry

The Bene Israel Jewish community from West India is a unique population whose history before the 18^th century remains largely unknown. Bene Israel members consider themselves as descendants of Jews, yet the identity of Jewish ancestors and their arrival time to India are unknown, with speculations on arrival time varying between the 8th century BCE and the 6th century CE. Here, we characterize the genetic history of Bene Israel by collecting and genotyping 18 Bene Israel individuals. Combining with 486 individuals from 41 other Jewish, Indian and Pakistani populations, and additional individuals from worldwide populations, we conducted comprehensive genome-wide analyses based on F_ST, principal component analysis, ADMIXTURE, identity-by-descent sharing, admixture linkage disequilibrium decay, haplotype sharing and allele sharing autocorrelation decay, as well as contrasted patterns between the X chromosome and the autosomes. The genetics of Bene Israel individuals resemble local Indian populations, while at the same time constituting a clearly separated and unique population in India. They are unique among Indian and Pakistani populations we analyzed in sharing considerable genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations. Putting together the results from all analyses point to Bene Israel being an admixed population with both Jewish and Indian ancestry, with the genetic contribution of each of these ancestral populations being substantial. The admixture took place in the last millennium, about 19–33 generations ago. It involved Middle-Eastern Jews and was sex-biased, with more male Jewish and local female contribution. It was followed by a population bottleneck and high endogamy, which can lead to increased prevalence of recessive diseases in this population. This study provides an example of how genetic analysis advances our knowledge of human history in cases where other disciplines lack the relevant data to do so.     

Making developmental science accessible,usable, and a catalyst for innovation

ABSTRACT

The rapidly moving frontiers of neuroscience, molecular biology, and epigenetics—combined with extensive research in the behavioral and social sciences—are dramatically expanding our understanding of how children develop, how that process can be disrupted, how to get it back on track when it does get derailed, and how to keep it from going off track in the first place. The challenge for educators, other practitioners, policymakers, and change agents across sectors lies in our collective ability to transform cutting-edge knowledge into design principles and concepts that can inform an actionable game plan. The first step in addressing this challenge is the need to identify the most important factors that affect individual variation in learning and behavior—a task that demands recognition of the inextricable interaction between environmental influences and genetic predispositions. Building on this foundational understanding, progress toward substantially better life outcomes for all children will require attention to three objectives: (1) making complex science understandable and accessible for strategically targeted audiences; (2) making credible knowledge usable for educators, other practitioners, parents, policymakers, and civic leaders; and (3) leveraging continuing advances in science to build an R&D platform that drives innovation across multiple sectors within a dynamic ecosystem. The opportunities to leverage scientific insights to catalyze fresh thinking and test new ideas in practice and in policy are plentiful and growing, while the barriers to progress remain formidable. The time to seize the opportunities and overcome the barriers is now.     

Furoates and thenoates inhibit pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 2 allosterically by binding to its pyruvate regulatory site

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed the reawakening of cancer metabolism as a therapeutic target. In particular, inhibition of pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDK) holds remarkable promise. Dichloroacetic acid (DCA), currently undergoing clinical trials, is a unique PDK inhibitor in which it binds to the allosteric pyruvate site of the enzyme. However, the safety of DCA as a drug is compromised by its neurotoxicity, whereas its usefulness as an investigative tool is limited by the high concentrations required to exert observable effects in cell culture. Herein, we report the identification – by making use of saturation-transfer difference NMR spectroscopy, enzymatic assays and computational methods – of furoate and thenoate derivatives as allosteric pyruvate-site-binding PDK2 inhibitors. This work substantiates the pyruvate regulatory pocket as a druggable target.     

Towards empirical comparison of immigrant integration across nations

ABSTRACT

The ambitious attempt by Richard Alba and Nancy Foner to provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of immigrant integration across several immigration nations – namely the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the Netherlands – concludes that low-status immigrant groups are marginal across all of these countries, and overall none of them stands out as particularly positive or negative. At the same time, some countries perform better than others on specific dimensions of integration, offset by less-favourable results on others. Dimensions examined include employment and economic mobility, overall economic well-being, residential inclusion, overcoming marginality based on race and religion, access to citizenship and political power, education for the children of immigrants, inter-group marriages and identification with the national society. The complexity of the analysis is daunting, and troubled in some aspects by empirical and methodological issues. The effort nonetheless moves the field forward substantially, and defines a new agenda for future research.     

Driving integration: how is it done

ABSTRACT

The present dilemma of immigrant integration in the West is, that for previous generations of immigrants in Europe and the United States, education and politics were strong engines that drove integration. However, these engines have not worked so well for this current wave of immigration, despite emerging progress. In this review, I examine the chapters on education and politics. Two questions emerge: first, with regard to education, how much can the ineffectiveness of the education system be attributed to the cultural challenges of immigration, compared to the challenges of class, with implications for immigrants and natives as well? and second, with regard to politics, is the problem not just the numbers of minority representatives, but how they are organized, and for what purpose – indeed, if they have a purpose?     

Emplacing Christ: An Indigenous Australian Ethics of Placemaking Across Borders

ABSTRACT

Travelling from my old heimat, Germany, I joined in September 2015 a group of Anangu Pitjantjatjara Bible translators on a two-week long pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This journey offered further probing into Anangu attachments to place that, until then, I had only known through ethnographic research in their desert homelands in northern South Australia. In the present article, I explore how and why the Anangu Christians forged links with biblically inscribed places to which they had no ancestral ties. What they did bring is a deep-seated sense of emotional connection with Jesus abiding in heaven, and here the pilgrimage was a chance to anchor this relationship in his land – to emplace Christ. Notable in this process of shifting the presence of Jesus from heaven to earth was the pilgrims’ moral concern to keep separate the emplaced stories of their ancestral lands on one hand, and the grounded narratives of the Christian Scriptures on the other. In Jonathan Mair and Nicholas Evans’ terms, their approach was one of ‘incommensuration’, a strategy to avoid moral conflict by refusing to make comparisons between religious traditions. My article may thus be read as an ethnographic contribution towards the understanding of an Australian Indigenous ethics of placemaking across borders.     

Method for Attaining Caraway Seed Oil Fractions with Different Composition

Caraway (Carum carvi L.) is a medicinal and aromatic plant; its seeds (fruits) are used as spice and they contain essential oils. We hypothesized that by collecting caraway oil at different time points during the extraction process, we could obtain oil fractions with distinct chemical composition. A hydrodistillation time (HDT) study was conducted to test the hypothesis. The caraway seed oil fractions were collected at eight different HDT (at 0 – 2, 2 – 7, 7 – 15, 15 – 30, 30 – 45, 45 – 75, 75 – 105, and 105 – 135 min). Additionally, a non‐stop HD for 135 min was conducted as a control. Most of the oil was eluted early in the HD process. The non‐stop HDT treatment yielded 2.76% oil by weight. Of the 24 essential oil constituents, limonene (77 – 19% of the total oil) and carvone (20 – 79%) were the major ones. Other constituents included myrcene (0.72 – 0.16%), trans‐carveol (0.07 – 0.39%), and β‐caryophyllene (0.07 – 0.24%). Caraway seed oil with higher concentration of limonene can be obtained by sampling oil fractions early in HD process; conversely, oil with high concentration of carvone can be obtained by excluding the fractions eluted early in the HD process. We demonstrated a method of obtaining caraway seed oil fractions with various and unique composition. These novel oil fractions with unique composition are not commercially available and could have much wider potential uses, and also target different markets compared to the typical caraway essential oil.     

Jewishness as sui generis: extending theorizations beyond the debate of “race,ethnicity, or religion”

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on Jewishness has often assumed that race, ethnicity, and religion are discrete categories. This review article surveys the place of Jewishness within race literature, ethnicity literature, and sociological religion literature, and offers a new theoretical framework for considering Jewishness as sui generis – of its own unique quality. The categories of race, ethnicity, and religion must be theorized as a system of interconnected frames and processes that overlap, interact, and are co-constituted. This web of frames and processes must be situated within the larger social system and meanings that construct Jewishness alongside other subjectivities.     

Migrant deportability: Israel and Ireland as case studies

This article critiques policies of deportation and deportability – a technology emanating from three seemingly conflicting rationalities: states' obligations under international human rights regimes, capitalism's need to facilitate the movement of labour, and the need to reaffirm state sovereignty. After outlining the concept of deportability, we argue that although justified by state actors as an integral part of asylum and immigration policies, deportability epitomizes the paradox of immigration regimes at a point of crisis. We use Israel and Ireland as case studies to illustrate that migrant deportability circumvents human rights and domestic legislation that hinder the power of the state to deport unwanted migrants. Paradoxically, in both, policies that engender the deportability of asylum seekers are a response to their undeportability. Despite their differences, Israel and Ireland are unusual immigration destinations and quintessential diaspora nations, whose histories of dispersal configure Jewishness and Irishness in ethno-racially rigid yet spatially fluid terms, as illustrated by their citizenship regimes.     

New data and new species of Microcoryphia and Zygentoma (Insecta) from Israel

The presented contribution concerns the study of several samples of Microcoryphia and of Zygentoma obtained in Israel; an up to date of the species of these insect Orders reported from Palestine is also presented. Genus Hyperlepisma (Lepismatidae: Ctenolepismatinae) is reported for the first time from the country and one new species H. palaestinensis n. sp., is described from the northern Negev. Another new species this one of the genus Lepidospora s. s. (Nicoletiidae: Coletiniinae), L. (L.) ayyalonica n. sp., is described from the Ayyalon Cave in Western Central Israel, from where several other terrestrial and aquatic endemic arthropods were already known.     

Flash Glucose Monitoring in Israel: Understanding Real-World Associations between Self-Monitoring Frequency and Metrics of Glycemic Control

ObjectiveFlash glucose monitoring has been widely used in Israel for diabetes treatment and since 2018, the cost is reimbursed for all people with type 1 diabetes nationally. In the current study, we present the daily scanning behavior for FreeStyle Libre users in Israel and how this was associated with a range of metrics for glycemic assessment.MethodsDeidentified data from FreeStyle Libre readers were collected between September 2014 and October 2020. Scan-rate data from Israel was extracted and sorted into 10 equal-sized groups based on scan frequency. The glucose parameters derived for each group were: estimated HbA1c (eA1c), time in range (TIR) between 70 and 180 mg/dL, and time with glucose levels of <70 mg/dL, <54 mg/dL, and >180 mg/dL.ResultsThe data set for Israel included 12 370 readers, with data from 131 639 separate glucose sensors representing 152 million automatically recorded individual glucose readings. Users performed an average of 15 daily glucose scans, ranging from a mean of 4.1 scans per day (lowest, 10%), rising to a mean of 38.7 scans/day (highest, 10%) (median, 12; IQR, 8-18 for all readers). As the scan rates increased, the eA1c decreased from 7.6% to 6.7% (P < .001). Mean TIR increased from 56.9% to 70.0% with increasing scan rates (P < .001). Concordantly, time with glucose levels of >180 mg/dL and <54 mg/dL decreased from 37.2% to 23.6% (P < .001) and from 2.23% to 1.99%, respectively, as scan frequency increased.ConclusionIn Israel, people with diabetes under real-world conditions record higher rates of FreeStyle Libre scanning. These are associated with improvements in TIR, eA1c, and reduced time with glucose levels of >180 mg/dL or <54 mg/dL.     

Decision Making during the Psychological Refractory Period

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Highlights? The PRP interferes with decision making and routing to the motor response ? Sensory evidence accumulation can occur for multiple decisions at the same time ? A large fraction of the PRP occurs after the commitment to a choice ? Evidence accumulation and sensory-motor mapping are distinct processes