Anthropological Analysis Research Articles

Environmental Ethics in Sub-Saharan African Literature through Myths and Legends

This paper aims to demonstrate how Language, Culture and Environment are linked. It examines the relationship between the Environmental Ethics and the Sub-Saharan African Literature. That is, how do Myths and Legends inspire the respect of the Environmental Ethics in Sub-Saharan Cultures. The method consists of an Anthropological Analysis of some African Myths and Legends from Scholars and other Authors who wrote on African Literature to illustrate the fact that, they carry Rules that govern Environmental Ethics and values that deals with our relationship with the physical milieu around us and how Myths permit to avoid pollution and ensure the protection of the endangered species. A Comparative Study of some Myths, in cultural Contexts, different from the Sub-Saharan one, indicates how Anthropocentric and Ecocide, Myths are. The result is the reality that, most of environmental Problems faced by the Humanity nowadays, are Anthropogenic. The Theoretical approach here is the Cultural Ecology to demonstrate how human adaptation to the natural Environment takes place by the Use of Cultural mechanisms. As a Result, the Paper demonstrate how Sub-Saharan African Literature is Environmentalist for Myths and Legends, constitute Charter for societies concerning Nature. They are Cultural Adaptation to natural Environment. They are adaptive Strategies for people to survive in their natural Environment. They convey messages concerning Rules that govern peoples’ behaviour with social and natural environment. There is a harmony or an interdependence between People and their geographical Milieu. Through Myths and Legends, Sub-Saharan African Literature constitute a School of Ecology. Because, the advocate for a Sustainable Management of Natural Resources, through their beliefs systems. Myths and Legends carry Environmental Ethics. They are cultural strategies for the respect of Environmental values; they communicate fundamental conceptions of nature and society and how people ought to relate and behave with natural environment. The paper demonstrates how the perturbation of Sub-Saharan African Language and Beliefs System by the western Imperialism, disturbed the relationships between people and their physical milieu and how the Environmental Ethics has been demoted, as the result of that fact.

Internet Memes as Stabilizers of Conspiracy Culture: A Cognitive Anthropological Analysis

Internet memes have emerged as the de facto language of the internet, where standardized memetic templates and characters distill and communicate narratives in simple, shareable formats. While prior research has highlighted their broad appeal as they traverse diverse audiences, their cultural function within online communities has received less attention. To investigate this function, we draw on cognitive anthropological conceptualizations of culture and theorize internet memes as “cultural representations.” We analyze 544 memes shared across two interconnected conspiratorial subreddits about COVID-19 between 2020 and 2022, employing a combination of content and thematic analysis. In doing so, we demonstrate that community members selectively engage with standardized memetic elements that resonate with their “conspiracist worldview.” Specifically, elements conveying the enduring “cultural themes” of Deception, Delusion, and Superiority function as “cultural resources” that stabilize the community’s culture. As such, we make three contributions. First, by theorizing internet memes as cultural representations, we demonstrate their stabilizing cultural function. Second, by showing how internet memes are used in online conspiratorial communities, we highlight their role in maintaining group cohesion and alleviating contention. Finally, we advance a revised methodological approach for the study of memetic communication.

Ukrainian Identity in the Context of Memory and Forgetting: Philosophical and Anthropological Analysis

Purpose. The main content of the presented study is a philosophical and anthropological analysis of the problem of memory in the context of the phenomenon of forgetting, the essential factors of establishing a new image of the Ukrainian person, his/her national memory and identity. This circumstance, in the situation of Ukraine’s defence against the Russian aggressor, upholding of freedoms and European values, poses the following tasks: 1) to undertake a consistent review of the conceptual content of the concepts of "memory" and "forgetting" and to identify their philosophical and anthropological content; 2) to analyse the phenomenon of national memory and show its significance for the struggle of the Ukrainian people for the European choice; 3) to study the main parameters of the process of forming a system of new values in the context of the phenomenon of forgetting in the discourse of philosophical anthropology. Theoretical basis. The complex and dynamic process of forming Ukrainian identity in the contexts of national memory and forgetting brings the system of life values to a new level of theoretical and methodological understanding. The philosophical and anthropological dimension of the values of a modern Ukrainian person allows us to engage the methodological discourses of memory studies, which are a way for people to construct their historical past in the perspective of creating a new future in the integrity of axiological, moral and existential content. The relevance of this problem is due to the crisis of worldview and cultural meanings of human existence in the context of war, the processes of which have a powerful impact on all aspects of social, political, and spiritual life, which ultimately leads to the need for a new type of communication, thinking, and behaviour. Originality. The study substantiates that the phenomenon of forgetting in the context of the formation of a new national memory largely determines the strategy of asserting Ukrainian identity in the context of modern civilizational challenges faced by Ukraine as a result of military aggression against its freedom and territorial integrity. This situation opens up new prospects for the formation of a civilizational system of values in interaction with a qualitatively different image of the Ukrainian person. Conclusions. Today, the Ukrainian state is facing an existential threat, which raises the problem of creating a new Ukrainian person whose worldview and system of values correspond to the image of a European person. Despite the serious problems that Ukraine has faced as a result of geopolitical contradictions on a global scale, philosophical and anthropological analysis has shown that the strategy of forming a new Ukrainian identity in the context of historical memory, which contains an element of forgetting, determines the process of creating a mentality that is consistent with the national strategy of entering Western civilisation. It is within the parameters of such an analysis that a new memory adequate to the needs of our time is formed.

The Anthropology of Love by Ingeborg Bachmann (“War Diary” and “The Book of Franza”)

The article is dedicated to the study of the work of the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973), which involves the investigation of specific examples of fictional and non-fictional literature using the principles of literary anthropology. In particular, the «War Diary» («Kriegstagebuch», 1944–1945) and the unfinished novel «The Book of Franza» («Das Buch Franza», 1965–1966) are considered comparatively. The purpose of the article is an anthropological analysis of the cultural universality of love, which is based on the author’s own life experience and is artistically reinterpreted in her texts. The role of the British soldier, the Viennese Jewish émigré Jack Hamesh (1920–1987) is emphasized in rereading «The Book of Franza». His image is embodied in the figure of Lord Percival Glyde (Percy), a captain of the English army, with whom the protagonist of Franza’s novel falls in love during the deoccupation of the Carinthia region. I. Bachmann’s notes in the form of a diary and 11 letters from the young man to her demonstrate the feelings of both. The main aspects of the artistic transformation of the writer’s «first» love for J. Hamesh are emphasized, considering the time-space context of the depicted events, which are accompanied by existential challenges for a person (the end of the Second World War). The literary character Percy summarizes the image of the British military, with whom the writer communicated at the time, and the receptive potential of his allusive anthroponym, which hints at the status of the «pseudo-couple». In addition, attention is paid to the idealization of his figure, which indicates the replacement of the real image with the metalogical one with hyperbolization of the characteristic features of the prototype, to enhance the effect in depicting the first romantic relationship of I. Bachmann. The anthropological dimension of love between a man and a woman shows the importance of fictional and non-fictional literature for the artistic rereading of life experience, representing a generalized vision of love by I. Bachmann.

THE MODERN PERIOD IN THE MIRROR OF EVERYDAY LIFE

The article proposes a philosophical and anthropological analysis of the modern period as an era of radical transformations of people’s everyday life, which underlie the formation of a rational subject and an individualised structure of society.

Реальность как сторона воображаемого в творчестве Ф.М. Достоевского

In many of his works, the great Russian writer and thinker F.M. Dostoevsky depicted the boundary between sleep and reality, reality and hallucination as flexible, which was noted by many researchers of his work. However, most attempts to comprehend this led to the idea that Dostoevsky’s lack of such a boundary was caused by the madness that struck his characters (K.V. Mochulsky, D.R. Khapaeva, I.I. Evlampiev). With this interpretation of the problem, the idea that reality exists in itself is accepted as a starting premise, and a healthy person sees it as it is, and a mad person sees it as it appears in their altered consciousness. Indeed, in this case, there is a gap in the thesis bequeathed to us by Parmenides about the identity of being and thinking about it. Thus, we are talking about an ontological interpretation of the problem. According to N.A. Berdyaev, Dostoevsky was the most important anthropologist ever before and after him. And F.M. Dostoevsky himself wrote that he was ready to spend his whole life dealing with what a person is, because he wanted to be one. This means that the problems posed in his works need an anthropological interpretation, and in this article philosophical and anthropological analysis is used as the main research method. If we approach this problem from a philosophical and anthropological point of view and raise the question of what reality is for a person, then we should conclude that a person does not know what reality itself is if it is not preceded by a sense of reality for him. Accordingly, we can assert that the plasticity of the boundary between reality and hallucination, dream and reality is not caused by human disease. It is not given to him at all to fi nd out what reality looks like in itself, for a person it is a side of the imaginary. Thus, we understand that a person does not live in the world, but in a picture of the world, and no reality in itself exists for them.

Shaping a creative choir by learning to listen?

ABSTRACT The MidWest Girls’ Choir, composed of girls aged 14–21, have developed their social and bodily experienced knowledge during their years as part of a girls’ choir so that they implicitly form the physical and social singing body. Choir singing is a process supported by the teaching and by the choir's practice of rehearsals and performances. This paper describes and analyses the meaning of engaging learning processes and repetitive practices for becoming skilled and potentially creative choir singers. The anthropological analysis of the choir singers’ individual and collectively embodied learning processes of singing, listening, and creating choreography is based on empirical examples. I argue that the creativity of the girls’ choir comprises a series of skills, bodily immersion and experimental practice by the individual members and the social group, formed by training in listening and sensing according to their age and choir experience.

Human Identification in Mass Disasters: Analyzing Complex Tattoos in the Brumadinho Tragedy

Background: The identification of victims in mass disasters is a challenging task, particularly when forensic teams must address fragmented human remains. Objectives: This article reports two necropsy cases from the 2019 collapse of the Brumadinho mine tailing dam, the largest humanitarian disaster in Brazilian history. Results: In both cases, identification was achieved through comparative anthropological analysis of complex tattoos. Positive identification was based on the presence of multiple coincident points between postmortem (PM) and antemortem (AM) photographic records of the tattoo designs, along with the absence of exclusionary elements. Conclusion: The authors propose that the comparative analysis of PM and AM tattoos should be more widely adopted as a low-cost, rapid identification method, particularly in complex forensic scenarios such as mass disasters and other challenging cases in the medical and forensic anthropology context.

Der Mensch, ein widersprüchliches Wesen mit innerer Tiefe: Hermeneutische Anthropologie im Anschluss an: Blaise Pascal und Charles Taylor

The paper focuses on the anthropological analyses of Blaise Pascal's Pensées and aims to elucidate their significance in the history and present from a methodological point of view. In its hermeneutic approach, Pascal's anthropology proves to be compatible with contemporary anthropologies such as Charles Taylor's description of man as a self‐interpreting animal. Finally, the potentials of such hermeneutic anthropologies for ethical questions should be indicated in perspective.

Sasak Language in Rituals and Traditions: An Anthropological Analysis of Communication in the Lombok Community

Sasak Language in Rituals and Traditions: An Anthropological Analysis of Communication in the Lombok Community

Anthropological Analysis of the Depiction of Deprivation in Old Age In the Case of the Movie Night Boats

This anthropological analysis focuses on the Croatian feature film Night Boats (2012), directed by Igor Mirković. The subject of the movie is a partnership that develops between two residents of a nursing home in Zagreb, highlighting, among other things, numerous problems and difficulties that the elderly face while trying to pursue a new romantic relationship at the very end of their lives, in specific nursing home conditions. The couple’s escape from the nursing home serves as an act of resistance, leaving room for the analysis of visual depictions of the various deprivations encountered by the elderly. Depictions of physical, emotional and economic dependency which result in an inability to make independent decisions, are in accordance with the results attained during several years of field research conducted in nursing homes in the Republic of Serbia. This research, which explores new partnerships as strategies of action among nursing home residents, will be compared with the film’s visual interpretations. Interpreting the visual depiction of deprivation and infirmity, which society associates the elderly with, will also include a semiotic interpretation of the symbolic expression that is used in the movie.

Identity Values and Cultural Memory in Contemporary Kyrgyz Cinema

The study examines the subject of several fiction feature films awarded at the first Bishkek International Film Festival (November 17-21, 2023). These films exalt the identity values and the cultural memory of Kyrgyz people and of other neighbored Central-Asian peoples, in order to put the question: “Which are conceptually these identity values?” and “Which are the narrative situations and the hero types that better emphasize them?” After identifying several such identity values, the study focuses on the motif or even the archetype of the abandoned child, a frequent motif in the films mentioned above. Through an effort to mature his conscience, but also with the support of an adult spiritual mentor, the abandoned child morally rises above the adults who abandoned him due to negligence or selfishness, becoming himself their potential spiritual savior. The study starts from the premise that a local and relatively young cinema industry, like the Kyrgyz one or generally the Central-Asian one, which hasn’t yet axiologically dissolved into the current of globalization, cannot be correctly and plenary understood without a deep knowledge of the cultural and civilizational background that generated it. Film analysis is therefore interwoven with anthropological analysis and cultural theory.

Cranial surgical approaches in the 21st Century Identified Skeletal Collection

Cranial surgical approaches in the 21st Century Identified Skeletal Collection

Analisi biologiche dei resti scheletrici di San Giuseppe da Copertino

We present the study of a peculiar case of the skeletal remains of an individual who was later recognised as a saint. According to the stories of his life he suffered a life of deprivation accompanied by physical phenomena that often considered as supernatural events. These events at least are not well defined from the scientific point of view. Anthropological analysis only allows us to conclude that this individual was a very virile, robust, almost athletic man, inspite of having lead by his own choice, a quite tormented life markedby what, we dare to say, were heroic deprivations. His facial lineaments, which in also define him as very virile, were reconstructed through the cast of his face made immediately after his death.

The spirit of the book cafe: Kurdish-language activism and the contested values of youth and culture in Turkey

ABSTRACT This article deploys a semiotic anthropological analysis of value to understand the recent emergence and spread of the Kurdish book cafe, or pirtûk kafe, using it as a window into the changing state of Kurdish language-activism and Kurdish youth culture in Turkey. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with cafe owners, operators, and patrons, the article offers both an overview of the pirtûk kafe in contemporary Turkey and an analysis of its role in promoting Kurdish culture and the use of the Kurdish language among the country’s youth.

Analysis of Islamic Legal Anthropology on The Marriage Traditions of The Mbojo and Samawa Tribes

This research aims to describe the similarities and differences in the traditional marriages of the Mbojo and Samawa tribes, as well as how Islamic legal anthropology analyzes these aspects. The study employs qualitative research through field research methods. A qualitative approach is used to observe and convey information that will produce clear data, based on community activities regarding how they are subjects within the research object. This research also contains comparative elements, which involve comparing two situations, events, and occurrences. In this case, the researcher applies a comparative method to the traditional marriages of the Mbojo tribe (Bima) and the Samawa tribe (Sumbawa). Data collection techniques in this study are obtained through direct observation in the field and interviews. Additionally, the data used in this research is supported by literature sources such as books, theses, journals, internet media, and others that support the research. The results of this study indicate that one of the purposes of marriage is to create a family that is peaceful, secure, and harmonious, in line with the concept of sakinah mawaddah wa rahmah. Marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman. In anthropology, culture is a system of ideas, actions, and human works that encompass beliefs, arts, morals, laws, and customs. In Indonesia, each region has its own unique culture, including in wedding ceremonies, such as those of the Mbojo tribe in Bima and the Samawa tribe in Sumbawa. Although they have different names and processes, the traditions of peta kapanca and barodak rapacar share the same purpose: to purify oneself in order to achieve a good and harmonious household.

The Anthropological Process of Identifying Missing Persons as a Teaching Method for Increasing Awareness in Legal and Forensic Dentistry in the Republic of Cyprus

Forensic Odontology is a critical field within forensic science, with significant importance in legal contexts and the identification of victims in mass disasters or cases of abuse. This article focuses on the efforts made by the European University Cyprus (EUC) School of Dentistry to raise awareness among dental students regarding legal and forensic dentistry practices. Through voluntary visits to the Anthropological Laboratory of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) in Cyprus, students gain firsthand experience and insights into anthropological analysis for identifying missing individuals. These visits provide students with practical application opportunities, emphasizing record-keeping practices, oral tissue morphology analysis, and unique aspects of restorative work during identification processes. Feedback from participating students highlights the value of experiential learning in increasing awareness about forensic odontology’s importance and relevance in real-world scenarios. The initiatives undertaken by the EUC School of Dentistry contribute to enhancing legal and forensic dentistry awareness among future dental professionals in Cyprus.

On trade in europe: anthropologists speak

This article is an introduction to the issue’s special theme on “Humans Buying and Selling: Anthropology of Trade (People, Goods, Structures, Relationships)”, featuring contributions by Svetlana Sidneva, Alexander Novik, Armando Maxia, Oxana Fais-Leutskaia, Julia Butschatskaja, and Irina Kucherova. The authors discuss the current state of trade as economic activity in a number of European regions, examining the local specificities of trade operations and their functioning, the symbolism of goods, the preservation of archaic traditional elements of “old ways of trade”, the human relationships of participants in these “games of exchange”, and other aspects of trade as a cultural phenomenon. Due to the fact that trade, especially in the context of modern developed societies, is infrequently considered as an object of anthropological research, while available studies in the vein of economic anthropology are mostly concerned with realities of the “Global South” or societies with “mixed economy”, these contributions are based on actual fieldwork material and represent an attempt at ethnographic reconstruction and anthropological analysis of trade through particular cases of European regions, such as Greece, Kosovo, Sardinia, Sicily, Germany, and Iceland. The contributors employ novel approaches to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of this theme in the context of contemporary culture.

What Should Be Typical about the Way We Calculate Typicality?

The probability of correct classification, and ultimately identification, lies at the heart of forensic anthropological analyses. To this end, practitioners rely on a variety of ways to assess the error or uncertainty of their estimates, including the use of statistically based analytical packages such as FORDISC. This article addresses typicality probabilities and specifically examines issues and assumptions with calculating F-statistic typicalities both statistically and within FORDISC. It uses multiple methods to calculate F-test typicality from publicly accessible craniometric data drawn from the Howells data set, a data set also included as reference groups within FORDISC. While the results of these calculations agree across various F-tests proposed by different authors, the results do not match the “TypF” values generated by FORDISC when using the “resubstitution” option. Through additional calculations and various reproducibility exercises, the authors demonstrate how and why “TypF” in FORDISC produces erroneous typicality values with the “resubstitution” option. They also identify the correct equation to incorporate into the software to rectify this problem. This work represents the logical conclusion of a long-running debate the authors had with Stephen D. Ousley and a desire to improve the accuracy and interpretability of analyses generated in FORDISC.

Cold Temperatures and Weather Processes on Human Bone

Amongst research on forensic skeletal material found in a variety of environmental conditions, cold climate contexts and the effects of various associated weather processes are very under-researched. This paper will examine existing sources on the effects of cold and freezing weather conditions on forensic anthropology analyses. It will review the various taphonomic processes that occur from sub-zero temperatures, like snow, ice, and freeze-thaw cycles on bone, as well as the associated challenges that could arise in identifying important features and analyzing skeletal remains when found in these conditions. Finally, this paper will discuss the research gap of the effects of cold weather climates on bone and will explore some much-needed new and expanding avenues of research on this topic, which could aid forensic identifications and analyses on human remains in cold climates.