Community Norms Research Articles

Exploring voice and agency among adolescents in South Asia: a vignettes-based approach

ABSTRACT The innovative use of vignettes in quantitative surveys offers a novel means of assessing attitudes, capturing individuals’ responses across diverse life domains to measure voice and agency more directly. Utilizing the use of scales and vignette-based inquiries, this study explores voice and agency on making marital decisions among 458 adolescents in India and Nepal. Regression analysis revealed that higher voice and agency scores correlated significantly with reduced odds of endorsing early marriage and increased support for continued education post-marriage. In vignette scenarios, greater voice and agency scores were linked to advocating against early sibling marriage and making independent choices for their own futures. These findings highlight that improved self-perception of agency empowers adolescents to assert independent decisions. Utilizing vignettes proved beneficial in this context as they enabled adolescents to understand community norms through storytelling, offering insights into their likely behaviour in specific situations, rather than drawing on abstract concepts.

P051 Associations between Chronotype and Symptoms of Depression in Patients attending an Outpatient Sleep Clinic

Abstract Introduction Chronotype (or morningness-eveningness), individuals’ time-of-the-day preference for activity, has been associated with depressive symptoms. This cross-sectional study examined the association between chronotype and symptoms of depression in outpatients attending a sleep disorders clinic. Method The sample included individuals attending an outpatient sleep disorders clinic and provided opt-out consent for their data to be used for research purposes. Individuals included in the analyses provided demographic data, their typical weekly total sleep time (TST), and complete responses prior to treatment on the reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (rMEQ; for chronotype), and the PROMIS depression scale. Results A total of 1641 (44.5% female, Mage = 45.20 years, SDage = 16.06 years) participants were included. On average, the sample scored intermediate chronotype (M = 14.73, SD = 4.35) and higher depressive symptom scores that were half a standard deviation higher compared to community norms (M = 55.80, SD = 10.01). Multiple linear regression controlling for age, sex, and TST showed that greater eveningness preferences predicted higher symptoms of depression, p<0.01, explaining 2.76% additional variance in depression scores above that of the covariates. Discussion Overall, sleep clinic outpatients had an intermediate chronotype and above average depressive symptoms. The findings are consistent with existing literature in other populations indicating that eveningness may be a risk factor for greater symptoms of depression. Future studies need to explore whether interventions to alter chronotype may benefit symptoms of depression in individuals with sleep complaints.

Understanding the role of youth in Indigenous territorial governance

Indigenous territories cover more than one-fourth of the world’s land surface, overlap with distinct ecological areas, and harbour significant cultural and biological diversity; their stewardship provides critical contributions to livelihood, food security, conservation, and climate action. How these territories are accessed, used, and managed is an important question for owner communities, state governments, development agencies, and researchers alike. This extends to how broad community memberships remain invested in territorial use and management, with young people comprising one sub-group often underrepresented in decision-making spaces. We know that internal community norms and structures–often dominated by older, adult males–can limit opportunities for youth to contribute their energy and ideas. We also know that youth can and do leave their home communities to pursue life, work, or education goals and aspirations. Drawing on insights from 5 years of collaborative research with the Indigenous Territory of Lomerío (ITL), Bolivia, we explore the roles that youth play in territorial governance, their perceptions of current structures and novel engagement strategies, and consider what lessons from this case could be applied more broadly. Our findings point to the ITL as an instructive example of how Indigenous (and other rural and remote) communities might enable young people to participate more fully in territorial governance, highlighting the importance of an enabling, underlying socio-cultural context. Based on our work in Bolivia, and lessons from other places, we discuss ways to enhance youth-community-territory linkages to support Indigenous land sovereignty and stewardship and reflect on how research co-design and knowledge co-production can help deliver more robust, inclusive, and useful (in an applied sense) empirical insights in support of such efforts.

Exploring Gender Inequalities and Promoting Equal Opportunities in Ghana's Cocoa Industry Using Harvard Analytical Framework

Using the Harvard Analytical Framework, this study explores the gender inequalities among cocoa farmers in Southern Ghana and also recommends strategies for promoting equal opportunities between the farmers. Specifically, the research identifies and describes the productive, reproductive, and community-based roles within these communities, explores access and control of resources, services, and decision-making processes and ascertains the factors that influence cocoa farmers' gendered opportunities or constraints. We used a cross-sectional survey design approach to select 232 respondents via the multi-stage sampling technique. Data was analysed using mainly descriptive statistics. The study reveals that although men and women cocoa farmers play useful roles in cocoa production, differences exist in their experiences. While men dominate in all the productive roles and some community-based roles, women dominate in the majority of the reproductive roles. Men have more access to and control over resources, services, and decision-making processes. Community norms, political, religious, and social factors serve as gendered opportunities for farmers, while economic factors are gendered opportunities and constraints. The study recommends the promotion of gender-responsive agricultural training that will aim to empower women to engage in productive roles. Policies and interventions that facilitate women’s access and control over essential resources such as land, inputs, and finances must be implemented by the Ghana Cocoa Board

Uneven transmission of traditional knowledge and skills in a changing wildmeat system: Yangambi, Democratic Republic of Congo

IntroductionIndigenous communities typically hold diverse traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of their social-ecological system. Much of this knowledge is embodied as skills related to subsistence practices within a specific landscape and is associated with community values and norms. Ways of knowing often reflect the different activities traditionally undertaken by men and women. The incursion of external forces, including urbanization, the cash economy and migration tends to diminish transmission of traditional embodied skills. Knowledge can be lost as culturally significant environments degrade or species become extirpated. Lack of opportunity to develop traditional knowledge and skills can diminish feelings of place and identity, and thus capacity for local environmental stewardship.MethodsThe Yangambi region, Democratic Republic of Congo is a hunting territory of the Turumbu ethnic group. We used questionnaires to explore how levels of wildmeat knowledge and skill may have changed over time among the Turumbu.ResultsThe responses showed lower levels of self-reported skill among women who started to participate in the last 10-15 years. This pattern partly reflects the period of ‘apprenticeship’ but may also suggest diminished learning opportunity in recent years. Skills in cooking, smoking, and selling wildmeat persisted at a higher level than skills in curing disease and gathering wild produce. There was a much more marked pattern for men, with diminishing levels of wildmeat skill reported for around 35-40 years, and even earlier for knowledge of traditional medicine and wildmeat taboos. Questions about mentoring suggested that women have maintained knowledge pathways between mother and daughter, while men showed a shift toward increased learning from uncles.DiscussionGender differences in sharing and learning TEK may be linked to the type of skills that remain valuable in a changing social, ecological, and economic context. Men traditionally undertake the capture elements of hunting, while women deal with wildmeat processing, marketing, and cooking. The Yangambi wildmeat system has evolved from subsistence to a strongly market-driven economy during the lifetime of our study participants. This shift may partly explain why market-based kills such as food smoking and selling have endured longer than hunter’s nature-based knowledge.

Hakikat Dan Sistem Nilai Dalam Konteks Pendidikan

Human potential must be developed by studying and continuing to read as instructed by Allah in the first revelation, namely IQRA. In fact, this is the essence of education. Reading will be a good culture, whereas never reading will be a bad culture. Not just reading books in copies, but reading the book of life. Books that live within oneself and books that live in the environment, such as family, neighbors, society and social media. Therefore, every human being must communicate with others. Can't live alone. Because humans are social creatures, so get along with everyone well. Live your life by following the rules that apply in society. Don't just want to live as you please. Because humans have feelings, ethics and norms. This is the true essence of education. Gain value by respecting norms. Whether religious norms, social norms, or community norms. Because human values, whether good or bad, can be reflected in the way they behave in society, and this attitude is the result of education that they have learned in life and put into practice in their daily lives. Whether your grades are good or bad, it all depends on you. Because the potential value is in his attitude. Keywords: Essence of education, Good culture, Attitude.

Moral Sense in Different Senses

ABSTRACT To understand the internal structure of moral positions and the nature of moral disagreements, it would be useful to have a “moral sense” model of our different types of moral sensitivity, from our relatively spontaneous friendliness to our appreciation for traditional community norms, ideal ethical norms, and spiritual appeals to ultimate concern. After the first round of modern moral sense theory in Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Edwards, most discussions of the moral sense concept have centered on general theses about moral value (objective or subjective, rational or emotional) without attending to this complexity. Even though the familiar positions in these discussions are not reconcilable on the plane of ethical theory, they need not be seen as simply antagonistic. Working with clearly differentiated senses of both “moral” and “sense,” this article refashions “moral sense theory” as a way of placing the insights of the classic moral sense theories, ethical rationalism, and a distinctly spiritual sensibility in a conceptually stable and empirically more discriminating order. The article also suggests strengthening the realist premise of moral sensing by invoking the model of a game player’s operational sense of how things are going in pursuit of a game’s objectives.

Риторическая структура введений к исследовательским статьям по компьютерным наукам: сравнительный анализ

Research paper introductions are considered challenging, especially for academic writers whose native language is different from English. Despite the large interest in the rhetorical organization of research papers across various disciplines and cultures, little is known about the structural patterns used by Russian authors in English-language research paper introductions in Computer Science as one of the fastest growing scientific fields. To fill the gap, this paper investigates the ways Russian academic writers organize their introductions as compared to the norms of the international scientific community where English is the acknowledged lingua franca. The purpose of this study is to identify discrepancies between the approaches to structuring computer science introductions generated in the English language by Russian and Anglophone authors. Drawing evidence from 43 research papers published in highly ranked Russian and Anglophone journals in Computer Science, it addresses the main features specific to research paper introductions in this field and analyzes how rhetorical moves are realized linguistically by both native and non-native academic writers based on the create-a-research-space (CARS) model. The results of the qualitative study show that Russian authors make use of fewer strategies than native English writers; moreover, the former tend to avoid the ‘establishing a niche’ move, which is considered obligatory in the structure of a research paper introduction. The paper adds to the exploration of cross-cultural variations in academic writing.

Subject dislocation in Ontario English: Insights from sociolinguistic typology

AbstractSubject dislocation (SD) is common across languages. In French, it is a vernacular norm. In English, it is comparatively rare. This article examines English SD in a unique contrastive situation in Ontario, Canada: two communities where SD is a community norm, one where individuals speak both English and French (Kapuskasing), and the other where the population speaks English only (Parry Sound). Dislocated subjects are produced by the same underlying linguistic mechanisms in both places, with parallel constraints by type of subject and intervening material, suggesting a typological universal. However, SD is age-graded in Kapuskasing, regardless of heritage language. In Parry Sound, it is obsolescent, in steady decline over the twentieth century. We conclude that while typological trends are underlain by universal cognitive processes, locally embedded sociocultural influences are the source of differentiation.

La mediación dentro de la justicia indígena

In accordance with the Constitution in the Republic of Ecuador, indigenous communities, peoples and nationalities are empowered to exercise jurisdictional functions in their territorial scope, in accordance with their ancestral traditions and their own law. Currently, the authorities of these communities can resolve the various internal controversies in accordance with their own laws and policies, as long as they do not violate the Constitution or internationally recognized human rights. The State must ensure that all public agencies and institutions adhere to the rulings of the indigenous jurisdiction; with the exception of criminal matters, which have a differentiated treatment in ordinary justice. With this approach, we recognize that the State is not the only source of justice, being applicable a parallel legal system that respects the norms of the native communities. Thus, conflict resolution alternatives such as mediation emerge as a viable method to resolve disputes. Due to his success in protecting the cultural norms and traditions of indigenous communities, this figure serves as an illustrative model of legal diversity. This paper delves into the value of mediation as a means to achieve legal pluralism that respects indigenous uses and customs.

Brain Drain from Pakistan: Causes and Factors

The problem of "brain drain" is a serious and ongoing issue for many countries, including Pakistan. This article explores the complex web of causes behind the outflow of Pakistan's educated and skilled labor force, a trend with far-reaching effects on the country's economic growth. Many highly trained Pakistanis feel compelled to leave their homeland in search of economic opportunity because of the country's poor economic climate. The need to leave your country because of political unrest, poor leadership, or fear for your safety only grows in intensity as a result. Constraints on access to excellent education and research opportunities are discussed as contributing factors to the brain drain from Pakistan. Emigration choices are heavily influenced by cultural and social variables such as family pressure and community norms. The study also explores the impact of government policies on brain drain patterns and the effect that globalization and connectivity have had in making overseas possibilities more accessible. It also delves into the sociocultural changes resulting from the loss of human capital that has plagued Pakistan due to this phenomenon. The paper indicates the policy suggestions and possible options for reducing brain drain in Pakistan in light of the data presented here.

The Relation of Community Values and Norms to the Practice of Pilgrimage in Mount Kawi, Indonesia

This study aims to see the relationship between community behaviour in practising at the tomb of religious figures in Mount Kawi, Malang Regency, Indonesia. The behaviour of pilgrims in visiting has a variety of motivations and interests. Mount Kawi is a pilgrimage tourism site with an exciting background. There are tombs of Islamic religious figures and places of worship of ethnic Chinese. The relationship between the two has an interesting relationship to know. Researchers use a qualitative approach by selecting several informants and processing the data qualitatively. The results showed that the relationship between people's behaviour in performing pilgrims leads to values, norms, and group identity. People's encouragement to visit tombs is more on the mundane aspect. Therefore, individual symbols appear that strengthen as a form of spirituality respectively. This research also impacts improving the quality of pilgrimage tourism, which has a pattern of making the tomb of religious figures its symbol.

The personal is professional: exploring romantic relationship within the socioecology of an athlete brand

ABSTRACT Research Question Human brands are embedded in a web of social relationships, and examining athlete brand dynamics holistically requires accounting for the different layers of social embeddedness. However, prior research has focused on stakeholder interactions and brand spillover effects, omitting consumers’ views of athlete brands concerning interpersonal relationships in private life. We address this gap by applying a social ecology paradigm and examining how consumers perceive an athlete’s brand with attention to their personal life and romantic relationships. Research Methods We conducted an embedded case study focusing on National Football League quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Brittany Matthews, his then-fiancée (now wife), and thematically analysed 5,115 user comments in response to three Facebook posts featuring the couple by ESPN. Results and Findings Complex and polarised discourses were uncovered, reaffirming or questioning the relationship’s authenticity. Evaluations of the athlete were integrated with issues of gender, status, and race, whereas his romantic partner was positioned as an asset for status signalling, informing the athlete's brand image. Implications The work reveals how evaluations of interpersonal relationships, such as romantic relationships, serve as observable cues informing the meaning of an athlete’s brand. We uncover how the interpretations of the romantic partner and relationship are interlinked with societal structures, celebrity, and sport community norms. Thus, we demonstrate how the social and industry influences on a human brand that are situated within different socioecological systems must be explored in concert rather than in isolation.

Responsif Akan Pandangan Mengenai LGBT Berdasarkan Perspektif HAM, Agama, dan Hukum di Indonesia

Sexual behaviour or actions that differ from generally accepted sexual norms in the LGBT community should not be considered something that should be taken for granted. This sexual behaviour or action arises because there are variations in individual sexual desires. Sexual orientation and habits refer to a person's desire to express their desire, love, emotions, and sexual activities towards individuals of the same gender, the opposite gender, or both. LGBT is an abbreviation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender, which refers to a group of individuals who have a sexual orientation or gender identity that is different from the majority. There are various views in society regarding LGBT, with some rejecting this variation in sexual behaviour while others openly accepting it. The debate regarding LGBT issues is increasingly intense and widespread, with various arguments related to human rights (HAM) and arguments based on religion. This research aims to investigate different views regarding LGBT issues in Indonesia, both from a religious and a human rights perspective.

Cultural Aspects Constraining Mine Water Supply Chain Management in ASAL Areas of Kitui County, Kenya

Kitui County receives low levels of rainfall annually thus considered as Arid and Semi-Arid (ASAL) area. The community has formed many cultural imaginations about water ensuing from scarcity and insufficiency of the commodity in the area. This study sought to establish how community livelihood, beliefs, norms and customs, poverty, rituals and gender involvement constrained mine water supply chain management. The findings showed that there is difficulty in accessing water and the quantity and quality available do not match community domestic needs. Consensus building and factoring in of cultural aspects is key in ensuring success of mining and extraction activities.

From 20th century weddings to quarantine weddings: Old and new approaches to analyzing rituals

Although ethnographic studies of marriage in 20th century Hungary have reckoned with the impact of socio-cultural transformations on getting married, nonetheless they primarily emphasized the normative aspects and permanence of the ritual; they stressed that marriage preserved “traditions”, or even that folk tradition acting as an ethno-folk-national “matrix” preserved and maintained the wedding rituals. Even if they touched upon the transformation of rituals, they primarily highlighted the modernization, simplification, fragmentation of the act of getting married and the marginalization of original meanings, traditional community norms, ideologies, and roles. Could this static and normative image depicting marriage not as a changing but rather as a decaying, diminished institution be in fact the result and consequence of an epistemological tradition, a methodological-theoretical focus that hides the process of the emergence of a new conception of marriage based on free choice, improvisation and on the idea of the individual breaking free of the yoke of normative traditions? The purpose of my paper is twofold. I will examine what the earlier Hungarian ethnographic studies understood by constancy, normativity, traditional or modern of wedding rituals. On the other hand, based on my current anthropological research (2019-2022, during the Covid–2019 pandemic) I will analyze the contemporary marriage rituals: and using the results of my research I also undertake a different kind of rereading of 20th century ethnographic descriptions. My paper based on the results of my digital anthropological research carried out between 2019 and 2022 (online questionnaires, digital ethnography, and in-depth interviews). I argue that the earlier Hungarian ethnographic approaches to weddings at the time may have been significantly influenced by prevailing Hungarian and international normative conceptualizations and theories of tradition and modernity.

Determinant of Women Empowerment in Southern Punjab (Pakistan): An Empirical Study

Women's empowerment is the most debated topic in world literature today. It is one of the Millennium Development Goals in relation to microfinance programmes; a latest issue in the microcredit literature. Not only was Grameen Bank founder Dr. Younus awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize in Bangladesh's micro-credit program, but it has also been a hot topic for researchers since its introduction in the mid-1990s to 1970s. This study considers women's empowerment empirically, as it is very difficult to measure this qualitative term. An attempt has been made to develop an Empowerment Index that has three important dimensions. Regression analysis is used to compare women's empowerment between microcredit borrowers and non-borrowers. The results obtained show that borrowed women obtained higher points in the Empowerment Index. Women's education and household education, community norms, and the impact of the media have also been observed to be significant factors in women's empowerment.

Incentivizing endemic biodiversity conservation under a warming climate through market-based instruments

ABSTRACT This study investigates the potential of utilising payment for ecosystem services (PES) led incentives to support the conservation of endemic biodiversity and the development of alternative livelihood opportunities, specifically through ecotourism, in regions facing water scarcity. It highlights the ability of PES programmes to not only generate additional income for communities but also encourage land use practices that safeguard biodiversity and enhance water recharge. Moreover, when social norms adapt and transform as water availability improves and PES incomes increase, it may promote the emergence of community-driven ecotourism ventures. Using the case of the lateritic plateaus in the Konkan region of Maharashtra, India, we design a dynamic optimisation model of the local community's utility maximisation problem under land use choices that could potentially provide them with water security and alternative livelihoods through ecotourism. The findings indicate that when PES income is substantial, community norms and social enterprises undergo a synergistic transformation, thereby offering livelihood resilience in the context of a warming climate. Moreover, as rising temperatures diminish the productivity of conventional land use choices like mango orchards, timely intervention through PES programmes can effectively avert an irreparable degradation of the lateritic plateaus while ensuring sustainable water resources in the long run.

Necessity as a driver in bending agricultural gender norms in the Eastern Gangetic Plains of South Asia

ABSTRACTThe majority of the farmers in the rural Global South continue to depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. Despite the fact that women account for almost half of the world’s farmers, they face gender-specific challenges such as deeply rooted cultural and social norms that limit their access to land, assets, financial markets, agricultural training, and information. Using semi-structured interviews with farmers in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, this study investigates how necessity is becoming one of the major drivers in the bending of agricultural gender norms. The study investigates the connections between feminist political ecology and agricultural technology production frameworks in order to comprehend the implications of technology adoption and influences on gender norms in communities. Women’s participation in agriculture was found to be heavily influenced by social and cultural barriers, and they were frequently subjected to social criticism for breaking the systemic gender norms. This paper emphasizes on the growing pattern of bending gender norms with recommendations for increasing women’s participation and scope in future agriculture development initiatives through policies and interventions that emphasize gender equity.

Settling down in Southwest Asia: the Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic transformation

Permanent settlement began in southwest Asia across the end of the Pleistocene (the Epipalaeolithic) and the beginning of the Holocene (the Neolithic). Aggregation represents a transformation of the cultural niche, involving major social and cultural innovations and profound developments of the strategies of subsistence. At first, the scalar stress of living in large, permanent communities was diffused through corporate effort in the construction and maintenance of monumental communal buildings, a complex material symbolism, and increasing intensity of communal rituals; participation demonstrated commitment and conformity to community norms. As cultivated crops and managed herds of sheep and goat gradually became the predominant source of subsistence, the old sharing ethos was overtaken by the household as the central socio-economic unit; the household became the focus for ritual and symbolism. As population aggregations grew larger, their supra-regional networks of socio-economic sharing and exchange also became more complex, extensive and intensive. The new cultural niche based on networked aggregations produced a marked acceleration in both the rate of cultural accumulation and the rate of demographic growth. At the end of the Neolithic, plow-agriculture began in place of horticulture; there are the first signs of mixed agro-pastoral economies, the marking of private property, new technologies (ceramics and copper metallurgy), and, in southern Iraq, irrigation agriculture. At this time, too, the accelerating expansion of the population of farmers is marked by the appearance of their new settlements in all directions.