Social Anthropology Research Articles

IDENTITY SEARCH - PERTURBATION AND SCRIMMAGE

The present endeavour is to exfoliate the status of health issues of women with new technology and the government schemes. The changing approach of society towards women has bought a new horizon where she is placed in the safe hands. The reflections of social change and cultural anthropology of gender politics is incorporated with the strong image of women today. Balancing the work and the family, is a challenge where women is ignoring her self care and facing the repercussions in her health. As women is the core support of her family and society, she needs to be well nourished. Both women in rural and urban areas, faces the health issues in different criteria and circumstances. The government measures along with NGO’s and the steps taken are multidimensional where much progress is evident in society. Women today, is a far better version compared to the last few years. The efforts have not gone in vain. Today, we can see new challenges to cope up for women and at the same time new ways to reconcile it. The anxiety and confusion of women has seen a reconstruction in its own way. The policies and the schemes’ prioritizing education has helped her to make a better choice which rebuilt the status in society.

Language, belief, and cultural resilience: Rastafarian discourse in Britain

This paper explores the intricate relationship between language, belief, and cultural resilience within the Rastafarian movement in Britain. Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives from linguistics, religious studies, cultural anthropology, and sociology, the paper delves into the unique linguistic practices, spiritual beliefs, and cultural expressions of Rastafarians in Britain.The paper examines the evolution of Rastafarian discourse, highlighting its distinctiveness and resilience within the context of Jamaican Patois and British multiculturalism. It analyses the role of language in shaping Rastafarian identity, resistance, and community cohesion, considering how linguistic practices reflect and reinforce Rastafarian beliefs and cultural norms.Furthermore, the paper explores the religious beliefs and practices that underpin Rastafarianism, particularly the reverence for Emperor Haile Selassie I and its implications for Rastafarian identity in Britain. It investigates how Rastafarian beliefs intersect with broader social and political issues, including race, colonialism, and social justice, shaping the movement’s engagement with British society.Finally, the paper examines the concept of cultural resilience within the Rastafarian community, analysing how Rastafarians in Britain have preserved and adapted their cultural traditions in the face of challenges such as racism, discrimination, and cultural assimilation. Overall, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the Rastafarian movement in Britain and its significance in the context of language, belief, and cultural resilience. It underscores the enduring impact of Rastafarian discourse and practices in shaping diverse cultural landscapes and fostering social change./ Keywords: Rastafarian colonial discourse, global dynamics, racial politics, Britain, societal integration, policy measures, fragmentation, Afrocentric interpretations, colonial resistance, prophetic salvation, cultural revitalization, London, African exploitation, white working-class culture

Dvojí život historické antropologie.

Since 1989 modern western methodological approaches, including historical anthropology, have been adopted in Czech academic circles, both spontaneously (among historians) and in institutionalised form (the case of ethnology). Very often, however, historical anthropology has been taken up only as an external label that has not meant any real change in research methods. This has simply encouraged the replication of the formal and informal ties and institutions inside the academic community that originated in the period of "normalisation" and that undermine the possibility of the real transformation of our academic environment. The author therefore attempts to distinguish in terms of both theory and method between two types of "historical anthropology": chronologically the first type has been closer to historical sociology (and directed in its way to the history of mentalities), while the second drew inspiration from social anthropology and led towards micro-history. In the Czech environment the ethnologists are closer to the first and the historians to the second, but often without either group being aware of the fundamental difference between the two types.

Appreciation, Analysis and Creation in the Teaching-learning of the Plastic Arts

Aim. The Didactics of the Plastic Education is necessarily nourished by the general didactics and the arts, as well as by their particular methodologies, in aspects related to the teaching-learning of the textual analysis, and specifically, the study of the visual code (iconic and visual signs, tropes or rhetorical figures, etc.), which dialogues with theory, semiotics, cultural anthropology, among other sciences. Methods. In academic research, methods such as the analysis of the results of pedagogical activity, ethnographic or experiential and inductive-deductive methods were used. Results. The Didactics of a Plastic Education requires an urgent review that includes, from its most general principles and laws, to the aspects related to the selection and sequencing of content, the role of the student's plastic education in achieving a social model, the distinctions between artistic education, aesthetic education and teaching of the plastic arts in all the integrality and complexity of their discourses, the teaching-learning process, its essence and contradictions, the categorical system of the teaching-learning process, among other fundamental aspects. The present study contributes to this rethinking of the theoretical and methodological postulates of the Didactics of Plastic Education, as it proposes as an objective: to argue the didactic principle of the unity between appreciation, analysis and textual creation in the teaching-learning process of the visual image analysis. Conclusion. This argument constitutes a theoretical contribution to the science, and clarifies, while unifying, criteria and procedures in the pedagogical practice of artists, teachers, instructors and masters of the plastic arts.

Caste, gender, race: Signposts of a feminist anti-caste approach

This commentary responds to the essay by Suraj Yengde titled ‘Race and Caste in the Making of US Sociology’, picks up a few threads in Yengde’s argument and attempts to unravel them in the interests of deepening this conversation on an issue that has returned to the foreground of global sociology and anthropology. Given the thin and tenuous disciplinary separations between sociology and social anthropology in India, especially evident in studies on caste, this commentary straddles these two disciplines in the Indian context and points to some interesting disciplinary intersections in the American context. Specifically, Yengde’s discussion of questions of caste, race and class is extended to look at Indian and diasporic contexts to speak to the specific intersections of caste, race, gender, class, region and temporality in contexts of caste formation drawing on the work of Joan Mencher and Gail Omvedt, among others.

Anthropologie argentine

Argentine Anthropology is a discipline of disciplines—sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, ethnohistory, folklore and ethnology, biological anthropology and forensic anthropology—whose first academic exponents date back to the end of the 19th century. It accompanied studies in the United States and Western and Central Europe and developed in close relationship with the institutions of the Argentine State, particularly educational, military and those dedicated to population policies and territorial definition. It was characterized by applying to a country that exported temperate products, with little need for intensive and slave labour, with repeated state intervention to the University system, and with an extensive overseas immigrant population. After a relatively conservative period, anthropology became one of the most innovative and reference disciplines in the Argentine social sciences.

What Am I Doing Here? Self-Reflexivity in Cross-Border Journalism Research

In journalism research conducted in the Global South, power relationships between the researcher and the researched mirror the uneven power structures between the Western journalists and their news subjects or their non-Western colleagues working alongside them. But so far, the figure of the journalism researcher in such contexts has not been problematized to any great extent in journalism scholarship. Moreover, the journalism researcher working in such contexts borrows heavily from the methodological toolkit of ethnography. But while the cultural anthropologists who created and refined ethnographic methodology have long been interrogating the colonial and neocolonial logics that inform ethnographic methods, journalism scholars have yet to significantly engage in such a self-critical project. We take ourselves as the starting points of the self-reflexive critical debate we believe journalism researchers interested in decolonizing journalism studies must have with themselves when it comes to conducting research in spaces of asymmetric power relations within global journalism. Laid out in three first person self-reflexive narratives, our critical questions are prompted by our own geopolitical and embodied presence in Lebanon, Afghanistan, and North Korea. We then discuss the commonalities among the questions that arose from our respective positionalities. Through this grounded, self-reflexive exploration, we aim to position global journalism researchers at the center of critical inquiry.

Social technology and people's mental health: informal work in an urban context

This article presents the experience of implementing the Health Promotion Extension Project through Social and Mental Health Education through Applied Technology, that is, Plant Biotechnology applied as a resource for Eco-Socio-Environmental Technology products. Aimed at members of indigenous peoples and ethnic groups in Rio de Janeiro, users of the Environmental Health, Parasitology and Bioethics Project (SAPB-LIPAT/FF/UFRJ), the project was carried out in an intersectoral partnership with the Laboratory for Studies on Aging Processes (PROVE/IPUB/UFRJ) and the Amazon Biobusiness Center (CBA), in a multi, inter and transdisciplinary approach. The article discusses the importance of social actors in the operationalization of public policy guidelines, with a focus on the promotion and defense of human rights, especially with regard to the right to work. The participation of the Sateré-Mawé and Tukano indigenous people was highlighted, demonstrating the leading role of these groups in solving local problems, which strengthened their cultures, worldviews and self-direction, demystifying attitudinal barriers. The present study was initiated through anamnesis in ethnopsychiatry (whose approach includes cultural anthropology). This study included the participation of these individuals from indigenous peoples and other peoples in an urban context in Rio de Janeiro, demonstrating how the anamnesis of unique ethnographic narratives favored investment in local study and work with elements of their cultures, reinforcing social ties and civic contribution. The project also explored procedures in plant biotechnology, specifically the ecophysiology of Euterpe oleraceae (Açaí) seeds, to analyze the desired biological effects of plant extracts of ethnic origin (Euphorbia tirucalli, Bixa orellana, Punica granatum and Tagetes erecta). Only E. tirucalli exerted antifungal action on the seeds used for informal work (crafts). In this way, equity of access and mental health were promoted through listening, but also through the resolution of concrete local problems, in a simple and viable way, maintaining the participation and autonomy of the participants through informal work. However, the expansion of this small and successful initiative depends on the engagement of a greater number of professionals, teachers and public managers committed to promoting dignity through work for these populations.

ACCULTURATION OF ISLAMIC CULTURE AND LOCAL CULTURE IN DRUMING TRADITION IN PANJANG REGION VILLAGE, KUCHING, SARAWAK, MALAYSIA

This article focuses on the acculturation of Islamic culture and local culture in the Bergendang tradition. The purpose of writing this article is to preserve the traditions that have been carried out by the Rantau Panjang Malay community in order to introduce them to the public. The approach and theoretical framework used in this research is the cultural anthropology approach and acculturation theory with a functional approach. Meanwhile, the methods used are ethnographic methods and phenomenological methods. From this research, it can be found that the background to the emergence of the Drumming tradition in Kampung Rantau Panjang is related to the absence of entertainment in ancient times, encouraging the people to create offerings to fill their free time and provide entertainment. In this case, previous people started the tradition of drumming by tapping on used boards and it produced different sounds and could arouse people's interest in dancing to the sound of used boards being hit. The developments and changes that have occurred have helped the Bergendang tradition continue to be in demand by every level of society. Even though some structures have changed, this traditional entertainment still maintains the elements and rules of the event. Apart from that, Islamic values ​​have become the spirit of various aspects in the implementation of the Bergendang tradition. Then, the majority of the people of Kampung Rantau Panjang responded to the implementation of the Bergendang tradition with a positive response. This can be seen from the enthusiasm of the residents when carrying out this tradition.

Attempting an Ontology of Participatory Film

In this video-essay, participatory filmmaker, Paul Cooke, and social anthropologist, Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, discuss in detail images from two activist-focussed, participatory video projects Cooke has run with young people in South Africa and Lebanon. They ask whether participatory film can communicate their creators’ activist intentions to audiences often far removed from the original context of production. They challenge themselves to answer this question by deliberately juxtaposing their respective disciplines’ distinct philosophical approaches to ontology. Bazin’s foundational discussion of the ontology of the photographic image (as a universally relatable ‘essence’ encapsulated in the image) is juxtaposed with anthropology’s ‘ontological turn’ (a radical cultural-relativist focus on people and contextually situated meaning). The video-essay reflects on whether the young participant filmmakers’ aesthetic choices generate images which speak for themselves or, alternatively, whether the transfigurations these images undergo through different registers of representation and curation – as the films move from community showcasing event to international film festival or academic setting – change their originally-intended meanings. In identifying tensions between proximity and distance, intimacy and exploitation, the potentials and limitations of mediating local activists’ voices to remote audiences through film is left up to the spectator for final arbitration.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: coping with zoonotic spillovers and climate injustice

ABSTRACT This art installation centers on then-recent outbreaks of rabies and Nipah viruses in India and Bangladesh, and reveals unexpected connections between vultures, fruit bats, and humans. Using Victorian and Dutch decorative arts from time periods in which England and the Netherlands were connected to these contemporary outbreak sites through colonization, the installation highlights the way climate injustice influences which humans and animals bear the most risk in disease spillovers. Using work by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, the installation also considers how culture (particularly art) functions as a psychological mechanism for coping with death anxiety.

Boekpayoo Customary Ceremony of Ga-Dangme in Nungua: Culture Versus Law in Ghana’s Fight Against Child Marriages

Child marriage has been an age-long problem in Ghana’s quest of protecting the rights and development of young girls. Though there are various international and domestic legal frameworks to assist the Ghana government in taking proactive steps in fighting against child marriages, there are some deep-rooted cultural practices commemorated in some Ghanaian traditional communities that seem to derail the government’s efforts. This paper aims to analyze the Boekpayoo customary ceremony organized by the Nungua Traditional Council in Ghana at the Gborbu temple on the 30th of March 2024. It offers a deeper understanding of the appropriateness and legality of the Boekpayoo customary ceremony to show how Ghana struggles to end all forms of child or early marriage. This paper puts the customary ceremony under the lens of existing domestic and international legal frameworks and cultural anthropology perspectives. This paper has relied on and has been critically analyzed through secondary data from national and international legal instruments, cultural anthropology literature, and news reports. This study revealed that the procedure for the Boekpayoo ceremony, as well as the fitting appointment for occupying the position of Naa Yoomo Ayemuede, is legitimate, as it helps in the preservation and promotion of the place-identity history and culture of the Ga-Dangmes. However, the timing and selection of Naa Okromo need to be analyzed as they are not in accordance with the established national and international legal frameworks.

Features of the organization and activities of the military college of the supreme court of the USSR during World War II

Without pretending to be exhaustive, the authors aim to focus on the organizational features of the functioning of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court (MCSC) of the USSR during the Second World War and the specifics of its punitive practice in the specified period in the western regions of Ukraine. The purpose of the task is to clarify the powers, the circumstances of the struggle for the strengthening of the monopoly in the control of military tribunals (MT) between the MCSC and the People's Commissariat of Justice (PCJ) of the USSR, highlighting the role of the Military Board in passing judgments, the implementation of absentee justice, as well as the details of the preparation and conducting field sessions in the west of Ukraine. The research methodology combines the tools of historical and legal analysis and social anthropology. The scientific novelty consists in posing and revealing the problem of conceptualization and practical implementation of the punitive policy of the Soviet state with the participation of the highest military judicial institution. The material introduced into scientific circulation makes it possible to focus research optics on the issues of interaction and parallelism, the struggle between various departments for control over special courts, to create a more complete picture of the arbitrariness that unfolded in the last war and post-war years in the western Ukrainian lands. It was established that the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR was an integral part of the political terror implemented both in the armed forces and against the civilian population. Created in 1939, the parallelism in the control of the VT by the People's Commissariat of Justice and the MCSC caused a confrontation between these bodies. The top of the USSR used this in their interests to maintain their own undivided control over the judiciary. The content and methods/forms of the punitive practice of this institution (customary nature, absentee justice, etc.) remained intact since the Great Terror and were fully controlled by the highest political leadership of the USSR. This was clearly confirmed during the work of field sessions in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR.

Celebration of Nature and Culture through Gaura Parba: An Interdisciplinary Study of Environmental Stewardship and Cultural Sustainability

Gaura Parba, also known as Gaura Purnima or Gaura Tritiya, is an ancient Hindu festival celebrated predominantly in Uttar Pradesh, India, and in the Far Western Region of Nepal, represents a unique amalgamation of nature, culture, and spirituality. This festival, dedicated to the worship of Goddess Gauri (an incarnation of Goddess Parvati), holds immense cultural and spiritual significance for the communities that observe it. However, beyond its religious connotations, Gaura Parba embodies a profound reverence for nature and serves as a conduit for the valorization of both natural and cultural heritage. This research explores Gaura Parba's significance in valorizing natural and cultural heritage within these communities. Employing an interdisciplinary approach encompassing various theoretical insights from cultural studies, anthropology, and environmental science, this study elucidates how Gaura Parba fosters a deep connection with nature and preserves cultural traditions. By examining the festival's rituals, beliefs, and environmental practices, the research explores the complex interplay between nature, culture, and spirituality within the context of Gaura Parba. The findings underscore Gaura Parba's contributions to ecological conservation, social cohesion, and the transmission of traditional knowledge, while also addressing contemporary challenges and opportunities for revitalizing the festival in the face of modernization and environmental change. This study provides valuable insights for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners aiming to enhance cultural resilience and sustainable development.

Siempre relacionando

This lecture digs into some of the back story to current anthropological interest in relations. It focuses on aspects of the British school of social anthropology, and on one of its enduring conundrums. In order to make its presentation at least partly digestible, the author constructs a light scaffolding for it after the manner of a detective novel. So it will investigate The Case of the Changing Perspective and, as a plot within the plot, The Case of the Blind Spot.

From Manichaeism to Politics: an Ideological Instrumentalization of Mykhailo Drahomanov’s Social Anthropology by the Ukrainian Leftists

In the history of Ukrainian sociology, the legacy of Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-1895) is primarily analyzed in terms of his socio-political writings or early methodological ones. However, when considering Drahomanov's long-term and internationally recognized contribution to social sciences and humanities, it is his works at the intersection of folklore studies and social anthropology that are much less often in the focus of sociologists' attention. An important component of these works was Drahomanov's prolonged interest in dualistic heresies and the views on social reality as divided between truth and falsehood, transmitted by the. This interest, which guided the scholar’s research interests for twenty years, had far-reaching consequences for the politicization of the Ukrainian national movement at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The author argues that Drahomanov's folklore and social-anthropological writings, which attracted the attention of researchers of Gnosticism and dualism like C.-G. Jung, as well as contemporary anthropologists, led him to the conviction that the traditional Ukrainian folk worldview tends towards a dualistic, Bogomil-Manichaean, origin-based perspective on the world. He used this conviction for political purposes, and the younger generation of activists of the Ukrainian national movement, who gave rise to radicals, socialist revolutionaries, and social democrats, widely exploited this socio-anthropological discovery for their own political agitation. The conclusions of the study lay the groundwork for further movement in several possible directions: research of the left-wing press to identify specific strategies for the application of the dualistic myth in propaganda, providing a more general historical-cultural context for contemporary studies of populism in Ukraine, as well as a general revaluation of different components in Drahomanov's legacy in the contemporary history of Ukrainian sociology.

Cultural Moral Evolution: A Proposed Model and Application in a Review and Analysis of the Evolutionary Stages of Diverse Cultures and the Impact on the Emergence and Identification of LGBTQA+ Communities

Abstract The authors present a five-part initial examination of cultural moral evolution in several diverse cultures, looking specifically at attitudes towards LGBTQA+ communities and scrutinizing how societal attitudes shift from fear, animus, tolerance, and acceptance to integration. This evolution is gauged through various societal lenses, including laws, religion, human rights, and educational practices. In Part One, the authors discuss the concept of cultural moral evolution and how it differs from and shares some of the same traits as cultural anthropology. Part Two explores cultural moral evolution towards LGBTQA+ communities in three countries: Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia. Part Three extends this analysis to four US states – Florida, Alaska, Hawaii, and Colorado. Part Four focuses on the US military, particularly the US Navy, analysing its cultural moral evolution towards the LGBTQA+ community. Finally, these observations are synthesized, with a summary of how the cultural moral evolution model is applied across different societal segments.

Европейская культурная традиция и мы: идеи М.К. Петрова

The subject of the article is the main problems of the European cultural tradition, considered by M.K. Petrov, and the questions of its specificity and continuity in the historical development from ancient philosophy to experimental sci­ence raised by him. The historical and philosophical context of his formation of the original theory of types of cultures is reconstructed. The rejection of He­gelian panlogism and the position on the universality of a linear development that is uniform for all cultures raises the question of the internal sources of cul­tural development. The article shows that Petrov is looking for answers on the paths of linguistics and the hypothesis of linguistic relativity. Turning to ancient philosophy allows Petrov to reconstruct the intellectual events caused by the emergence of language as a human invention, which broke ties with the former world of stable meanings and opened up the space for the emancipa­tion of the word and the desacralization of knowledge. In this context, the article examines a number of controversial issues about the biocode and sociocode, the name and sign that allowed them to remain the center of an extra-biological system of social coding, and about the diversity of cultures in a polycentric world. Questions are raised about the correlation of Petrov’s positions and mo­dern cultural anthropology

Становление современной российской социологии: интервью с профессором Владимиром Вячеславовичем Козловским

We had a conversation with Vladimir Kozlovskiy in April 2024, coinciding with the 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Vladimir Kozlovskiy is a Doctor of Sciences (Philosophy), Professor, Director of the Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Branch of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SI RAS – FCTAS RAS), Head of the Department of Sociology of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Sociology, Saint Petersburg State University, and Chief Co-Editor of the Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology. During the interview, the influence of culture and social processes on the development and institutionalization of Russian sociology was discussed. Vladimir Kozlovskiy is one of the leading experts in the field of the history of sociology and was awarded the II-class Medal of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland"; he is the Honoured Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation. His studies of civilizational development models of modern societies have made a great contribution to modern sociology. The relevance of research conducted under the leadership of Vladimir Kozlovskiy is especially high in the context of the modern development of Russian society.

Fieldwork Locations: Where Sociocultural Anthropologists Conduct Research

Historians of anthropology have observed how the locations where sociocultural anthropologists conduct fieldwork have influenced their methods and theories. This paper provides information about (1) where sociocultural anthropologists publishing in selected well-known journals in recent years have been conducting fieldwork; and (2) how contemporary fieldwork locations resemble and differ from those in the past. The geographical distribution of fieldwork sites by world region prior to the mid-1950s differs considerably from that of more recent years. However, since 1960 the only significant changes have been increases in the proportions of field sites in Europe and the Middle East. In comparison with their populations, fieldwork sites in both the past and present greatly overrepresent some regions and countries and underrepresent other regions and countries. The result is a sampling problem that hinders attempts to make cross-cultural generalizations.