Socio-political Strategies Research Articles

Settlement Patterns and Built Environment at the Archaeological Site of Yalahau, Yucatan

ABSTRACT The Parque Estatal de Yalahau Project is a multidisciplinary effort combining archaeology, paleoecology, and historical ecology. The initial analysis focuses on settlement patterns within the Protected Natural Area of Parque Estatal de Yalahau-Yucatan, Mexico. The research uses a conceptual framework integrating humans, non-human species, and geological/climatic forces into a holistic, historical landscape approach, where humans shaped and symbolically interpreted their surroundings, leaving tangible impacts. The study situates findings within the Maya region, contributing to the growing recognition that the ancient Maya shaped sustainable landscapes rather than degrading the environment. The discussion centers on three key aspects of the Prehispanic Yalahau landscape: 1) settlement patterns in wetlands; 2) Maya environmental engineering and the absence of water stress; and, 3) landscape as an expression of sociopolitical strategy. The Yalahau site demonstrates how the Maya thoughtfully blended urban spaces with plants, animal ecologies, and water resources, reflecting deep social understanding of terrain and wetlands.

The Use of Balances in Late Andean Prehistory (ad 1200–1650)

Studies of balances (scales) in Europe, Asia and northern Africa have found that their use is not exclusively tied to state control or market exchange, but rather grew and evolved through interactions among bureaucrats in centralized states, merchants, artisans and local leaders. Research on balances from Andean South America can contribute to an understanding of the diverse roles and functions of balances, as they developed independently in a region where there were both exchange-based and non-market economies. This article includes data on Andean balances that reveal that they were used as early as the Late Intermediate Period (ad 1100–1400), and that there is variation in the characteristics and dimensions of the balances. Similar to other regions, balances in the Andes were likely used by different groups of specialists including merchants, bureaucrats and artisans. To understand how balances were used, they need to be understood alongside long-distance exchange practices, socio-political strategies, the organization of craft production and the possible use of currency.

Revolution and Resistance in the Desert: The Guggenheim System's Impact on Nitrate Mining and Society in Atacama, 1926-31.

In 1926, during an economic crisis that severely impacted the mining industry, Guggenheim Brothers, the Guggenheim family business, implemented a new technological system to extract saltpeter from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Known as the Guggenheim system, this cutting-edge technological innovation had a significant impact on regional society and facilitated the introduction of Chilean saltpeter into the global fertilizer market. For this system to succeed, however, it had to incorporate a sociopolitical strategy based on a highly hierarchical and well-controlled labor force. Through their political and cultural influence in the region, the Guggenheim family's industry transformed a remote area into a state periphery, creating new ways of inhabiting the desert within a strict framework in which workers' lives were regulated by company-imposed labor discipline. With more political power than the state, the Guggenheim family sought to suppress any social agency deemed dangerous to the production of saltpeter.

5-6세기 고구려의 몽촌토성 점유 양상에 관한 연구

This paper aims to examine the processs of regeneration of Mongchontoseong by Goguryeo, following Baekje’s relocation of its capital to Ungjin. Drawing upon the artifacts from 1980s excavation and the recent fieldwork findings, this study explores the spatial and temporal reorganization in the Mongchontoseong after 5th century AD. The spatial distribution of the pottery from the southern part of the inner Mongchontoseong site was first explored. Goguryeo strategically reused places previously built by Baekje, including storage, ponds, and pits, and also altered the built environment. The features, iron weapons, farming tools, and pottery type also reveal the diverse aspects of the long-term occupation of Goguryeo, taking the roles of domestic housing, rituals, agricultural activities, and storage. The radiocarbon dating results from the pits and roadways show Goguryeo’s active engagement in infrastructure reconstruction from the late 5th century to the middle of the 6th century, predating the reoccupation by the allied forces of Baekje and Silla in 550 AD. The material evidence reveals Goguryeo’s prolonged regeneration of the site for the southward expansion, as sociopolitical strategies in the context of warfare in the Korean Peninsula during 5-6th century AD.

Settling down at Ceibal and Cuello: variation in the transition to sedentism across the Maya lowlands

During the Middle Preclassic period (c. 1000–350 BCE), the people of the Maya lowlands transitioned from a mobile horticulturalist to sedentary farming lifestyle, exemplified by permanent houses arranged around patios and rebuilt over generations. Early evidence of this change has been found in northern Belize, in the Belize Valley, and at Ceibal, Guatemala. At Cuello and other sites in northern Belize, mortuary rituals tied to ancestor veneration created inequality from the beginning of sedentary life. There, relatively dense populations facilitated the emergence of competitive sociopolitical strategies. However, Maya communities in different regions adopted different aspects of sedentism at different times and employed different power strategies. Unlike Cuello, Ceibal was founded as a ceremonial center by semi-mobile people. Middle Preclassic ritual practices at Ceibal and in the Belize Valley were associated with more collective leadership. At the end of this period, increased population densities contributed to a shift to more exclusionary rituals and political strategies throughout the lowlands.

Filsafat pendidikan Islam multikultural KH. Abdurrohman Wahid dan implementasinya dalam pendidikan Islam Indonesia

Purpose − It is alleged that cultural pluralism in Indonesia still causes various problems such as racism, negative stereotypes, ethnocentrism, radicalism and environmental destruction. Seeing this phenomenon, KH. Abdurrohman Wahid looked for a solution by formulating an Islamic Education Philosophy with a multicultural pattern. This article aims to describe the Islamic Education Philosophy formulated by Abdurrohman Wahid and its implementation in Indonesia.
 Method − The method used is a type of qualitative research using literature study. Data collection was carried out using the note-taking technique through related scientific references. Data analysis uses descriptive-analytic analysis.
 Findings − The results of this research show that the concept of Multicultural Islamic education from KH's perspective. Abdurrohman Wahid includes: First, the objectives of Multicultural Islamic education, namely; Islamic education based on neomodernism, Islamic education based on liberation, Islamic education based on multiculturalism. Second, the multicultural Islamic education curriculum prioritizes affective and psychomotor aspects, develops student-oriented patterns, educators are able to understand the meaning of education, create students who have an interest in learning, process-oriented patterns, and are vocationally based. The implementation of multicultural education can be implemented through various strategies in the form of cultural strategies, socio-political strategies, socio-cultural strategies, pedagogical strategies.

Black media nostalgia in Britain

ABSTRACT Drawing on Black media, cultural, and digital studies, this work considers the relationship between nostalgia and the media, cultural productions, and experiences of Black people in Britain. Engaging with Hesse's (2000) work on ‘Diasporicity: Black Britain's Post-Colonial Formations', I explore how media representations of Black Britain and connected production processes have changed since the 90s, in ways entwined with Black nostalgia and generational (be)longing. Since Hesse (2000, p. 97) observed that ‘Black Britishness is a discourse whose increasing currency has yet to be conceptualized seriously', research and writing on Black Britishness and Black life in Britain has significantly expanded. Informed by such work, I delve into some of the details of Black media experiences in Britain to consider how Black nostalgia manifests in and through these contexts. Inspired by Ahad-Legardy's (2021) work on ‘Afro-nostalgia' and how visual culture aids archives of Black ‘historical joy', I consider the digitally mediated, comforting, conflicting, and historical nature of Black media nostalgia in Britain, and Black nostalgia more generally. Such discussion distinguishes between Black people's nostalgic media experiences and Black media nostalgia which centers Black creative expression and the kaleidoscopic gazes of Black audiences. Nostalgia's enigmatic quality cannot be comprehended via empirical analysis, alone. Thus, sculpted by understandings of ‘sociopolitical strategies of presence' (Osei 2019, p. 733), this work conceptualizes Black nostalgia in ways based on key media examples, research interviews, researcher reflections and the possibilities and playfulness presented by influx ponderings. Overall, shaped by Hall's (1993; 1997) work on representation and popular culture, this manuscript yields insights regarding dynamics between nostalgia, media, and Black life in Britain. Such work highlights the need for specificity (e.g., whose gaze(s), geographies, generations) when articulating Black people’s experiences in Britain, and the power of nostalgia in Black media and culture, which spans decades and different devices.

Climate change intensified violence in the south-central Andean highlands from 1.5 to 0.5 ka

AbstractThe archaeology of the pre-contact Andes provides an ideal study of human responses to climate change given the region's extreme climatic variability, excellent archaeological preservation, and robust paleoclimate records. We evaluate the effects of climate change on the frequency of interpersonal violence in the south-central Andes from ca. 1.5–0.5 ka (AD 470–1540) by comparing incidents of skeletal trauma observed among 2753 crania from 58 sites to rates of ice accumulation at the Quelccaya Glacier. We find that, in the highlands, the odds of identifying inter-personal violence increase on average by a multiplicative factor of 2.4 (1.8–3.2; 95% C.I.) for every 10-centimeter decrease in annual ice accumulation. Our statistical analysis does not detect a relationship between ice accumulation and interpersonal violence rates among coastal or mid-elevation populations. This disparity likely resulted from variable economic and sociopolitical strategies at different elevations. The failure of rain-fed agriculture during periods of drought and concomitant dissolution of organizing polities likely predisposed highland populations to socioeconomic stress and violent competition for limited resources. Conversely, diversity among lowland and midland economies may have buffered against the effect of drought.

The Colombian Healthy Child Contest: in search of Latin America's "ideal child" in the 1930s.

This article analyzes healthy child contests as a medical and socio-political strategy implemented in Latin America to protect childhood, thus ensuring the future of the "race" and the nation. These contests blended degeneration, racial theories, and state interventionism and gained momentum in the 1930s with the rise of eugenics. This article examines the contest in Colombia, which was implemented under the Liberal Republic (1930-1946); even though this competition was defined by its national context, a broader international perspective improves understanding. Questions are also raised about the efforts of the Liberal government to strengthen the idea of national identity through education and health programs.

The dead do not unbury themselves: Understanding posthumous engagement and ancestor veneration in coastal Peru (AD1450-1650)

• Commingled burial features at Las Huacas include behaviors related both to the mortuary program and ancestor veneration. • Elites at Las Huacas likely used ancestor veneration to develop authority as the region was incorporated into the Inca Empire. • Article introduces the terms communal secondary and selective secondary to differentiate between types of secondary engagements. • At Las Huacas, feet, hands, crania, and vertebrae are linked to secondary practices. • Mandibles in commingled features could be a good indicator for primary burials in a given feature. The study of mortuary practices encompasses a wide variety of different behaviors that are related to cultural and religious customs, sociopolitical strategies, and conceptions about personhood. In this article, we share data from archaeological excavations and osteological analyses of mortuary features from the site of Las Huacas in the Chincha Valley. Many of these features were involved in secondary mortuary rituals, which can be particularly difficult to study due to the commingled nature of the remains. Based on analyses, remains at the site became disarticulated and commingled due to various practices: (1) delayed primary burials, (2) tomb reuse, (3) selective secondary, and (4) communal secondary practices. In selective secondary practices, crania, feet, hands, and vertebrae were removed and reposited in new features. In communal secondary practices, vertebrae were placed on reed posts and pigment was applied to crania, sometimes fully covering the facial bones. These remains were involved in rituals within an elite complex (Complex N1) that had restricted access and the rituals likely created and maintained social and administrative hierarchies. The burials at Las Huacas demonstrate the importance of ancestor veneration in elite claims to authority during the Late Horizon (CE 1400–1532) and Colonial period (CE 1532–1650).

Beyond Tracking: The Relationship of Opportunity to Learn and Diminished Math Outcomes for U.S. High School Students

Background/Context: In this study, we draw on evolving definitions of opportunity to learn (OTL) to conceptualize mathematics OTL has having two main components: structural OTL, defined by gatekeeping access to specific mathematics courses through the process of tracking, and instructional OTL, defined by the learning experiences of students in their mathematics courses. We also conceptualize both of these aspects of OTL as occurring in the current educational milieu, where sociopolitical factors reward or punish specific school strategies. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study seeks to examine, using an OTL framework, the relationship between high school math teachers’ instructional practices, students’ course tracks in mathematics, students’ perceptions of mathematics, and students’ distal measures of academic attainment, including completion of advanced math coursework and completion of a high school diploma. Research Design: Using latent class analysis, this secondary data analysis analyzed the 2009 High School Longitudinal Study data from the National Center for Educational Statistics to examine mathematics instructional OTL based on math teachers’ objectives of emphasis and its relationship to structural OTL in the form of course tracking. Findings/Results: We identified “Enriched” and “Rote Knowledge and Skills” latent classes of math OTL. Teachers providing Enriched OTL emphasize the widest variety of objectives, including cognitively demanding problem-solving and logic objectives and practical applications of mathematics, while teachers providing Rote Knowledge OTL emphasize basic computation, algorithms, and computation skills. Black students, Hispanic students, and students living in poverty were more likely to be in math OTL classes focused primarily on basic concepts, algorithms, and computation, with little to no emphasis in more applied and cognitively demanding math course objectives, and they were less likely to be enrolled in advanced ninth-grade math courses. Students in Rote Knowledge OTL courses with little to no emphasis in applied and cognitively demanding math course objectives had lower mathematics identity and self-efficacy, and math achievement. Conclusions/Recommendations: This study adds to the literature suggesting that students in the United States experience an opportunity gap rather than an achievement gap, and that opportunity gaps are both structural and instructional. This study also adds to the literature suggesting student sorting systems are inherently unequal and must be addressed through policy, leadership, and cultural shifts in both schools and districts.

Green Brand Image and Sustainability: Marketing Implications of High-School Student Responses

This is a research paper that is focused on assessing issues relating to green brand image influences on high-school students and its implications sustainability. 
 
 An interpretive methodology was utilised in order to help understand high-school student perceptions of Brand Image in terms of Sustainability. The scope for this research were high-school students with the population of interest made up of 11 private schools, located at independent school sites, situated in Bangkok, Thailand.
 
 Findings: The research outcomes comprised of Five (5) Main Themes: Emotional Engagement, Green Brand Trust, Green Brand Loyalty, Functional Benefits, Sustainable Corporate Image; and Twelve (12) sub-themes created through the focused analysis of 133 conversation targets.
 
 The paper addresses the raised issues and implications for managing Green Brand Image and Sustainability. These indications are synthesised from major research actors in the field that show that socio-political strategies, economics and marketing Brand developments that should be made clearer and a paradigm shift made to strengthen strategies to engage younger people in positive Brand Image management.

Parallel Modernity and Indigeneity in Riffat Abbas's Namak Ka Jeevan Ghar

Indigeneity is a powerful means of representation and also a contested idea in the modern postcolonial world; used as a tool of resistance and conscious socio-political strategy to express collective identities. The assertion of singularity is the starting point of the path to achieve identity rooted in unique history, distinguished culture, religion, art and fables.The paper aims to understand the concept of Indigeneity employing Mbembe’s theory of decolonization by (re)visit to Loonri, a textual utopia created by Riffat Abbas in Namak ka Jeevan Ghar, the novel initially written in Saraiki. The paper reflects on identity discourses and native dialogue with power and governance structure as well as “other”. The study unearthed how in a parallel modern world, the indigenous inhabitants of a region formulate subversive strategies over time to maintain a unique identity with their creative spirit and sturdy imagination to maintain Indigeneity as parallel modernity.

Unraveling Spatial, Structural, and Social Country-Level Conditions for the Emergence of the Foreign Fighter Phenomenon: An Exploratory Data Mining Approach to the Case Of ISIS

ABSTRACT Governments face a tough and timeless challenge: dealing with the capability of radical terrorist organizations to recruit foreign fighters. However, scholars so far have ignored that this phenomenon pertains to the realm of complexity theory, failing to determine the combination of country-level variables able to catalyze this issue. This is an important concern if countries want to design effective socio-political strategies aimed at decreasing terrorist groups’ capability to enroll foreign fighters or, at least, to curtail the penetration of their radical message. Thus, to address this issue we undertake an exploratory data mining approach (knowledge discovery in databases) to discover country-level patterns which might engender conditions that induce people to join an extremist organization, based on the case of ISIS. After a pre-selection procedure, the 950 variables initially selected were reduced to 22, and subsequently used in decision tree algorithms. Findings reveal the existence of six specific country clusters, which are characterized by some spatial, structural (economic and political), and social variables that create favorable conditions for the emergence of the phenomenon. Academic and practical recommendations are then discussed.

(En)acting our experience: Combat veterans, veteranality, and building resilience to extremism

Drawing from emerging arenas within (applied) anthropology and informed by ongoing ethnographic fieldwork alongside combat veterans in Southeast Europe, this paper follows indications that veterans and veteran organizations are potential enablers/maintainers of resilience to violent extremism within societies. This position builds from the recognition that veterans embody a unique capacity for resilience; a capacity generated by surviving combat and deepened as veterans encounter the struggles of life after service. Exploring this proposition of veteran contribution and collaboration suggests a (re)theorization of the veteran in society is required. In service of this (re)theorization, the concepts of "veteranality" and "critical veteranality" are introduced to signify and engage a social ontology representing the dynamics of the veteran life-world. In conclusion, it is argued that (re)theorization, ethnographic methodologies and anthropological engagement will guide how socio-political strategies countering extremism can be opened to veteran (en)acted experiences with resilience.

Mortuary Practices Amid Sociopolitical Changes: Interpreting a Large Communal Ossuary at Las Huacas, Chincha Valley

Ancient Andean mortuary practices were dynamic events where individual and group identities were displayed and negotiated during Inca imperial expansion (AD 1400–1532) and the Colonial period (AD 1532–1824). This article explores the significance of a large communal ossuary found at the site of Las Huacas in the Chincha Valley through analyzing the context, material culture, and human remains. The feature is a secondary interment of at least 42 individuals that incorporates broad local trends and integrates some Late Horizon innovations, including the manipulation of vertebrae on a reed post. If the feature was deposited during the Late Horizon, the burial event was likely embedded within sociopolitical strategies under Inca-Chincha joint rule. If deposited during the colonial period, it could represent an offering made in response to a drastic decrease in population. Regardless, the feature demonstrates how local Chincha material culture and mortuary practices persisted and changed after Inca expansion.

Like a chess game: radical right-wing activists explain their part in violent clashes with the state

ABSTRACT Many members of minority groups clash violently with state agents. The case of the Israeli West-Bank Settlers’ Right-Wing Activists is particularly paradoxical. Unlike disempowered groups whose ability to bring about change is limited – the Settlers constitute a powerful sociopolitical force, and the security forces with which Settler Right-Wing Activists clash, also protect them in territories to which they claim sovereignty. Based on 20 semi-structured interviews, this article provides explanations Settler Right-Wing Activists give to violent clashes in which they were involved. The findings present two non-mutually exclusive possibilities: (1) violence is perceived as an acceptable sociopolitical change strategy. Interviewees agree to risk themselves as individuals (but not to risk their group) in exchange for potential benefits such as preventing settlement evacuation; (2) Violence indicates declining mainly four out of six different components of perceived state legitimacy: trust, distributive justice, procedural justice, and legality, but primarily not identification and effectiveness.

Colonial Repetition as Third World Textual Aesthetics: A Theoretical Approach

This paper discusses a national allegorical literary style labeled colonial repetition as one way in which literature represents the collective colonial mentality to respond to the oppression of colonization. The national allegory is a socio-political strategy proposed by Fredric Jameson for the reading of third world texts to address themes such as colonial violence, exploitation, paralysis, helplessness, and sense of loss [homeless at home]. The literary style of colonial repetition reflects collective symptoms through the repetition of words, phrases, and sentences in a text. This paper posits colonial repetition in Korean poet Yi Sang’s Crow’s Eye View as a characteristic of Jamesonian third world texts that articulate the tragic circumstances of the colonial system: national misery and national subalternity.

Rock Procurement in the Early Neolithic in Southern Norway – Significance by Association with People and Places?

Rocks and places of rock procurement can be sig- nificant beyond pragmatic reasons. In the Early Ne- olithic in southern Norway, specific rock types and quarries appear to have been deeply entangled in socio-political strategies that either bound people together or set people apart. Charted variations in the character of lithic procurement and distribu- tion indicate two parallel but diverging processes of “Neolithization” in the western and eastern region respectively. In the west, rhyolite from a quarry atop Mt. Siggjo was especially significant, demonstrated by the intense quarrying and wide distribution of rhyolite along the west coast. Indeed, in the west, certain quarries appear to have been regarded as nodal points, anchoring people’s sense of identity and belonging. In the east, imported flint gained a similar role because of its association with farm- ing and Funnel Beaker–related societies in south- ern Scandinavia. That is, rock was significant not only due to its physical qualities, but by its associa- tion with a specific place, social or cultural group.

Ecotourism’s ethics: Self-organization and care in urban Guyana

In this article, I shed light on the ethical orientations of people who labour and invest in ecotourism, and the conditions through which ecotourism becomes recognizable as a neoliberal practice. I reveal that what distinguishes ecotourism is not merely its arrangements for the commodification of nature and related scientific enterprises. Instead, ecotourism depends in part on how people live with environmental degradation and the flexible ways in which they relate ideas of care to such lived experiences. Drawing on research conducted in urban Guyana, the article lays out people’s struggles to plan for mangrove tourism despite the presence of garbage and the threat of erosion to forests. In so doing, I illustrate that ecotourism expresses itself through self-organizing processes and therefore, is dialectically intertwined with sociopolitical strategies of care and its distribution.