scholarly journals Ethnicity and Gender in Museum Representations of Human Evolution

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús Piqueras ◽  
Marianne Achiam ◽  
Susanna Edvall ◽  
Charlotte Ek
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Educational Activity ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Linear Sequence ◽  
Early Hominids ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Scientific Facts ◽  
Design Of Learning Environments ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender

Abstract Scientific representations of human evolution often embrace stereotypes of ethnicity and gender that are more aligned with socio-cultural discourses and norms than empirical facts. The present study has two connected aims: to understand how ethnicity and gender are represented in an exhibition about human evolution, and to understand how that representation influences learners’ meaning making. First, we analysed an exhibition with realistic reconstructions of early hominids in a museum of natural history, to identify dualisms related to the representation of gender and ethnicity that have been recognised in research. Then, we studied the processes of meaning making in the exhibition during an out-of-school educational activity, in which groups of teenaged students explore and discuss the hominid reconstructions. Our results show that the exhibition displays human evolution in the form of a linear sequence from a primitive African prehistory to a more advanced European present. Behind this depiction of human evolution lies stereotypic notions of ethnicity and gender: notions that were incorporated into the students’ meaning making during the educational activity. When students noticed aspects of ethnicity, their meaning making did not dispute the messages represented in the exhibition; these were accepted as scientific facts. Conversely, when the students noticed aspects related to gender, they often adopted a more critical stance and challenged the representations from different perspectives. We discuss the implications of our findings for exhibit design and evolution education more generally. In doing so, we offer our perspectives on the design of learning environments to salvage inherently sexist, racist, imperial science.

Depictions of Ethnicity and Gender in Elementary School Science Materials

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Winterrowd ◽  
Silvia Canetto ◽  
April Biasiolli ◽  
Nazanin Mohajeri-Nelson ◽  
Aki Hosoi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
School Science ◽  
Elementary School Science ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender

Neural and sociocultural mediators of ethnic differences in pain

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
EAR Losin ◽  
CW Woo ◽  
NA Medina ◽  
JR Andrews-Hanna ◽  
Hedwig Eisenbarth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Nociceptive Pain ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Pain Mechanisms ◽  
Thermal Pain ◽  
Heat Effects ◽  
Pain Report ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender

© 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. Understanding ethnic differences in pain is important for addressing disparities in pain care. A common belief is that African Americans are hyposensitive to pain compared to Whites, but African Americans show increased pain sensitivity in clinical and laboratory settings. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying these differences are unknown. We studied an ethnicity- and gender-balanced sample of African Americans, Hispanics and non-Hispanic Whites using functional magnetic resonance imaging during thermal pain. Higher pain report in African Americans was mediated by discrimination and increased frontostriatal circuit activations associated with pain rating, discrimination, experimenter trust and extranociceptive aspects of pain elsewhere. In contrast, the neurologic pain signature, a neuromarker sensitive and specific to nociceptive pain, mediated painful heat effects on pain report largely similarly in African American and other groups. Findings identify a brain basis for higher pain in African Americans related to interpersonal context and extranociceptive central pain mechanisms and suggest that nociceptive pain processing may be similar across ethnicities.

Goddess on the Frontier

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Yunnan Province ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Frontier Region ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender ◽  
Shifting Identities

This book follows the transformations of the goddess Baijie, a deity worshiped in the Dali region of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, to understand how local identities developed in a Chinese frontier region from the twelfth century to the twenty-first. Dali, a region where the cultures of China, India, Tibet, and Southeast Asia converge, has long served as a nexus of religious interaction even as its status has changed. Once the center of independent kingdoms, it was absorbed into the Chinese imperial sphere with the Mongol conquest and remained there ever since. Goddess on the Frontier examines how people in Dali developed regional religious identities through the lens of the local goddess Baijie, whose shifting identities over this span of time reflect shifting identities in Dali. She first appears as a Buddhist figure in the twelfth century, then becomes known as the mother of a regional ruler, next takes on the role of an eighth-century widow martyr, and finally is worshiped as a tutelary village deity. Each of her forms illustrates how people in Dali represented local identities through gendered religious symbols. Taken together, they demonstrate how regional religious identities in Dali developed as a gendered process as well as an ethno-cultural process. This book applies interdisciplinary methodology to a wide variety of newly discovered and unstudied materials to show how religion, ethnicity, and gender intersect in a frontier region.

scholarly journals ‘Strangely Like a Person’: Cole and the Queering of Asexuality in Dragon Age: Inquisition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Shani Brown ◽  
Nichola Lucy Partridge
Keyword(s):  
Media Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
And Gender

AbstractIn this article we consider the representation of the character Cole in Bioware’s Dragon Age: Inquisition (Electronic Arts, San Mateo, 2014), focusing upon how his asexuality is treated by other characters and its significance within his narrative arc. As well as contributing to the discussion of the representation of sexualities and gender within games, we seek to add to the ‘representational archive of asexuality’ (Cerankowski and Milks, Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, Routledge, Abingdon, p 40, 2014), including games as media depicting and defining asexuality through fictional characterisation. We argue that it is particularly through humour that Cole is marked as being ambiguously set apart from the other characters in the game, and is infantilized as a ‘boy’ rather than a young man. Within a party of diverse genders, sexualities and indeed species, Cole’s absent interest in sex is treated as though it were something strange and in need of being overcome for Cole to become fully ‘human’. Beyond the scope of this game, this raises further questions for the representation of asexuality within media culture, and broader cultural discourses concerning whether asexuality is conceived of as being within the bounds of both masculinity and human normality.

scholarly journals Does School Racial Composition Explain Why High Income Black Youth Perceive More Discrimination? A Gender Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shervin Assari
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
African American ◽  
African American Males ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Perceived Discrimination ◽  
Poor Mental Health ◽  
Racial Composition ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ethnicity And Gender

Recent research has documented poor mental health among high socioeconomic status (SES) Blacks, particularly African American males. The literature has also shown a positive link between SES and perceived discrimination, suggesting that perceived discrimination may explain why high SES Black males report poor mental health. To better understand the role of contextual factors in explaining this pattern, we aimed to test whether school racial composition explains why high income Black youth perceive more discrimination. We explored these associations by ethnicity and gender. Using data from the National Survey of American Life-Adolescent supplement (NSAL-A), the current study included 810 African American and 360 Caribbean Black youth, with a mean age of 15. Ethnicity, age, gender, income-to-needs ratio (SES), skin color, school racial composition, and perceived (daily) discrimination were measured. Using Stata 15.0 (Stata Corp., College Station, TX, USA), we fitted seven structural equation models (SEMs) for data analysis in the pooled sample based on the intersection of ethnicity and gender. Considerable gender by ethnicity variations were found in the associations between SES, school racial composition, and perceived discrimination. For African American males but not African American females or Caribbean Black males or females, school racial composition fully mediated the effect of SES on perceived discrimination. The role of inter-racial contact as a mechanism for high discrimination and poor mental health of Black American adolescents may depend on their intersection of ethnicity and gender. School racial composition may be a mechanism for increased perceived discrimination among high SES African American males.

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