scholarly journals Finding Archaeological Relevance during a Pandemic and What Comes After

2020 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-22
Author(s):  
Lynn H. Gamble ◽  
Cheryl Claassen ◽  
Jelmer W. Eerkens ◽  
Douglas J. Kennett ◽  
Patricia M. Lambert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Disease Vectors ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Global Pandemic

This article emerged as the human species collectively have been experiencing the worst global pandemic in a century. With a long view of the ecological, economic, social, and political factors that promote the emergence and spread of infectious disease, archaeologists are well positioned to examine the antecedents of the present crisis. In this article, we bring together a variety of perspectives on the issues surrounding the emergence, spread, and effects of disease in both the Americas and Afro-Eurasian contexts. Recognizing that human populations most severely impacted by COVID-19 are typically descendants of marginalized groups, we investigate pre- and postcontact disease vectors among Indigenous and Black communities in North America, outlining the systemic impacts of diseases and the conditions that exacerbate their spread. We look at how material culture both reflects and changes as a result of social transformations brought about by disease, the insights that paleopathology provides about the ancient human condition, and the impacts of ancient globalization on the spread of disease worldwide. By understanding the differential effects of past epidemics on diverse communities and contributing to more equitable sociopolitical agendas, archaeology can play a key role in helping to pursue a more just future.

scholarly journals Does Local Adaptation Impact on the Distribution of Competing Aedes Disease Vectors?

Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Kelly L. Bennett ◽  
William Owen McMillan ◽  
Jose R. Loaiza
Keyword(s):  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Resource Competition ◽  
Disease Vectors ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Transplant Experiment ◽  
Reciprocal Transplant Experiment ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
Ecological Resources ◽  
The Face ◽  
Arboviral Disease

Ae. (Stegomyia) aegypti L. and Aedes (Stegomyia) albopictus Skuse mosquitoes are major arboviral disease vectors in human populations. Interspecific competition between these species shapes their distribution and hence the incidence of disease. While Ae. albopictus is considered a superior competitor for ecological resources and displaces its contender Ae. aegypti from most environments, the latter is able to persist with Ae. albopictus under particular environmental conditions, suggesting species occurrence cannot be explained by resource competition alone. The environment is an important determinant of species displacement or coexistence, although the factors underpinning its role remain little understood. In addition, it has been found that Ae. aegypti can be adapted to the environment across a local scale. Based on data from the Neotropical country of Panama, we present the hypothesis that local adaptation to the environment is critical in determining the persistence of Ae. aegypti in the face of its direct competitor Ae. albopictus. We show that although Ae. albopictus has displaced Ae. aegypti in some areas of Panama, both species coexist across many areas, including regions where Ae. aegypti appear to be locally adapted to dry climate conditions and less vegetated environments. Based on these findings, we describe a reciprocal transplant experiment to test our hypothesis, with findings expected to provide fundamental insights into the role of environmental variation in shaping the landscape of emerging arboviral disease.

scholarly journals Self and Dignity: The Spirituality of Survival

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Christopher Turner
Keyword(s):  
Living Organism ◽  
Active Power ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Biological Capacity ◽  
Natural Power ◽  
Individual Human ◽  
Secular Spirituality

This paper examines the nature of spirit and spirituality as organic response to threat in the context of a global pandemic. Drawing from the fields of neuroscience, philosophy and theology, the author defines spirit as the biological capacity of a living organism to maintain homeostasis in response to changes in its environment. The capacity of individual human organisms to respond to changes that are perceived as threats to homeostasis with passive and active power is posited as a spirituality that is crucial for the survival of the human species. The paper represents a form of secular spirituality that is synonymous with the natural power of organic life.

scholarly journals Consuming Desire in Under the Skin

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Yael Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
Porous Boundaries ◽  
Destructive Potential ◽  
The Human Condition

Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 film Under the Skin is a Gothicized science fictional narrative about sexuality, alterity and the limits of humanity. The film’s protagonist, an alien female, passing for an attractive human, seduces unwary Scottish males, leading them to a slimy, underwater/womblike confinement where their bodies dissolve and nothing but floating skins remain. In this paper, I look at the film’s engagement with the notions of consumption, the alien as devourer trope, and the nature of the ‘other’, comparing this filmic depiction with Michael Faber’s novel on which the film is based. I examine the film’s reinvention of Faber’s novel as a more open-ended allegory of the human condition as always already ‘other’. In Faber’s novel, the alien female seduces and captures the men who are consumed and devoured by an alien race, thus providing a reversal of the human species’ treatment of animals as mere food. Glazer’s film, however, chooses to remain ambiguous about the alien female’s ‘nature’ to the very end. Thus, the film remains a more open-ended meditation about alterity, the destructive potential of sexuality, and the fear of consumption which lies at the heart of the Gothic’s interrogation of porous boundaries.

scholarly journals The Nourishing Art

IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
1969 ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Jane Lawrence ◽  
Rachel Hurst
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
First Year ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Basic Characteristics ◽  
Detailed Application

Cooking is regarded as one of the most basic characteristics of civilised existence, almost as critical as shelter in defining and reading the human condition. Frascari (2002) used cooking as an analogy for design suggesting that ‘to build and cook are a necessity, but to build and cook intelligently is the chief obligation of architecture and cuisine’ (p. 3). What is it about this ordinary activity that invites comparison? Is it that the everyday acts of cooking are primary generators of spatial practices and material culture? Or is it that the production of food bears numerous parallels with the production of built space – each following a recipe or plan to manipulate elements into an entity definitively judged by the physical senses? This paper builds upon a companion work titled, ‘Eating Australian Architecture’ (Hurst & Lawrence, 2003), which investigated a pedagogical approach based on parallels between food and design for teaching first year architectural students. In this paper, the focus is on a detailed application of this method to typological analyses of contemporary domestic architecture. It uses three examples of influential Australian design practices, selecting from each a paradigm with which they are associated. Food metaphors of raw, medium and well- done are used to explore emergent characteristics and experiential qualities within the current architectural climate. The apparent extremes between raw and cooked, like those between excess and austerity, are re-evaluated not as simple oppositions or measures of success, but as equally rich modes of approach to design. The argument is made for gastronomy as a persuasive interrogatory tool for the sensory and holistic examination of the built environment.

Don't Touch My Hair

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
Mary Oling-Sisay
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Multiple Relationships ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Service Learning Projects ◽  
Learning Projects

Myriad studies on service-learning agree on the benefits of service-learning for students. Because projects are designed with the needs of students and institutions in mind, the experiences of the Black communities served are seldom highlighted nor are the intricacies of the multiple relationships addressed. Voices of marginalized groups especially the Black communities—the community that is the focus of this chapter—needs to be incorporated in authentic and intentional ways to advance transformational service-learning for all involved. This chapter begins to examine issues and opportunities for best case scenarios for service-learning projects in Black communities.

AI: A Semiotic Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-216
Author(s):  
Stéphanie Walsh Matthews ◽  
Marcel Danesi
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The World ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Human Sense ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a powerful new form of inquiry unto human cognition that has obvious implications for semiotic theories, practices, and modeling of mind, yet, as far as can be determined, it has hardly attracted the attention of semioticians in any meaningful analytical way. AI aims to model and thus penetrate mentality in all its forms (perception, cognition, emotion, etc.) and even to build artificial minds that will surpass human intelligence in the near future. This paper takes a look at AI through the lens of semiotic analysis, in the context of current philosophies such as posthumanism and transhumanism, which are based on the assumption that technology will improve the human condition and chart a path to the future progress of the human species. Semiotics must respond to the AI challenge, focusing on how abductive responses to the world generate meaning in the human sense, not in software or algorithms. The AI approach is instructive, but semiotics is much more relevant to the understanding of human cognition, because it studies signs as paths into the brain, not artificial models of that organ. The semiotic agenda can enrich AI by providing the relevant insight into human semiosis that may defy any attempt to model them.

Pandemics as Rights-Generators

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-686
Author(s):  
Neha Jain
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Global Pandemic

AbstractWhile the global pandemic has exposed the fragility of human rights protections, it has also resulted in rights victories for some of the most vulnerable members of society. This Essay examines epistemic, consequentialist, and normative rights reframing efforts that have been mobilized to advocate for and secure human rights during the pandemic through the lens of prisoners’ rights. It argues that these rights seeking strategies hold promise for advancing rights claims of prisoners and other marginalized groups beyond the pandemic.

Ancestral Diversity in Skeletal Collections: Perspectives on African American Body Donation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allysha Winburn ◽  
Antaya Jennings ◽  
Dawnie Steadman ◽  
Elizabeth DiGangi
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Research Facilities ◽  
Body Donation ◽  
The U.S

African Americans comprise approximately 13% of the U.S. population, 26% of missing persons, and 51% of homicide victims (Kochanek et al. 2019; National Crime Information Center [NCIC] 2018; U.S. Census Bureau 2010). However, African American remains are underrepresented in the documented skeletal samples resulting from body donations to U.S. taphonomic research facilities. If forensic anthropologists are to rise to the challenge of identifying remains from this segment of the U.S. population, and if heritable differences among human populations are to be distinguished from the embodied differences acquired by marginalized individuals, a deeper understanding of African American skeletal biology is essential. This understanding is contingent on Black donors participating in whole-body donation to anthropological research facilities—participation that may be undermined by a legacy of mistrust between Black communities and the traditionally White-dominated scientific and medical establishments. This review paper synthesizes data from medical research on cadaver and organ donation, as well as anthropological literature on structural violence, embodiment, and the collection and curation of human remains, to present multiple perspectives on increasing African American body donation to anthropological research. We focus on historical, structural, and cultural factors potentially contributing to Black donor reluctance, providing a perspective often lacking in discussions of skeletal curation. We aim to generate debate and discussion within the field of forensic anthropology and among community stakeholders about how skeletal research can better serve Black communities.

scholarly journals 'GILDED CARRIAGES AND LIVERIED SERVANTS': Thackeray, Bourdieu, and Material Culture

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Miller
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Spatial Relationships ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Economic Experience ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Representation Of Space ◽  
Commodity Form

The writings of William Thackeray (1811-1863) are dominated by his experience of the commodity form; his apprehension not only of objects and material reality, but also of his own literary productions emerges from economic experience. Working from Pierre Bourdieu's materialist analysis of spatial relationships, the following paper first examines the consequences of commodification on Thackeray's representation of space and material culture, and then briefly analyzes that representation as a product of Thackeray's habitus, understood as the dialectical product of his position within a series of social transformations in mid-Victorian England.

scholarly journals This [Black] Woman’s Work: Exploring Archival Projects that Embrace the Identity of the Memory Worker

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Chaitra Powell ◽  
Holly Smith ◽  
Shanee' Murrain ◽  
Skyla Hearn
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Black Colleges ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Predominantly White Universities ◽  
Archival Profession ◽  
Woman's Work

Archivists who work on African American collections are increasingly more aware that traditional sites of African American agency and autonomy are becoming more unstable. The need to capture the perspectives and histories of these institutions is urgent. The challenges become more acute when communities recognize the need to preserve their legacies but do not have the resources or support to make it happen. African American material culture and history remains at risk of co-optation from large institutions and individuals seeking to monetize and profit from collecting Black collections. Endemic in that process is the risk of these institutions controlling the narrative and inadvertently or deliberately erasing the narratives of these diverse communities from that community’s perspective. Cultural memory workers focused on African American collections face numerous challenges: the risk of losing the materials or communities themselves; partnering with organizations and administrations with differing, and perhaps conflicting agendas; working on projects with limited or term funding; and the emotional labor of being a person of color in a predominantly white field trying to support communities that can often reflect their own experiences. How can libraries, museums, and archives bring these communities into the world of archives and empower them to protect and share their stories? How can archivists, particularly those of color, find support within their institutions and the archival profession, to accomplish this work of preserving African American cultural heritage? How can archives support genuinely collaborative projects with diverse Black communities without co-opting their stories and collections?The authors will address these questions in this article, discussing their experiences working with a variety of institutions—predominantly white universities, Black colleges, churches, neighborhoods and families. The authors also include their reflections from their National Conference of African American Librarians panel presentation in August 2017 on these related topics.

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