Social Identity and Dental Modification at the Postclassic Maya Urban Centre of Mayapan

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Stanley Serafin ◽  
Marilyn A. Masson ◽  
Carlos Peraza Lope ◽  
Douglas J. Kennett ◽  
Richard J. George

Dental modification represents one interesting aspect of corporeal adornment in human history that directly reflects personal social identity. Tooth filing choices distinguished certain individuals at the urban, Maya political capital of Mayapan from 1150 to 1450 ad, along with cranial modification, nose and ear piercings, tattoos and body paint. Here we examine how filing teeth, considered a beautification practice for women at Spanish Contact in the sixteenth century, is distributed across a skeletal sample of males, females, elites and commoners in this city. We evaluate the normative claim of the Colonial period and determine that while predominantly females filed their teeth, most women chose not to. Sculptural art further reveals that male personages associated with the city's feathered serpent priesthood exhibited filed teeth, and we explore the symbolic meaning of filed tooth shape. Assessing the practice in terms of associated archaeological contexts, chronology and bone chemistry reveals that it did not correlate with social class, dietary differences, or birthplace. Residents of Mayapan, a densely inhabited, multi-ethnic city of 20,000, engaged with multiple material expressions of belonging to intersecting imagined communities that crosscut competing influences of polity, city, hometown and family scale identity. Tooth filing reflects identities at the individual or family scale.

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Bénabou ◽  
Jean Tirole

In this paper, we provide a perspective into the main ideas and findings emerging from the growing literature on motivated beliefs and reasoning. This perspective emphasizes that beliefs often fulfill important psychological and functional needs of the individual. Economically relevant examples include confidence in ones' abilities, moral self-esteem, hope and anxiety reduction, social identity, political ideology, and religious faith. People thus hold certain beliefs in part because they attach value to them, as a result of some (usually implicit) tradeoff between accuracy and desirability. In a sense, we propose to treat beliefs as regular economic goods and assets—which people consume, invest in, reap returns from, and produce, using the informational inputs they receive or have access to. Such beliefs will be resistant to many forms of evidence, with individuals displaying non-Bayesian behaviors such as not wanting to know, wishful thinking, and reality denial.


Res Publica ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 343-359
Author(s):  
Marc Jacquemain ◽  
René Doutrelepont ◽  
Michel Vandekeere

At first view, the methodology of survey research may seem rather unsuitable to the study of such "holistic" phenomena as collective and social identities.  That difficulty vanishes - at least partly - as soon as we consider social identity as the link between the individual and his belongings, as does the "social identity theory", developed from the work of Taffel and Turner.  From there on, survey research may prove to be a useful device to cope with some main characteristics of social identity: mainly its variability among groups and classes within a same society and its particular sensitivity to socio-political contexts.  Survey research, combined with the social identity theory may help to test historical assumptions at a macro-social level. It may also give some ''flesh" and some additional realism to the micro-theories of social behaviour, which are too often limited by their conception of a strictly rational and interested agent.


Urban History ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-418
Author(s):  
STEPHANIE HANKE

ABSTRACT:The article analyses the diffusion of artificial grottoes in Genoa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in terms of their role in the construction of the ruling oligarchy's social identity. No other artistic genre offered a more effective means for bankers and merchants to flaunt their wealth and their network of international contacts. Grottoes comprising expensive corals and exotic shells functioned as a strategic marketing device whose cost and splendour satisfied not only the discerning humanist but also made a profound impression upon non-expert guests who were, first and foremost, potential future business clients.


Author(s):  
Matthew D. O'Hara

This chapter discusses the conceptual and practical tools of Catholicism that many colonial subjects used to shape their futures. Christianity came with a host of ideas and practices that influenced one's relationship to the future, even the future of eternity in the form of salvation or damnation. Introduced through European missionaries in the sixteenth century, such concepts as free will and sin demanded new ways not only of thinking about religion and spirituality but also of living and relating to time. The chapter draws on a rich body of scholarship related to these themes but also delves into a unique set of primary sources, especially the intriguing genre of confession manuals. When examined over the arc of the colonial period, these sources reveal an evolving sense of individual futuremaking through the tools of Catholicism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-168
Author(s):  
Trisna Malinda

This study exposes about society changes when the formation and development of Trans Village program from isolation to acculturation. Its purpose is to identify how the community change from isolated to acculturated and changes then forms a social identity in Trans Village. The Theory used in this field is Henri Taifel’s social identity theory that stated the individual concept forms by their experience in the group by acknowledging and applied the social values, participate, and develops their sense of care and pride of their group. This research uses descriptive qualitative research. Data collection techniques through observation, interviews, and documentation. This study also uses data analysis techniques by reducing data, displaying data and drawing conclusions. The number of informants used is 9 people filtered through purposive sampling. The results of this study indicate that the process from isolation to community acculturation occurred at the time of the formation and development of the Trans Village in Kurau Village. At first, the transmigrant communities are isolated from the local community so there are no interactions. Then by the time being, Trans Village leads to the transformation of social identity. Social identity is formed starting from the awareness, relationships, collaboration and harmonization among the people. People who were initially isolated have now become acculturated in Kampung Trans. This condition can be seen from the merging of the community, namely the local community and transmigrants in Trans Village which caused mixing between cultures so that new cultures are formed while still preserving old cultures. People live mingled by promoting the values ​​and rules that exist in Kampung Trans.


Author(s):  
E.-C. Nitu ◽  
O. Cirstina ◽  
F.-I. Lupu ◽  
M. Leu ◽  
A. Nicolae ◽  
...  

In addition to their undeniable aesthetic value, ornaments are the element that may differentiate the various social groups or individuals belonging to certain groups. More specifically, body decoration is closely related to social identity. The ornament, as a form of communication, has a certain advantage over other means of communication because, once displayed, perhaps even more than language itself, the individual wearing it need not make any effort to deliver his/her message, social sta-tus, their belonging to a group etc. The first adornments used during the Paleolithic are beads, while perforated shells are among the earliest examples of this sort. In a few cases, the perforated shells come from species rarely used in the Paleolithic, brought from long distances, in terms of the settlements in which they were found so, apart from individualizing and characterizing a certain group, they may represent important documents regarding migrations over wide areas and even regarding the origin of a culture. This is shown by new discoveries made in an early Gravettian layer at the Poiana Cireului site (Piatra Neam, north-eastern Romania), dated between 30 ka and 31 ka BP (Niu et al., 2019). The ornaments discovered here include a unique association of perforat-ed shells represented by three species of mollusks: Lithoglyphus naticoide, Litho-glyphus apertus and Homalopoma sanguineum (an exclusively Mediterranean spe-cies). This occupation differs from Central and Eastern European Gravettian tradi-tions through the symbolic behavior of the communities, defined by the use of perfo-rated shells of freshwater and marine (Mediterranean origin) mollusk belonging to species very rarely used in the Palaeolithic. Poiana Cireului is one of the very few Gravettian sites where perforated Homalopoma sanguineum shells were found and is the only Gravettian settlement where Lithoglyphus naticoides shells were used. We present the ornaments discovered and the results of analysis performed to identify the perforation methods and the use-wear traces. The presence of a Mediterranean species at the Poiana Cireului settlement located more than 900 km from the nearest source suggests the connection of communities here with the Mediterranean area. In the light of these new findings, the origin and diffusion of the Gravettian from the Mediterranean to the east of the Carpathians are a hypothesis that should be considered. Niu, E.-C., Crciumaru, M., Nicolae, A., Crstina, O., Lupu, F. I., Leu, M. (2019). Mobility and social identity in the Early Upper Palaeolithic: new personal ornaments from Poiana Cireului site (Piatra Neam, Romania). PLOS ONE, 14 (4), e0214932. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214932


Author(s):  
E.-C. Nitu ◽  
O. Cirstina ◽  
F.-I. Lupu ◽  
M. Leu ◽  
A. Nicolae ◽  
...  

In addition to their undeniable aesthetic value, ornaments are the element that may differentiate the various social groups or individuals belonging to certain groups. More specifically, body decoration is closely related to social identity. The ornament, as a form of communication, has a certain advantage over other means of communication because, once displayed, perhaps even more than language itself, the individual wearing it need not make any effort to deliver his/her message, social sta-tus, their belonging to a group etc. The first adornments used during the Paleolithic are beads, while perforated shells are among the earliest examples of this sort. In a few cases, the perforated shells come from species rarely used in the Paleolithic, brought from long distances, in terms of the settlements in which they were found so, apart from individualizing and characterizing a certain group, they may represent important documents regarding migrations over wide areas and even regarding the origin of a culture. This is shown by new discoveries made in an early Gravettian layer at the Poiana Cireului site (Piatra Neam, north-eastern Romania), dated between 30 ka and 31 ka BP (Niu et al., 2019). The ornaments discovered here include a unique association of perforat-ed shells represented by three species of mollusks: Lithoglyphus naticoide, Litho-glyphus apertus and Homalopoma sanguineum (an exclusively Mediterranean spe-cies). This occupation differs from Central and Eastern European Gravettian tradi-tions through the symbolic behavior of the communities, defined by the use of perfo-rated shells of freshwater and marine (Mediterranean origin) mollusk belonging to species very rarely used in the Palaeolithic. Poiana Cireului is one of the very few Gravettian sites where perforated Homalopoma sanguineum shells were found and is the only Gravettian settlement where Lithoglyphus naticoides shells were used. We present the ornaments discovered and the results of analysis performed to identify the perforation methods and the use-wear traces. The presence of a Mediterranean species at the Poiana Cireului settlement located more than 900 km from the nearest source suggests the connection of communities here with the Mediterranean area. In the light of these new findings, the origin and diffusion of the Gravettian from the Mediterranean to the east of the Carpathians are a hypothesis that should be considered. Niu, E.-C., Crciumaru, M., Nicolae, A., Crstina, O., Lupu, F. I., Leu, M. (2019). Mobility and social identity in the Early Upper Palaeolithic: new personal ornaments from Poiana Cireului site (Piatra Neam, Romania). PLOS ONE, 14 (4), e0214932. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214932


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-261
Author(s):  
Harry Aveling ◽  

Accepting that there is a close connection between religion and poetry, the paper focuses on the person that is presented in poetry in Malay in response to the Divine. The concept of “the person” used contains three elements: (a) the human identity – our common physiological and psychological qualities; (b) the social identity – arising from our membership in the various groups that make up our particular society; and, (c) the self – the unique personal sense of who I am. It argues that the person in Malay religious poetry is largely a “social identity” the self surrendered to God through membership in the Muslim community. Keywords: religious poetry, person, human identity, social identity, the individual self


2010 ◽  
pp. 1346-1361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillianne R. Code ◽  
Nicholas E. Zaparyniuk

Central to research in social psychology is the means in which communities form, attract new members, and develop over time. Research has found that the relative anonymity of Internet communication encourages self-expression and facilitates the formation of relationships based on shared values and beliefs. Self-expression in online social networks enables identity experimentation and development. As identities are fluid, situationally contingent, and are the perpetual subject and object of negotiation within the individual, the presented and perceived identity of the individual may not match reality. In this chapter, the authors consider the psychological challenges unique to understanding the dynamics of social identity formation and strategic interaction in online social networks. The psychological development of social identities in online social network interaction is discussed, highlighting how collective identity and self-categorization associates social identity to online group formation. The overall aim of this chapter is to explore how social identity affects the formation and development of online communities, how to analyze the development of these communities, and the implications such social networks have within education.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Wayne E. Lee ◽  
David L. Preston ◽  
David Silbey ◽  
Anthony E. Carlson

Introduces the problem of intercultural combat and how it changes the individual experience of battle. It also defines the partly overlapping categories of asymmetrical, unconventional, or irregular warfare. Intercultural warfare is a clash of mindsets as much as weapons. Intercultural combat defies expectations, and frequently presents a problem in sustaining a winning strategic narrative, since the two sides’ definitions of victory differ. This introduction sets the stage with a brief look at the colonial period and the role of Indians as “unexpected enemies.” In general Americans have always thought about war as likely to be against someone culturally similar. In reality, most American wars have been against cultural “others.”


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document