Language diversification and contact in Africa

Author(s):  
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal

The linguistic map of Africa as it manifests itself in its gestalt to us today is the result of a range of factors, involving climate change, technological innovations, as well as social conditions. Climate change resulted in the expansion as well as reduction of human habitation and thereby of language families. Technological changes, for example the introduction of pastoralism or agriculture also must have played an important role in the creation of new linguistic areas. A quintessential role, however, is to be attributed to social factors determining whether linguistic boundaries are maintained or dissolved.

Author(s):  
Caitlin Vitosky Clarke ◽  
Brynn C Adamson

This paper offers new insights into the promotion of the Exercise is Medicine (EIM) framework for mental illness and chronic disease. Utilising the Syndemics Framework, which posits mental health conditions as corollaries of social conditions, we argue that medicalized exercise promotion paradigms both ignore the social conditions that can contribute to mental illness and can contribute to mental illness via discrimination and worsening self-concept based on disability. We first address the ways in which the current EIM framework may be too narrow in scope in considering the impact of social factors as determinants of health. We then consider how this narrow scope in combination with the emphasis on independence and individual prescriptions may serve to reinforce stigma and shame associated with both chronic disease and mental illness. We draw on examples from two distinct research projects, one on exercise interventions for depression and one on exercise interventions for multiple sclerosis (MS), in order to consider ways to improve the approach to exercise promotion for these and other, related populations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nijee Brown ◽  
Hal Aubrey ◽  
Trevor Clark ◽  
Tina Jordan ◽  
Kwamme Anderson ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Shiri Lev-Ari ◽  
Sharon Peperkamp

AbstractThere is great variation in whether foreign sounds in loanwords are adapted or retained. Importantly, the retention of foreign sounds can lead to a sound change in the language. We propose that social factors influence the likelihood of loanword sound adaptation, and use this case to introduce a novel experimental paradigm for studying language change that captures the role of social factors. Specifically, we show that the relative prestige of the donor language in the loanword’s semantic domain influences the rate of sound adaptation. We further show that speakers adapt to the performance of their ‘community', and that this adaptation leads to the creation of a norm. The results of this study are thus the first to show an effect of social factors on loanword sound adaptation in an experimental setting. Moreover, they open up a new domain of experimentally studying language change in a manner that integrates social factors.


2021 ◽  
pp. 485-497
Author(s):  
Suzana Marjanić

Using the example of the town of Labin in Istria, I demonstrate how isolation, the so-called periphery, can also serve as an expression of resistance in a cultural niche. The collective Labin Art Express (L.A.E., initiated by Dean Zahtila, late Krešimir Farkaš, Graziano Kršić) is the initiator of the fundamental L.A.E. project Underground City XXI ‒ independent underground Labin cultural city as an alternative to the existing above-ground, heteronomous Labin, i.e. the creation of a real city 150 m below the earth’s surface ‒ in underground halls and tunnels, carved in solid rock, connecting Labin, Raša, Plomin and Rabac, with streets, bars, galleries, swimming pools, playgrounds for children, shops, restaurants, the Museum of Mining and Industry of Istria. Thereby we can compare Labin in terms of urbanity and anthropology with the town of Katowice, which in 2018 was selected to host the most significant UN Climate Change Conference, following the 2015 Paris Agreement. Katowice were chosen as one of Europe’s most polluted sites due to the exploitation of coal i.e. the transition of the aforementioned town from a mining and industrial site to a modern industrial, economical, technological and cultural centre.


2022 ◽  
pp. 68-93
Author(s):  
Daniele Giordino ◽  
Edoardo Crocco

Climate change, pollutants, sustainable development, and public health have become increasingly more relevant issues that continuously get addressed and discussed by governments and entities all over the globe. Through the adoption of policies and recyclable methods, they hope to encourage and aid the responsible consumption of natural resources so as to reduce the creation of waste. Furthermore, the generation of sustainable communities is encouraged so as to safeguard and protect the population's health against the risks associated with different types of pollutants. To support SMEs in the adoption of sustainable practices, this chapter aims to introduce, guide, and provide some useful tools that can then be utilized by readers and professionals operating within SMEs to maximize the effectiveness of their sustainability approaches and tools while also providing knowledge on how the implementation of sustainable practices could be integrated within their businesses.


Author(s):  
Peter Rudiak-Gould

The Republic of the Marshall Islands, an archipelago of low-lying coral atolls in eastern Micronesia, is one of four sovereign nations that may be rendered uninhabitable by climate change in the present century. It is not merely sea level rise which is expected to undermine life in these islands, but the synergy of multiple climatic threats (Barnett and Adger 2003). Rising oceans and increasingly frequent typhoons will exacerbate flooding at the same time that the islands’ natural protection—coral reefs—will die from warming waters and ocean acidification. Fresh water resources will be threatened by both droughts and salt contamination from flooding. Although the reaction of the coral atoll environment to climate change is uncertain, it is likely that the islands will no longer be able to support human habitation within fifty or a hundred years (Barnett and Adger 2003: 326)—quite possibly within the lifetimes of many Marshall Islanders living today. In the public imagination, climate change in vulnerable, remote locations is the intrusion of contamination into a formerly pristine environment, of danger into a once secure sanctuary, of change into a once static microcosm (see Lynas 2004: 81, 124). Archaeologists, of course, know better than this: every place has a history of environmental upheavals, and the Marshall Islands is no exception. Researchers agree that coral atolls are among the most precarious and marginal environments that humans have managed to inhabit (Weisler 1999; Yamaguchi et al. 2005: 27), existing only ‘on the margins of sustainability’ (Weisler 2001). The islands in fact only recently formed: while the reefs are tens of millions of years old, the islets that sit on them emerged from the sea only recently, probably around 2000 BP (Weisler et al. 2000: 194; Yamaguchi et al. 2005: 31–2), just before the first people arrived (Yamaguchi et al. 2005: 31–2). The new home that these early seafarers found was not so much an ancient safe haven as a fragile geological experiment—land whose very existence was tenuous long before humans were altering the global climate.


Author(s):  
Kathryn C. Kaufman

This chapter addresses the lack of adequate global infrastructure and the limits imposed on global growth, prosperity, and quality of life. Inadequate infrastructure causes loss of lives, constrains economic progress, and exacerbates climate change. To address the infrastructure gap between what is being constructed and what is genuinely required, the author proposes the creation of a development fund, which will require international collaboration and cooperation, to make available a substantial amount of capital and dedicate it to projects that contribute to the betterment of society. This development fund will not only improve infrastructure but also enhance the quality of many lives.


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