A Bird in the House: An Anthropological Perspective on Companion Parrots

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Anderson

AbstractAlthough companion birds are the third most-common animal companion—after dogs and cats—in U.S. households, few anthrozoological publications focus on them. This study examines the role of companion parrots in American households. The study combines a literature review with the results of a survey of bird owners and participant observation. The study uses the resulting qualitative and quantitative data in addressing the social dynamics of companion parrot ownership in the household. The data support the impression that companion parrots increasingly are being considered family members, or "Fids" ("Feathered Kids"), thus following current trends in American society that accord companion animals in general a greater investment in time, money, and emotion. However, the general public is not well informed about the complexities of captive parrot care, and psittacine wellness is an important concern.

Author(s):  
Julia Wesely ◽  
Adriana Allen ◽  
Lorena Zárate ◽  
María Silvia Emanuelli

Re-thinking dominant epistemological assumptions of the urban in the global South implies recognising the role of grassroots networks in challenging epistemic injustices through the co-production of multiple saberes and haceres for more just and inclusive cities. This paper examines the pedagogies of such networks by focusing on the experiences nurtured within Habitat International Coalition in Latin America (HIC-AL), identified as a ‘School of Grassroots Urbanism’ (Escuela de Urbanismo Popular). Although HIC-AL follows foremost activist rather than educational objectives, members of HIC-AL identify and value their practices as a ‘School’, whose diverse pedagogic logics and epistemological arguments are examined in this paper. The analysis builds upon a series of in-depth interviews, document reviews and participant observation with HIC-AL member organisations and allied grassroots networks. The discussion explores how the values and principles emanating from a long history of popular education and popular urbanism in the region are articulated through situated pedagogies of resistance and transformation, which in turn enable generative learning from and for the social production of habitat.


Africa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Padrão Temudo

This article aims at contributing to our understanding of violence and warfare in contemporary West Africa by adopting a bi-focal analysis that looks both at power struggles within the urban elite and at the grassroots multi-ethnic setting in southern Guinea-Bissau. I pay close attention to the social dynamics of rural peoples' perspectives, coping strategies and inter-ethnic conflicts. Local conflicts are elucidated as an ongoing process that traverses times of war and peace. Although they are subject to manipulation by urban actors, local conflicts are also a matter of continuous negotiation and partial consensus at the grassroots. In stark contrast to this, the struggles in the ruling group are characterized by an escalating spiral of factionalism, diminishing compromises and elimination of rivals. By analysing the relationship between urban and rural actors and the role of cosmology, the article also aims to shed new light on the multiple shapes patron–client relations can assume in Africa.


2019 ◽  
pp. 233-236
Author(s):  
Jana Riess

This concluding chapter argues that in the next few years at least, the polarization within Mormonism will continue, in which those who remain in the LDS Church will be ardent believers but those who don't fit in will pull up stakes and leave. How the Church chooses to finesse the social shifts—specifically, those regarding marriage, gender, racial diversity, and LGBT issues—will signal which trajectory it is going to follow: will it remain steadfast and become entrenched in the role of embattled subculture, or will it lean in, accommodating its message and positioning in order to retain cultural relevancy and attractiveness? The chapter then considers the acute tension the LDS Church is experiencing between assimilation into American society and retrenchment. This ever-present pendulum between assimilation and retrenchment has ensured that Mormonism has successfully maintained its distinctive edge even while making major theological deletions that might have been unthinkable to previous generations.


Author(s):  
Ellie R. Schainker

Chapter 3 explores the social dynamics of religious toleration and the confessional state from below by examining the spaces of Jewish conversion. The chapter presents a range of conversion narratives which locate interfaith encounters at the local tavern as the springboard for migrating to a different confessional community. It analyzes daily social interactions among Jewish and neighboring Polish, Lithuanian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian communities, and how these encounters nurtured intimate knowledge of other confessional lifestyles, facilitated interfaith relationships, and provided access to the personnel and institutions of other faiths. By taking a geographical approach, the chapter presents the western provincial towns and villages of imperial Russia as interreligious zones wherein conversion was predicated on interconfessional networks, sociability, and a personal familiarity with Christianity via its adherents. In exploring forms of encounter, the chapter highlights the role of the local godparent—often local elites or civil/military personnel—in facilitating confessional transfers.


2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Anthony Hunter

Using data generated from participant observation and semistructured interviews, I consider the ways in which nightlife, or what might be imagined as the nightly round—a process encompassing the social interactions, behaviors, and actions involved in going to, being in, and leaving the club—is used to mitigate the effects of social and spatial isolation, complementing the accomplishment of the daily round. Through an analysis of the social world of the Spot, I argue that understanding the ways in which urban blacks use space in the nightclub to mediate racial segregation, sexual segregation, and limited social capital expands our current understanding of the spatial mobility of urban blacks as well as the important role of extra–neighborhood spaces in such processes. Further, I highlight the ways that urban blacks use space in the nightclub to leverage socioeconomic opportunities and enhance social networks. While I found that black heterosexual and lesbian and gay patrons used space in similar ways at the Spot, black lesbians and gays were more likely to use the club as a space to develop ties of social support.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 184797901772161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Peter Ferdinand ◽  
Uli Meyer

In this article, we develop a programmatic notion of innovation ecosystems, which emphasizes the analysis of different forms of distributed innovation without reducing the perspective to the role of a focal organization. It highlights relationships between communities and corporate firms as nexus for distributed innovation and elaborates how different facets of openness shape the dynamic of the ecosystem. Thus, our model allows for the analysis and comparison of a broad scope of constellations, their particular coordinating mechanisms as well as related advantages and disadvantages. We apply this framework to two specific cases of distributed innovation, the RepRap 3D printer and the ARA modular smartphone, in order to delineate how differences in the forms of openness affect the prevalent relationships between communities and firms as well as the constituting functions of their particular innovation ecosystem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-72
Author(s):  
Alexander Kruglov ◽  
Andrey Kruglov

Creativity, the integrative function of the psyche of Homo sapiens (HS), which arose about 50,000 years ago, allowed HS to project the image of the goal (IG), transformed into a “symbol,” into the external environment. The projection constructs of the psyche have become autonomous fragments of the environment in the HS perception, not being its derivatives. Objective reality, perceived by HS, has acquired non-inherent properties: a mental product of the psyche that integrates the virtual and real components of the environment. In other words, the role of HS has evolved over the last 10,000 years, since the beginning of the agrarian revolution: from (1) a dependent subject controlled by external forces in an animated world to (2) “the crown of God's creation” in “theism” and, (3) to the status "Higher power" during the period, in which "God is Dead." Initially, HS exists in an incompletely real environment, with an increasing component of virtuality. With symbolic virtual content, HS supplemented or duplicated the entire surrounding world, creating a two-component habitat (virtual and real). The emergence and development of conceptual thinking (ConceptT) led to a partial "devirtualization" of the environment, the removal of restrictions on scientific knowledge, the rapid growth of technology and social dynamics. The result of technological development was, in the recent past, a temporary resolution of the primary frustration: the establishment of the current equilibrium in the relationships with the regulatory "dissociated symbol"—the virtual "information universe” (IU). The IU, defining as the interference of "media" with the "information body" of the Internet, we consider as a unified information space, integrated with reality and in total constituting the HS habitat. Clip thinking (ClipT), qualitatively different from ConceptT, is a new operating system of the psyche, a moderator of adaptation to a new, virtualized environment. A technological derivative of mental activity HS—the IU—without the participation of conscious forms of mental activity, transforms the algorithms of thinking, i.e. formats the psyche as a whole with adaptation to qualitative and quantitative changes in the virtual component of the environment, and to the perspectives on the development of technologies during the singularity.


Author(s):  
Anastasia K. Kadda

The aim of this study is to describe the social role of technology in healthcare quality improvement. Methodologically, the study was based on a review of the relevant literature, Greek and foreign, as well as Internet sources related to the social role of technology in healthcare quality improvement. The main conclusions drawn were the following: a) The development of new technologies in the field of health and their involvement within the social context is today a fast accelerating process; b) The presentday expansion of health-oriented technology is of vital importance because of current trends in the field of healthcare and of the social evolution on healthcare services; c) Information technology is capable of profoundly contributing to the improvement of the quality of health, and thus to the wellbeing of the citizens in a society; d) By the use of health technology, more efficient and productive financial management is achieved with numerous benefits for the economy; e) Electronic health can improve the quality of healthcare thereby facilitating the work of health professionals; f) Greek society is being increasingly influenced by both international and domestic scientific and technological advances in health technology despite the existence of significant legal barriers; g) Current trends in the European Union as far as health technology is concerned are intimately connected with expanding citizen participation in the electronic revolution and their increasing access to the Information Society.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 174-182
Author(s):  
Łukasz Blechar ◽  
Patrycja Zalewska

AbstractIntroduction. Currently we observe a change in the labor market. It is caused by the new developments in the field of artificial Intelligence.Aim. We would like to present current trends affecting the work of nurses and midwives around the world in order to raise the social awareness of these changes among Polish healthcare workers. Moreover, we want to emphasize the fact that it is necessary to involve them as the stakeholders in the ongoing discussions and research projects in order to better understand their needs and expectations.Discussion. The article revolves around the current state of technology. We begin by outlining the framework of the perceived changes in the nurses’ structures and tasks around the world. Then we provide the examples of a variety of robots already executing those tasks. We start with the robots whose purpose is the elimination of simple, routine activities such as TUG or HOMER. After doing so, we move on to possible solutions how to eliminate the need for personal involvement in invasive (such as BloodBot) and non-invasive procedures (CLARA). We finish by introducing the machines used to replicate animal therapy, which can be used to treat patients who have difficulties with communicating their needs.Conclusions. We would like to present the future of nursing closely related to machines. We want to emphasize the element of complementarity of this relation and the fact that performing some tasks by robots is not connected with replacing people, but rather with enabling them to shift their focus from the performance of arduous duties to spending more time on empathic work with the patient.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-132
Author(s):  
Saghar Sadeghian

This article is about the struggles of a persecuted confessional minority in Qajar Iran. It shows that the massacre of the Bahāʾis in Isfahan in 1903 was representative of the ongoing power struggles in the city. Previous scholarship that has briefly explored these events has relied primarily on a handful of British diplomatic sources. Drawing on unexplored documents in British and Iranian archives, this article provides crucial details about the social dynamics on the ground and stresses the role of key actors involved in this episode in Iranian history. In the process, the article puts together the socio-economic contexts of the events in Isfahan, explains why the Bahāʾis sought foreign protection, and analyzes the attitudes of powerful local actors such as Zell al-Soltān and Āqā Najafi.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document