Crafting Marine Shell Prestige Goods at Cahokia

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Beth Trubitt

Acquired from coasts and exchanged inland across North America, marine shell was an important raw material for making prestige goods, valued objects that “materialized” relationships between individuals or groups. Of interest here is how marine shell prestige goods production and exchange was organized, including the social identities of crafters and consumers. At Cahokia, shell working was associated with higher-status households, especially in the later phases of the Mississippian sequence. Shell ornaments crafted by elite households may have been used locally, but since prestige goods often passed through many hands, some shell objects may have ultimately been deposited far from Cahokia.

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 665-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück ◽  
Alex Davies

Bronze Age metal objects are widely viewed as markers of wealth and status. Items of other materials, such as jet, amber and glass, tend either to be framed in similar terms as ‘prestige goods’, or to be viewed as decorative trifles of limited research value. In this paper, we argue that such simplistic models dramatically underplay the social role and ‘agentive’ capacities of objects. The occurrence of non-metal ‘valuables’ in British Early Bronze Age graves is well-documented, but their use during the later part of the period remains poorly understood. We will examine the deposition of objects of amber, jet and jet-like materials in Late Bronze Age Britain, addressing in particular their contexts and associations as well as patterns of breakage to consider the cultural meanings and values ascribed to such items and to explore how human and object biographies were intertwined. These materials are rarely found in burials during this period but occur instead on settlements, in hoards and caves. In many cases, these finds appear to have been deliberately deposited in the context of ritual acts relating to rites of passage. In this way, the role of such objects as social agents will be explored, illuminating their changing significance in the creation of social identities and systems of value.


1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lamia Rustum Shehadeh

Law plays a vital role in establishing not only regulations but actual thoughts and behavior in defining what is acceptable by society and what is to be considered natural or unnatural. Thus, as the laws dealt with here become symbols of what society believes to be natural or unnatural, they assume far more serious implications than their strictly legal context; hence, the significance of this study. The law is the arena where different views or philosophies are contested. Thus, Rosemary Coombe maintains that “law concludes or limits everyday struggles, authoritatively determines the qualities of individuals or groups, the social identities which people can lay claim to, and the ways in which personhood and experiences of self can be legitimately represented.” Furthermore, by legitimizing certain conceptions of the self, the law by default suppresses alternative conceptions.


Author(s):  
Vasilios Gialamas ◽  
Sofia Iliadou Tachou ◽  
Alexia Orfanou

This study focuses on divorces in the Principality of Samos, which existed from 1834 to 1912. The process of divorce is described according to the laws of the rincipality, and divorces are examined among those published in the Newspaper of the Government of the Principality of Samos from the last decade of the Principality from 1902 to 1911. Issues linked to divorce are investigated, like the differences between husbands and wives regarding the initiation and reasons for requesting a divorce. These differences are integrated in the specific social context of the Principality, and the qualitative characteristics are determined in regard to the gender ratio of women and men that is articulated by the invocation of divorce. The aim is to determine the boundaries of social identities of gender with focus on the prevailing perceptions of the social roles of men and women. Gender is used as a social and cultural construction. It is argued that the social gender identity is formed through a process of “performativity”, that is, through adaptation to the dominant social ideals.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-72
Author(s):  
Anam Miftakhul Huda

The woman stands for Java language (wani ditoto) term used for Homo sapiens gender and has reproduction. The opposite sex from the woman is a man or a male. The woman is a word commonly used to describe mature women. Awareness of Indonesian women to work very large, although the country must work out to become migrant workers, this is shown by the increasing number of women migrant workers every year.Based BNP2TKI report in 2013 the number of migrants reached 512 168 people, consisting of 285 197 person formal workers (56 %) and 226 871 informal migrant workers (44 %). Whereas in 2012 migrant workers reached 494 609 people consisting of 258 411 formal sector (52 %) and 236 198 informal migrant workers (48 %). (detik.com). This research using phenomenology approach by deep interview (unstructured) observation non participants and study documentation. The subject in this research is Javanese Indonesian women. The informants of this research are six women workers.   The purpose of this research is expected to describe the shift in the concept of Javanese women carry out tasks in abroad, there are Indonesian cultural values implied by the instincts of a typical traditional Javanese woman, though the housemaids are located in other countries.Social identity theory is a theory that was originally engaged in the area of Social Psychology, with the language and its ability to find and understand the meaning, has become a meta - theory that is able to bring together many disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, communications, as implications is that reality is always social, and the social contextual character always in a state of local culture and history.The meaning of something can be very different in cultures or groups of people who are different because in each cultural or community groups have own ways to interpret things. Groups of people who have a background of understanding is not the same to certain cultural codes will not be able to understand the meaning produced by other community groups.Research described that diversity nations woman patriarchy, Javanese culture properties characteristic of java women clearly reflected in life with workers Indonesia (TKW) is different from another country.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146954052110160
Author(s):  
Tiziana Brenner Beauchamp Weber ◽  
Eliane C. Francisco Maffezzolli

This research identifies the relationship between consumption practices and the construction of social identity among tweens in a Brazilian context. Using consumer culture theory and social identity theory, we employed 80 h of observation, 9 interviews, and projective techniques with fifteen girls. Three social identity groups were acknowledged: naive, connected, and counselors. These groups revealed different identity projects, such as the integration and maintenance within the social group of current belonging, the access to the social group with the greater distinctions, the generation of differentiable and positive distinctions (both intra- and intergroups), and the expression and consolidation of identity and its respective consumption practices. This research contributes to the consumption literature that relates to consumer identity projects. The findings reveal a current resignification of girlhood and exposes tweens’ consumption practices as a direct mechanism of the expression and construction of their social identities. These are mechanisms of social identity construction as mediated by group relations through the processes of access, maintenance, integration, differentiation, and distinction.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Michael Phillipp Brunner

Abstract The 1920s and 30s were a high phase of liberal missionary internationalism driven especially by American-led visions of the Social Gospel. As the missionary consensus shifted from proselytization to social concerns, the indigenization of missions and the role of the ‘younger churches’ outside of Europe and North America was brought into focus. This article shows how Protestant internationalism pursued a ‘Christian Sociology’ in dialogue with the field’s academic and professional form. Through the case study of settlement sociology and social work schemes by the American Marathi Mission (AMM) in Bombay, the article highlights the intricacies of applying internationalist visions in the field and asks how they were contested and shaped by local conditions and processes. Challenging a simplistic ‘secularization’ narrative, the article then argues that it was the liberal, anti-imperialist drive of the missionary discourse that eventually facilitated an American ‘professional imperialism’ in the development of secular social work in India. Adding local dynamics to the analysis of an internationalist discourse benefits the understanding of both Protestant internationalism and the genesis of Indian social work and shows the value of an integrated global micro-historical approach.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Tamás Mizik ◽  
Gábor Gyarmati

As Earth’s fossil energy resources are limited, there is a growing need for renewable resources such as biodiesel. That is the reason why the social, economic and environmental impacts of biofuels became an important research topic in the last decade. Depleted stocks of crude oil and the significant level of environmental pollution encourage researchers and professionals to seek and find solutions. The study aims to analyze the economic and sustainability issues of biodiesel production by a systematic literature review. During this process, 53 relevant studies were analyzed out of 13,069 identified articles. Every study agrees that there are several concerns about the first-generation technology; however, further generations cannot be price-competitive at this moment due to the immature technology and high production costs. However, there are promising alternatives, such as wastewater-based microalgae with up to 70% oil content, fat, oils and grease (FOG), when production cost is below 799 USD/gallon, and municipal solid waste-volatile fatty acids technology, where the raw material is free. Proper management of the co-products (mainly glycerol) is essential, especially at the currently low petroleum prices (0.29 USD/L), which can only be handled by the biorefineries. Sustainability is sometimes translated as cost efficiency, but the complex interpretation is becoming more common. Common elements of sustainability are environmental and social, as well as economic, issues.


2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
António Carlos Valera ◽  
Thomas Xaver Schuhmacher ◽  
Arun Banerjee

2011 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tristan Carter

AbstractThis paper reviews 50 years of obsidian studies at Neolithic Çatalhöyük in the Konya plain, central Anatolia. A number of key issues are addressed: (1) the source of the site's raw materials, the means and forms by which the obsidian was introduced to the site and the role of Çatalhöyük in the supra-regional dissemination of these raw materials; (2) the alleged gender associations of certain obsidian goods in the burial record and beyond; (3) a more general consideration of the social significance of the circulation and consumption of obsidian at the site, including the phenomena of hoarding and gifting, plus the important role of projectiles in the creation of social identities and various forms of ritual behaviour, not least the termination of the life of a building/individual; (4) the technotypological and raw material variability through time; (5) the use of obsidian in daily practice and craft-working.


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