scholarly journals Bridging Discussions of Human History: Ancestry DNA and New Roles for Africana Studies

Genealogy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
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This paper explores how Africana Studies offer the opportunity for a new worldview that may supplant the assumption that Western history is history. It considers how new knowledge of the human migration bodes for the future of Africana Studies. It has the following research questions: (1) Does new ancestry data reveal or clarify African narratives that may have been missing or suppressed?; (2) What heritage do participants over- or under-predict?; (3) Do participants over-predict indigenous American heritage?; and (4) How is unexpected heritage received? Data from the DNA Discussion Project is used to answer these questions, and implications for bridging discussions of human history using Ancestry DNA are discussed.

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Boström ◽  
Rolf Dalin

This study focus on adolescents motivations about remaining in rural areas in the Mid Sweden Region, a part of Sweden with decreasing school performance scores and high out-migration. The study is based on 1,500 young people’s responses to a Web-based survey within the framework of a regional school development project. The research questions focused on: whether youths were going to stay there or move the future in urban or rural areas, influences, and the future choices and differences among genders, regions, and age groups. The empirical data are processed with statistical analysis. The study confirms previous research on young people’s relocations from rural areas; jobs and education are important motives, and the most prone to move are women. What is new knowledge is that lessons about the region’s importance have a positive, significant effect on individuals’ plans to remain in their home municipality. This can and should be highlighted in local, regional, and national politics, but more importantly in school discourses. Since school plays a role in students’ thinking and future choices, a larger formation effort could be of great value for norms and regional political standpoints. The study has relevance to the international terms of similar geographical areas.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 157-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip L. Roth ◽  
Allen I. Huffcutt

The topic of what interviews measure has received a great deal of attention over the years. One line of research has investigated the relationship between interviews and the construct of cognitive ability. A previous meta-analysis reported an overall corrected correlation of .40 ( Huffcutt, Roth, & McDaniel, 1996 ). A more recent meta-analysis reported a noticeably lower corrected correlation of .27 ( Berry, Sackett, & Landers, 2007 ). After reviewing both meta-analyses, it appears that the two studies posed different research questions. Further, there were a number of coding judgments in Berry et al. that merit review, and there was no moderator analysis for educational versus employment interviews. As a result, we reanalyzed the work by Berry et al. and found a corrected correlation of .42 for employment interviews (.15 higher than Berry et al., a 56% increase). Further, educational interviews were associated with a corrected correlation of .21, supporting their influence as a moderator. We suggest a better estimate of the correlation between employment interviews and cognitive ability is .42, and this takes us “back to the future” in that the better overall estimate of the employment interviews – cognitive ability relationship is roughly .40. This difference has implications for what is being measured by interviews and their incremental validity.


This chapter is a transcript of Haq’s address to the North South Roundtable of 1992, where he identifies five critical challenges for the global economy for the future. If addressed properly, these can change the course of human history. He stresses on the need for redefining security to include security for people, not just of land or territories; to redefine the existing models of development to include ‘sustainable human development’; to find a more pragmatic balance between market efficiency and social compassion; to forge a new partnership between the North and the South to address issues of inequality; and the need to think on new patterns of governance for the next decade.


2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvatore T. March ◽  
Fred Niederman

We must look ahead at today's radical changes in technology, not just as forecasters but as actors charged with designing and bringing about a sustainable and acceptable world. New knowledge gives us power for change: for good or ill, for knowledge is neutral. The problems we face go well beyond technology: problems of living in harmony with nature, and most important, living in harmony with each other. Information technology, so closely tied to the properties of the human mind, can give us, if we ask the right questions, the special insights we need to advance these goals. Herbert A. Simon (2000)


2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Mansell ◽  
Allison Harell ◽  
Elisabeth Gidengil ◽  
Patrick A. Stewart

AbstractWe introduce the Politics and the Life Sciences special issue on Psychophysiology, Cognition, and Political Differences. This issue represents the second special issue funded by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences that adheres to the Open Science Framework for registered reports (RR). Here pre-analysis plans (PAPs) are peer-reviewed and given in-principle acceptance (IPA) prior to data being collected and/or analyzed, and are published contingent upon the preregistration of the study being followed as proposed. Bound by a common theme of the importance of incorporating psychophysiological perspectives into the study of politics, broadly defined, the articles in this special issue feature a unique set of research questions and methodologies. In the following, we summarize the findings, discuss the innovations produced by this research, and highlight the importance of open science for the future of political science research.


Author(s):  
David Levi-Faur

This chapter focuses on Jack L. Walker’s 1969 paper “The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States,” which analyzes the phenomenon of diffusion as well as interdependent decision-making in a collective setting. The chapter summarizes Walker’s arguments and the reception of his work in, and its influence on, the field of political science. It then considers the research questions posed, such as why some states act as pioneers by adopting new programs more readily than others, and whether there are more or less stable patterns of diffusion of innovations. It also revisits Walker’s debate with Virginia Gray with regards to the latter’s seminal study “Innovation in the States: A Diffusion Study.” The chapter offers some suggestions on the future progress of diffusion scholarship and its potential to redefine our understanding of politics and policy.


Author(s):  
Thomas Borstelmann

This chapter tracks the economy of the 1970s as it began to decline after the prosperity of previous decades. Economic growth had defined human history for two hundred years, reaching a peak in the generation after 1945 when world economic growth averaged an extraordinary 5–7 percent per year. Americans rode that growth to a higher standard of living than anyone else. But in the 1970s it all seemed to be flowing away. Unemployment, oil shortages, a plunging stock market, recession, and, above all, inflation were apparently ending these golden years of unparalleled prosperity. Inflation hit everyone, and it hit the poor hardest of all. Persistent inflation undercut dreams and hopes for the future. The economic trauma of the 1970s threatened to destabilize Americans' understanding of how the world worked.


Author(s):  
David MacDougall

Research in the sciences, including the social sciences, is usually supposed to be conducted in a systematic way, working from research questions to the gathering of empirical data, to conclusions. But in an analogy drawn from the art of fencing, the author argues for an alternative approach in visual anthropology. Films look at the world differently from the ways we conventionally see, and these differences have optical, social, and structural origins. To overcome these differences, filmmakers may have to voluntarily ‘dislocate’ themselves in order to put themselves in a position to view their subject from a different perspective, and so uncover new knowledge. The argument is supported by a discussion of the realities of ethnographic fieldwork, the processes of filmmaking, and the role of play and improvisation in the arts and other human endeavours.


Author(s):  
Petter Gottschalk

Knowledge is an important organizational resource. Unlike other inert organizational resources, the application of existing knowledge has the potential to generate new knowledge. Not only can knowledge be replenished in use, it can also be combined and recombined to generate new knowledge. Once created, knowledge can be articulated, shared, stored, and re-contextualized to yield options for the future. For all of these reasons, knowledge has the potential to be applied across time and space to yield increasing returns (Garud & Kumaraswamy, 2005).


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