Transcending Conquest

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa S. Murphy ◽  
Haagen D. Klaus
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Culture Contact ◽  
The Body ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Skeletal Morphology ◽  
Health Changes ◽  
Health Decline ◽  
European Immigrants

There are twelve chapters divided into three sections: 1) life, death, and mortuary practices; 2) colonial entanglements, frontiers, and diversity; and 3) identity and the body under colonialism. The first and second sections offer a global perspective on the effects of colonialism and culture contact on community health: indigenous converts living in the frontier, peripheral towns, lower class suburbanites within major urban centers, and recent European immigrants. The contributions move beyond indigenous communities. Class, ethnicity, hybridity and contact longevity (entanglement) flesh out that colonialism was not a one-way process of cultural exchange, health decline, extirpation, or even a bad thing. The chapters’ undercurrent is resilience, with bioarchaeological data providing evidence of dietary and health changes reflecting the various degrees different communities responded and adjusted to colonialism. Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed‘ssecond accomplishment is to define bioarchaeology of colonialism that is not focused on diet, disease, and demography. Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed successfully justifies the value of diverse approaches that use body modification (Tiesler and Zabala), human skeletal morphology (Buzon and Smith, Danforth et al.,Ortiz et al., Ribot et al.), and ancient DNA (Danforth et al.) to explore what a bioarchaeology of colonialism can offer—the study of identity, hybridity, and ethnogenesis.

Creating the Wind

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-31
Author(s):  
Élodie Dupey García
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Natural Behavior ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Late Postclassic ◽  
Comparative Examination ◽  
Meteorological Phenomenon

This article explores how the Nahua of late Postclassic Mesoamerica (1200–1521 CE) created living and material embodiments of their wind god constructed on the basis of sensory experiences that shaped their conception of this divinized meteorological phenomenon. In this process, they employed chromatic and design devices, based on a wide range of natural elements, to add several layers of meaning to the human, painted, and sculpted supports dressed in the god’s insignia. Through a comparative examination of pre-Columbian visual production—especially codices and sculptures—historical sources mainly written in Nahuatl during the viceregal period, and ethnographic data on indigenous communities in modern Mexico, my analysis targets the body paint and shell jewelry of the anthropomorphic “images” of the wind god, along with the Feathered Serpent and the monkey-inspired embodiments of the deity. This study identifies the centrality of other human senses beyond sight in the conception of the wind god and the making of its earthly manifestations. Constructing these deity “images” was tantamount to creating the wind because they were intended to be visual replicas of the wind’s natural behavior. At the same time, they referred to the identity and agency of the wind god in myths and rituals.

The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Sousa
Keyword(s):  
Gender Relations ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Criminal Records ◽  
Native Women ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Important Position ◽  
The One

The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar examines gender relations in indigenous societies of central Mexico and Oaxaca from the 1520s to the 1750s, focusing mainly on the Nahua, Ñudzahui (Mixtec), Bènizàa (Zapotec), and Ayuk (Mixe) people. This study draws on an unusually rich and diverse corpus of original sources, including Ñudzahui- (Mixtec-), Tíchazàa- (Zapotec-), and mainly Nahuatl-language and Spanish civil and criminal records, published texts, and pictorial manuscripts. The sources come from more than 100 indigenous communities of highland Mexico. The book considers women’s lives in the broadest context possible by addressing a number of interrelated topics, including: the construction of gender; concepts of the body; women’s labor; marriage rituals and marital relations; sexual attitudes; family structure; the relationship between household and community; and women’s participation in riots and other acts of civil disobedience. The study highlights subtle transformations and overwhelming continuities in indigenous social attitudes and relationships. The book argues that profound changes following the Spanish conquest, such as catastrophic depopulation, economic pressures, and the imposition of Christian marriage, slowly eroded indigenous women’s status. Nevertheless, gender relations remained inherently complementary. The study shows how native women and men under colonial rule, on the one hand, pragmatically accepted, adopted, and adapted certain Spanish institutions, concepts, and practices, and, on the other, forcefully rejected other aspects of colonial impositions. Women asserted their influence and, in doing so, they managed to retain an important position within their households and communities across the first two centuries of colonial rule.

‘Tales of Wonder and Horror’: Coverage of insanity in the Leeds press, 1808-1840

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Evgeniya Kryssova
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
The Body ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Periodical Literature ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
The North ◽  
The Press

<p>The press was at the centre of the reform of the meaning of insanity, during its evolution from an equivocal eighteenth-century concept of melancholia to a medicalised Victorian notion of ‘lunacy’. During the late Georgian era newspapers provided a public forum for the opinion of newly emerging psychiatric practitioners and fostered the fears and concerns about mental illness and its supposed increase. The press was also the main source of news on crime, providing readers with reports on criminal insanity and suicide. In the first half of the nineteenth century, newspaper contents included official legal reports, as well as editorial commentary and excerpts from other publications, and newspaper articles can rarely be traced to one single author. Historians of British insanity avoid consulting periodical literature, choosing to use asylum records and coroners’ reports, as these sources are more straightforward than newspapers. However, Rab Houston’s recent study of the coverage of suicide in the north of Britain shows that the provincial press has been unjustly overlooked and can offer the material for a unique social analysis. Asylum records and coroners’ records do not contain the same detail provided in the press. Newspaper commentary can arguably reveal contemporary attitudes towards insanity and, moreover, sources such as asylum records only deal with the lower-class patients, as the middle- and upper-class insane were usually privately detained.  This thesis examines the press coverage of insanity in Leeds newspapers, and expands on previous research by looking at the way insanity was portrayed in the two most popular publications in the industrial region of Yorkshire: the Leeds Intelligencer and the Leeds Mercury. Chapter one focuses on legal cases that featured a verdict of insanity and explores the language used by the press in the reports of, mainly, violent domestic crime. Chapter two looks at reports of suicide and considers how contemporary views on financial and moral despondency influenced the portrayal of self-murder. Chapter three considers editorial articles that cannot be described as either crime or suicide reports. This chapter uncovers the presence of surprisingly humorous and entertaining articles on insanity found in editorials and the ‘Miscellany’ sections of the newspapers. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the reportage of insanity in the Leeds press was sensational, moralistic and selectively sympathetic; furthermore, such portrayal of insanity was reinforced throughout the body of the paper. Leeds newspapers segregated the insane by adopting a moralising tone and by choosing to use class-specific language towards the insane of different social ranks.</p>

scholarly journals Online and Offline Representations of Biocultural Diversity: A Political Ecology Perspective on Nature-Based Tourism and Indigenous Communities in the Brazilian Pantanal

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koen Arts ◽  
Maiara Rabelo ◽  
Daniela de Figueiredo ◽  
Georgina Maffey ◽  
Antonio Ioris ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Biocultural Diversity ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Conceptual Flexibility ◽  
Brazilian Pantanal

The concept of biocultural diversity is confronted with contemporary changes that impact on local communities, such as globalization and digital transformations. Engaging the conceptual flexibility of ‘biocultural diversity’, we studied nature-based tourism at the intersection of indigenous communities and the digital realm. We employed a political ecology perspective to examine online and offline representations of biocultural diversity in the Brazilian Pantanal, one of the biggest wetlands in the world, and home to groups of peoples known as the Pantaneiros. Data from interviews with 48 stakeholders in the tourist sector were structured along three ‘myths’—the Uncivilised, Unrestrained, and Unchanged—for which we have also constructed counter narratives. Each myth denoted the primacy of biodiversity, and ignored broader dimensions of the Pantanal as a bioculturally diverse landscape. The relationships of the Pantaneiros with their environment were found to be intricate and had clear repercussions for tourism, but ironically, reference to the Pantaneiro culture in nature-based tourism was superficial. Moreover, thriving on the myths, this form of tourism perpetuates skewed power structures and social inequalities. Lower-class Pantaneiros likely suffer most from this. We recommend stakeholder engagement with a biocultural design that facilitates the integration of other-than-biodiversity values, and that thereby promotes sustainability of the entire social-ecological system.

scholarly journals Muscle forces and the demands of human walking

Biology Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam D. Sylvester ◽  
Steven G. Lautzenheiser ◽  
Patricia Ann Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Lower Limb ◽  
Reaction Force ◽  
The Body ◽  
Muscle Forces ◽  
Skeletal Morphology ◽  
Lower Limb Muscles ◽  
Fossil Hominins ◽  
Force Curves ◽  
Behavior Function ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACT Reconstructing the locomotor behavior of extinct animals depends on elucidating the principles that link behavior, function, and morphology, which can only be done using extant animals. Within the human lineage, the evolution of bipedalism represents a critical transition, and evaluating fossil hominins depends on understanding the relationship between lower limb forces and skeletal morphology in living humans. As a step toward that goal, here we use a musculoskeletal model to estimate forces in the lower limb muscles of ten individuals during walking. The purpose is to quantify the consistency, timing, and magnitude of these muscle forces during the stance phase of walking. We find that muscles which act to support or propel the body during walking demonstrate the greatest force magnitudes as well as the highest consistency in the shape of force curves among individuals. Muscles that generate moments in the same direction as, or orthogonal to, the ground reaction force show lower forces of greater variability. These data can be used to define the envelope of load cases that need to be examined in order to understand human lower limb skeletal load bearing.

Embodied Inequality

2019 ◽  
pp. 35-54
Author(s):  
Erynn Masi de Casanova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Food Consumption ◽  
Domestic Work ◽  
Limited Resource ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Body ◽  
Health Food

This chapter examines the role of bodies and embodiment in domestic work. It argues that bodies matter for how domestic employees experience their work. Indeed, domestic workers' accounts emphasized physical labor and the embodied inequality between employer and employee. They described their work as exhausting, accelerating the deterioration of their bodies, and potentially dangerous. These accounts conceive of the body as a limited resource that women draw on to do their work, a resource that can be used up or damaged in the process. Bodies also matter because of the symbolic distinctions drawn between “good,” middle-class/elite bodies and “bad,” lower-class/deviant bodies—between employers' and workers' bodies. Workers face clear boundaries between themselves and employers in relation to health, food consumption, and appearance. Even employers who buck tradition by pursuing more egalitarian relations are aware of the differential values typically placed on differently classed bodies in Ecuador.

Dancing Body and Artistic Creation

2021 ◽  
pp. 136-159
Author(s):  
Ana Carolina Cadar
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
The Body ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Health Decline ◽  
History Of

This chapter aimed to explore, through the framework of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical theories, Vaslav Nijinsky's particular usage of his artistic creations. The history of Nijinsky's revolutionary talent and his mental health decline was the focus of this chapter. Nijinsky's formation as a dancer and his unique talent, and the specificities of his original subversive pieces were addressed. What can Nijinsky's trajectory teach about the artistry of sublimation and the use of the body in dance? Findings were contrasted with data from Maricela Sulbaran Zerpa's research concerning dancers and their relationship with their bodies alongside some contemporary testimonies of dancers.

scholarly journals Go Zika Go: A Feasibility Protocol of a Modified Ride-on Car Intervention for Children with Congenital Zika Syndrome in Brazil

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (18) ◽  
pp. 6875
Author(s):  
Egmar Longo ◽  
Ana Carolina De Campos ◽  
Amanda Spinola Barreto ◽  
Dinara Laiana de Lima Nascimento Coutinho ◽  
Monique Leite Galvão Coelho ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Goal Attainment ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
The Body ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Computer Adaptive Test ◽  
Motor Disability ◽  
Severe Motor ◽  
Congenital Zika Syndrome

Children with congenital Zika syndrome (CZS) present severe motor disability and can benefit from early powered mobility. The Go Zika Go project uses modified ride-on toy cars, which may advance the body functions, activities, and participation of children. This paper describes the study protocol aiming to assess the feasibility of a modified ride-on car intervention for children with CZS in Brazil. A mixed-methods design with a multiple 1-week baseline, 3-month intervention, and 1-month follow-up will be implemented. Modified ride-on car training sessions will be conducted three times a week at the participants’ home or in the clinic. The primary outcome will be a narrative description of study feasibility (photovoice method, focus groups, parent feasibility questionnaire and assessment of learning powered mobility). Secondary outcomes will be switch activation, driving sessions journal, social-cognitive interactions, mobility (pediatric evaluation of disability inventory computer adaptive test), goal attainment scaling (GAS), and participation (young children’s participation and environment measure). Go Zika Go is expected to be viable and to improve function, activity, and participation of children with CZS, providing a low-cost, evidence-based rehabilitation option that will be relevant to early child development in a global perspective.

Security Dispositifs and Urban E-Planning

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 42-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Barreto de Castro ◽  
Rosa Maria Leite Ribeiro Pedro
Keyword(s):  
Video Surveillance ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Scientific Controversy ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Surveillance Cameras

The main objective of this article is to make a psychosocial analysis of forms of government in their relations with video surveillance, especially regarding the effects produced in terms of subjectivity, a dimension of the use of technologies in city governance that urban e-planning ought not to ignore. This will contribute to the body of knowledge surrounding contemporary video surveillance in its current practices in Rio de Janeiro, and also help researchers to understand how existing policies that regulate this phenomenon are appropriated by people who live in this city. The presence of surveillance cameras as an element of everyday life in urban centers has dramatically increased in recent years. As important actants in the practice of government, these security dispositifs are articulating heterogeneous elements and “performing” very specific realities. However, particularly in Brazil, studies on video surveillance are still limited. Therefore, it is worth investigating which government performances in Brazil have been produced from the relationships established by surveillance cameras, and how those practices and knowledges are produced as effects of these same relationships. Likewise, by understanding that each subject responds differently to such actants, the authors intend to bring out the different versions that compose, specifically, this techno-scientific controversy and its resonances in the daily lives of common citizens. This article follows ideas proposed by Actor-Network Theory (ANT), especially the contributions of the sociologist Bruno Latour. As a research strategy, the authors proposed the creation of a cartography of the controversies about a particular urban video surveillance “collective” to be opened soon in the city of Rio de Janeiro - the ISCC (Integrated Security Command Center). Through mapping its associations, the authors look to increase the visibility of these issues of security dispositifs today and of the forms of government as they are performed and experienced at the scene in focus.

Guarding the Body

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-72
Author(s):  
Erika Robb Larkins
Keyword(s):  
Lower Class ◽  
Private Security ◽  
The Body ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Basic Training ◽  
Security Guards ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Security Industry ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Private Security Industry

Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the private security industry, this article focuses on the training of low-level guards, examining the centrality of the body and embodied experience to their work in hospitality settings. In a racially stratified society in which lower-class, dark-skinned bodies are oft en equated with poverty and criminality, security guards are required to perform an image of upstanding, respectable, law-abiding citizens in order to do their jobs protecting corporate property. Guards learn techniques of body management at security schools as part of their basic training. They also learn how to subdue the bodies of others, including those of white elites, who represent a constant challenge to their authority. Working from my own experiences as a student in private security schools, I argue for the relevance of an understanding of the body and its significations to private security work.

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