Basic Signs of the Concepts of Bogatstvo and Wealth in Russian and English Language Pictures of the World

The article compares the motivating signs of the concepts of bogatstvo and wealth based on eleven Russian etymological dictionaries and seven English etymological and four explanatory dictionaries. The author analyzed the words bogatstvo and wealth as the main representatives of the concepts in question and identified their motivating signs. The interpretation relied on the theory of mentality. The Russian concept of bogatstvo appeared to have 15 motivating sings that could be grouped into five blocks: 1) material wealth, 2) allocation of resources, 3) a share of property, 4) spiritual wealth, 5) values. The English concept of wealth demonstrated fourteen motivating signs represented as three blocks: 1) material wealth, 2) values, 3) spiritual wealth.

Pardos’ Triumph

On September 13, 1745, the pardo (mixed-race Afro-Brazilian) brotherhood (lay Catholic association) of Nossa Senhora do Livramento (Our Lady of Emancipation) of Recife, Pernambuco, in collaboration with the pardo brotherhood of Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe) in neighboring Olinda, enthralled Pernambuco’s largest city with a great festival in honor of Blessed Gonçalo Garcia (1556–97). Like many colonial festivals, the festivities included fireworks, artillery salvos, five triumphal carts, seventeen allegorical floats, five different dance performances, and jousting. Yet never before had such an extravagant display of material wealth been made by an Afro-Brazilian brotherhood. The pardo irmãos (brotherhood members) had two important issues they wanted to settle once and for all with this festival. One was the question of Blessed Gonçalo’s pardoness, since the would-be-saint was the son of a Portuguese man and an East Indian woman, and pardoness in Brazil had been defined as the result of white–black miscegenation. The other issue was the popular notion that mixed-race Afro-Brazilians constituted colonial Brazil’s most deviant and unruly socioracial group. In this article, I analyze how mixed-race Afro-Brazilians used the material culture of early modern festivals to publicly articulate claims about their sacro-social prestige and socio-symbolic status. I contend that material culture played a central role in the pardo irmãos’ articulation of their devotion to Blessed Gonçalo and claims of sacro-social and socio-symbolic belonging, and that they used this material culture to challenge colonial notions about their ethnic group.

The Bright Future of Democracy is in Education

Does democracy have a bright future? This brief paper addresses this question and argues, that, thanks to Prometheus, political “animals” can build a better-managed corral for their common living which includes a better provision of education for all “animals.” A historical analysis of the long past may be used to discern what lies ahead. Democracy requires education and virtue, or to put it in one word, it requires pedagogy. The higher the level of pedagogy, the closer a politeia would come to an ideal democracy. Sometimes democracy is confused with equality in everything. Political “animals” are not equal, and political systems which treat people with different abilities equally have no future. An ideal society should discriminate according to levels of education obtained and the acquisition of material wealth. If the politeia is ideal, then each citizen has the same opportunity to become more educated and wealthier. In this free competition of being educated and the acquisition of individually made material wealth, ideal societies can flourish as Hesiod postulated in the 8th Century BCE and become stable despite Polybius’ predictions in the 2nd-1st Century BCE of the inevitable historical cyclicality of political systems. Keywords: education, pedagogy, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, ochlocracy, tyranny, ideal politeia, Polybius

Assessing comparative asset-based measures of material wealth as predictors of physical growth and mortality.

Social scientists and policymakers have increasingly relied on asset-based indices of household wealth to assess social inequities and to identify economically vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries. In the last decade, researchers have proposed a number of asset-based measures that permit global comparisons of household wealth across populations in different countries and over time. Each of these measures relies on different assumptions and indicators, and little is known about the relative performance of these measures in assessing inequalities. In this study, we assess four comparative, asset-based measures of wealth—the Absolute Wealth Estimate (AWE), the International Wealth Index (IWI), the Comparative Wealth Index (CWI), and the “Standard of Living” portion of the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI), along with a variable measuring television ownership—and compare how well each predicts health related variables such as women’s BMI, children’s height-for-age Z scores, and infant mortality at the household and survey level. Analyzing data from over 300 Demographic and Health surveys in 84 countries (n= 2,304,928 households), we found that AWE, IWI, CWI, MPI are all highly correlated (r = 0.7 to 0.9). However, IWI which is based on a common set of universally weighted indicators, typically best accounts for variation in all three health measures. We discuss the implications of these findings for choosing and interpreting these measures of wealth for different purposes.

Porcelain dolls from Neudachiny estate in Tobolsk

The object of this research is the finds of porcelain dolls discovered by L. N. Sladkova in 1998 during the excavations of Neudachiny estate in Tobolsk. The goal lies in studying two pieces of porcelain dolls, which most likely were imported and symbolize material wealth for the majority of Tobolsk resident in the late XIX – early XX centuries. Having explored the items from other collections of the Tobolsk Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve, the author attempts to determine the prevalence of such porcelain dolls in Tobolsk in the late XIX – XX centuries, and which social classes could afford them. The relevance of this work is substantiated by the absence of publications dedicated to archaeological finds of the imported porcelain dolls in the territory of Western Siberia, as well as Russian-language literature on attribution and study of this category of toys of the XI – early XX century. The author carries out the attribution of porcelain dolls found on the territory of the Neudachiny estate, and concludes that such finds are imported and manufactured in the late XIX – early XX centuries. The preserved hallmark allowed establishing that one of the dolls was manufactured in Germany at Armand Marseill factory. In correlation of the income of different categories of residents with the cost of porcelain dolls, the author indicates that not all segments of urban population could afford such porcelain dolls. The items may also contain information on commercial ties, as well as peculiarities of the childhood of Tobolsk residents of that time.

Sedentarisation and maternal childcare networks: role of risk, gender and demography

Worldwide mothers receive help with childcare from a diverse range of individuals (allomothers). Nonetheless, little exploration has occurred into why we see such diversity, such as different strategies used to buffer risk. Wide maternal childcare networks may be a consequence of situations of little material wealth and food storage - as is common in mobile hunter-gatherers - where households rely on the pooling of risk in informal insurance networks. In contrast, when households settle and accumulate wealth and food, they are able to retain the risk by absorbing losses within the household. Thus, the size and composition of mothers’ childcare networks may depend on whether households pool or retain risk, as captured by mobile and settled households in the Agta, a diverse Philippine foraging population. From in-depth observational data on 78 children, we find that childcare from grandmothers and sisters was higher in settled camps, while childcare from male kin was lower. Our findings offer little support for risk buffering, and additional analyses demonstrated that girls’ workloads were increased in settled camps, unlike boys, while grandmothers had fewer dependent children, increasing their availability as allomothers. These results point to gender-specific changes associated with shifting demographics as camps become larger and more settled.

Critical perspectives on the transformative potential of higher education in Aoteara New Zealand

<p>The global economic recession has resulted in unprecedented levels of inequality among the masses and paradoxically extraordinary levels of wealth and fortune among an elite few. In Aotearoa New Zealand, there is a widely held belief among Māori that higher education provides the key to dismantling inequalities and a ‘good education’ will help in the making of a better life. This research study looks at how to create positive transformation for Māori through education by exploring the inter-relationship between higher education, transformation and social class in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand. Based on semi-structured interviews with 30 ‘highly educated’ Māori from diverse backgrounds, aged 25 to 46 years old, this thesis explores the perspectives and tensions that arise for contemporary Māori who are creating a landscape for themselves and their whānau (family), particularly how higher education is complicit in both the potential to transform and the potential to constrain transformation. At the end of the day, are highly educated Māori simply maintaining the status quo, or are they in fact building organic intellectuals with the capacity to create and effect positive transformation for the collective? The research found that higher education success was a key enabler for transformation. Higher education opened doors and provided opportunities for participants to build critical consciousness and accrue material wealth as individuals in order to contribute to collective (whānau, hapū and Iwi) transformation. Only half of the participants identified with social class and therefore class consciousness was not a lever for transformation, rather it was at the level of whakapapa (genealogy) where transformative consciousness might be accelerated. Whānau is the critical transformation site and participants are leading transformative strategies in a range of dynamic ways, however, at present this action is uncoordinated. The findings showed scope for increased cohesion and collaboration in order to develop innovative strategies which draw on ‘both’ cultural and material wealth to address structural inequalities and enliven whānau, hapū, iwi and Māori transformative aspirations.</p>

Critical perspectives on the transformative potential of higher education in Aoteara New Zealand

<p>The global economic recession has resulted in unprecedented levels of inequality among the masses and paradoxically extraordinary levels of wealth and fortune among an elite few. In Aotearoa New Zealand, there is a widely held belief among Māori that higher education provides the key to dismantling inequalities and a ‘good education’ will help in the making of a better life. This research study looks at how to create positive transformation for Māori through education by exploring the inter-relationship between higher education, transformation and social class in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand. Based on semi-structured interviews with 30 ‘highly educated’ Māori from diverse backgrounds, aged 25 to 46 years old, this thesis explores the perspectives and tensions that arise for contemporary Māori who are creating a landscape for themselves and their whānau (family), particularly how higher education is complicit in both the potential to transform and the potential to constrain transformation. At the end of the day, are highly educated Māori simply maintaining the status quo, or are they in fact building organic intellectuals with the capacity to create and effect positive transformation for the collective? The research found that higher education success was a key enabler for transformation. Higher education opened doors and provided opportunities for participants to build critical consciousness and accrue material wealth as individuals in order to contribute to collective (whānau, hapū and Iwi) transformation. Only half of the participants identified with social class and therefore class consciousness was not a lever for transformation, rather it was at the level of whakapapa (genealogy) where transformative consciousness might be accelerated. Whānau is the critical transformation site and participants are leading transformative strategies in a range of dynamic ways, however, at present this action is uncoordinated. The findings showed scope for increased cohesion and collaboration in order to develop innovative strategies which draw on ‘both’ cultural and material wealth to address structural inequalities and enliven whānau, hapū, iwi and Māori transformative aspirations.</p>

The North of Western Siberia in the Socioeconomic Space of the USSR: Shifting Models of Nature Use

The north of Western Siberia is a region that in a historically short time went from a hub of territorial development, where it was only necessary to control the volume of extraction of certain resources, to a zone of extensive industrial development of vast territories with the need for comprehensive environmental protection. The models of embedding the north of Western Siberia into the socioeconomic space of the USSR were simultaneously based on the need to develop the region’s rich natural resources and to rationally use them. At their core was an industrial standard. In the 1930s–1950s, this industrial standard depended on the use of biological resources, where the main producer of material wealth was the Indigenous inhabitants of the north. Yet it failed. A need arose to rely on resources with a more powerfully transformative and modernizing potential. These resources became hydrocarbons. Beginning in the 1960s, the model of natural resource use in the north was reoriented towards the extraction of oil and gas. The favorable market conditions and large export potential of these resources made it possible to solve not only economic but also ideological tasks. The main producer of material goods became the migrant population, which had the necessary professional and social skills to translate the industrial standard into practice. The Indigenous peoples of the north found themselves on the sidelines of socioeconomic development. A stereotype took root in Soviet society and science that the main object of management and transformation should be nature, which can be modified unlimitedly and at any speed. At the same time, it is obvious that technological and socioeconomic mechanisms are more, not less, malleable than natural ones. A person in the “human-nature” system was considered utilitarianly, exclusively from an economic standpoint. All of this speaks to the need to better understand the historical experience of state environmental management in northern Siberia and the role of people in this process.

Celebrity worship and cognitive skills revisited: applying Cattell’s two-factor theory of intelligence in a cross-sectional study

Background Almost two decades of research produced mixed findings on the relationship between celebrity worship and cognitive skills. Several studies demonstrated that cognitive performance slightly decreases with higher levels of celebrity worship, while other studies found no association between these constructs. This study has two aims: (1) to extend previous research on the association between celebrity worship and cognitive skills by applying the two-factor theory of intelligence by Cattell on a relatively large sample of Hungarian adults, and (2) to investigate the explanatory power of celebrity worship and other relevant variables in cognitive performance. Methods A cross-sectional study design was used. Applying an online survey, a total of 1763 Hungarian adults (66.42% male, Mage = 37.22 years, SD = 11.38) completed two intelligence subtests designed to measure ability in vocabulary (Vocabulary Test) and digit symbol (Short Digit Symbol Test). Participants also completed the Celebrity Attitude Scale and the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale. Subjective material wealth, current family income and general sociodemographics were also reported by participants. Results Linear regression models indicated that celebrity worship was associated with lower performance on the cognitive tests even after controlling for demographic variables, material wealth and self-esteem, although the explanatory power was limited. Conclusions These findings suggest that there is a direct association between celebrity worship and poorer performance on the cognitive tests that cannot be accounted for by demographic and socioeconomic factors.