Impact of a science and technology strategy on the learning of physics

The use of smartphones and some applications for educational purposes are valuable tools in the laboratory since they are motivating for students and the teacher can take advantage of this advantage for the teaching of physics. The experience is based on the anthropological theory of didactics and the teaching approach in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It is proposed to investigate a trigger question in physics. To respond, an application is used that uses the smartphone’s sensors to record the simulation data. The experience is described, and results of its implementation are presented. Methodologically, a qualitative descriptive approach was used in a group of tenth grade students taking the physics course. Finally, it is concluded that the students felt motivated since they felt they participated in the construction of their own learning, supported using technologies that facilitate the integration of knowledge in physics.

Toward a Pedagogy for Consumer Anthropology: Method, Theory, Marketing

This paper focuses on teaching the application of anthropology in business to marketing students. It begins with the premise that consumer marketers have long used ethnography as a component of their qualitative market research toolkit to inform their knowledge about and empathy for consumers. A question for market research educators who include ethnography in their curricula is if and how to teach the richness of anthropologically based approaches, especially given a decoupling of ethnographic method from anthropological theory in much consumer research practice. This discussion might also resonate with anthropology educators who are interested in the ways anthropology is applied in commercial settings. As a demonstration of a teaching mode rather than a research report, this paper describes how a consumer anthropology market research project is used experientially in the classroom to help marketing students learn and appreciate the application of both anthropological method and theory for brand-building. Included is a summary of an ethnographic project on Duncan Hines cake mix and an in-class student exercise during which three conceptual ‘jumping off’ points from anthropological theory were used to generate marketing initiatives.

An Approach to the Anthropological Theory of the Qur’an and Hadith and Their Roles in Reducing Environmental Degradation

Background: According to the Qur’an, man is the servant and the successor of Allah, the representative of prosperity on earth, and has the responsibility for the universe. This approach will create a constructive human interaction with the environment. Environmental degradation is against the will of Allah. It originates from ignorance, human selfishness, passions, and evil temptations, manifest in greed, arrogance, and extravagance. If humans control these abnormal factors and follow Qur’an teachings, they will enjoy a healthy environment that is a universal right. This paper seeks to study the anthropological theory of the Qur’an and its role in reducing environmental degradation. Methods: Based on the descriptive-analytical design, we explored 70 verses of the Holy Qur’an in which the words samā’, ‘ard, mas’ūl, khalīfah, shaytān, and those are cognate with the Arabic verbs sa-khkha-ra, ha-ra-sa, sa-ra-fa, ki-ba-ra, ha-wā, ‘a-ba-da, and ‘a-ma-ra, as well as the related articles, books, and philological and exegetical sources. We investigated the Qur’an to find the effect of awareness and more attention of human beings to the dimensions of man’s creation to reduce environmental degradation. These issues will be discussed in two parts: 1) the anthropology and the dimensions of human creation in the Qur’an, and 2) the causes of environmental degradation. Results: This study showed that the survival of life and human enjoyment of a healthy environment depends on enough knowledge of oneself, seeking help from Allah, and following the Qur’anic guidelines. These facts effectively control internal and external causes of environmental degradation, including ignorance, egoism, selfishness, and evil temptations. These actions destroy the roots of greed, arrogance, and extravagance in human beings. For this reason, Allah demands humans to develop earth, care for and rescue it from any destruction, avoid extravagance, and observe justice. Conclusion: Meditating in the Qur’an, the man knows his creative dimensions and environmental degradation factors that are incompatible with nature and are rooted in some of the inner and outer dimensions of human personality. Hence, he will consciously enjoy sustainable development and maintaining a healthy environment. This behavior will then reduce anomalies in the environment on his part.

Elements of the anthropological theory of didactics in the selection of contents in a course of fluid mechanics in engineering, a case study in Spanish universities

The Anthropological Theory of Didactics has been applied to the field of didactics of mathematics with remarkable success. Fluid Mechanics is a discipline with a strong mathematical background, where mathematics is used for modeling the continuous nature. In addition, the Fluid Mechanics concepts are essential for the future engineer or scientist. For this reason, it is worth thinking whether the content that developed in engineering schools or science faculties are those demanded by the future professionals. The analysis has been done within the context of a case study framed in the Spanish noosphere, more particularly Universities and Companies. In this direction, the objective of this article is to know the institutional distance between the University and society as a demander of technologies based on Fluid Mechanics. To this end, the methodology based on the issuance of a questionnaire to experts focused on aspects such as present and emerging content associated with the Fluid Mechanics of an engineering degree is used. Note that the number of experts selected is reduced so as to consider the study as a sourcing for introducing expert thoughts on the fluid mechanics conception between university and companies. The results highlight the existence of an institutional distance between the University and the Enterprise (as a technology executor) in the conception of contents, thus establishing an area of potential improvement within the noosphere associated with fluid mechanics in Spain. Highlights Questionnaire to experts to understand the current institutional relations between University and Company in the Spanish system. Application of the Anthropological Theory of Didactics (ATD) techniques to Fluid Mechanics. Confirmation of an institutional distance between University and Companies in Fluid Mechanics conceptions.

The Icon

Perhaps no form of visual culture is more closely associated with the history and religious life of the Byzantine Empire than the painted icon. Known from the Early Byzantine period in encaustic images, its theological and liturgical functions are usually understood in light of theory that emerged in the wake of the Iconoclastic Controversy. As the imprinting of sacred form on matter, icons provide access to the sacred. Although often characterized as static and unchanging, they were produced in a variety of media, and over time new formats and new image types appeared. Recent discussions of Byzantine icons have successfully employed anthropological theory. Continued investigation of the reception of icons beyond the empire’s borders will similarly illuminate the history of their meaning and form.

Taskscapes, Landscapes, and the Politics of Agricultural Production in Roman Mosaics

In recent years archaeologists have put forward explanations of the design and impact of mythological and allegorical scenes in mosaics as part of elite Roman visual culture. While scenes of labor have served as evidence to accompany archaeological data on rural life, depictions of labor have received comparatively less attention as part of Roman ideological structures. Through an analysis of mosaics of the imperial period, this article demonstrates the value of adapting Timothy Ingold’s concept of taskscape for understanding the elite strategies of cultural hegemony underlying depictions of agricultural work in Roman art and showcases an approach to the Roman economy rooted in this particular body of anthropological theory. Elites used a set of visual strategies, Roman taskscape features, to promote their ongoing control over agricultural production, a strategy that endured across the Roman world for generations.

Law as Technique

This chapter challenges anthropologists’ long-standing antipathy to the study of legal technique. It highlights Max Weber and Karl Llewellyn’s early interest in legal experts and legal knowledge as objects of sociological study, but suggests that the impetus to produce an external critique of law or context for law has hindered subsequent generations of anthropologists and sociolegal scholars from engaging legal technique as an object of ethnographic inquiry. In response, this chapter argues for greater ethnographic attention to the aspect of legal knowledge that most captivates lawyers: the means. The chapter highlights a growing body of sociolegal scholarship that engages with legal technique by drawing variously on systems theory and science and technology studies (STS) to illuminate the recursivity of legal expertise, the materiality of legal knowledge, and the agency of legal technique. Ultimately, this chapter argues that anthropologists’ long-standing attention to the constraints of form inherent in exchange can serve as a productive starting point both for anthropological theory and methods to elucidate the workings of legal knowledge, and for ethnography of legal technique to serve as a source of theoretical innovation.

The Semantics of Participation in the Russian Language as a Reflection of the Cultural Universal «Own/Foreign» Concept and the «West/East» Opposition

This paper deals with the issues of an important ethnic trait through the reflection in the Russian language and in the speech behavior of native speakers. This trait is focused around the need for actualization of «participation» or complicity in speech and social behavior as an invisible connection established in the inner world of the subject of the relationship of participation with other persons, animals, objects, spatial and social objects and even eras and ideas. The developed semantics of participation in the Russian language reflects the cultural universal concept of «own/foreign». L. Levy-Bruhl studied one member of that opposition theoretically and on the basis of extensive empirical material created the anthropological theory of participation. Russian linguists V. V. Ivanov, Yu. D. Apresyan, V. S. Khrakovsky and A. P. Volodin, I. I. Kovtunova studied concepts associated with the notion of participation in the mid‑1980s using the material of Russian deixis and the category of possessiveness. In the Russian language, the semantics of participation is expressed by various linguistic means: the means of verbal and pronominal deixis, diminutives, possessive syntactic constructions and affixes, words with the semantics of emotional attitude and assistance

Stay Home, Stay Safe Proximity as Vitality ad Vulnerability Under Lockdown

From March to May 2020 in the UK, measures that became known across the world as ‘lockdown’ curtailed personal freedoms in order to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus. While initial criticisms of lockdown focused on the adverse impacts of social isolation on wellbeing, this research article explores how lockdown creates new and altered proximities and intimacies as well as distances. During the initial UK lockdown, the ‘household’ and ‘home’ were deployed in public rhetoric as default spaces of care and security in the face of widespread isolation and uncertainty. However, emergent proximities created by bringing people together in the assumed safety of home also deepened existing inequalities and vulnerabilities. Using anthropological theory, third sector evidence, and ethnographic interview data we explore this process. We argue that understanding proximity and intimacy as fundamentally ambivalent, not normatively affirming, is central to recognising how pandemic responses such as lockdown reinforce and reproduce existing forms of inequality and violence.