‘Dragging Seventy Little Plaits of Her Across the Land of the Altai’: Haircare, Hairstyles, and Hair Ornaments of the Southern Altaians from Historical and Cultural Perspectives

This study deals with haircare, hair ornaments, hairstyles, and hairrelated rituals of the Southern Altaians (Altai Kizhi, Telengits) and their development over time. Haircare has played an important role in Altaian society for centuries. It has been a ritual symbol, an indicator of gender, age, marital or social status. In context, hair has played a significant cultural and social role across societies and historical periods around the world. For this reason, haircare has also been sometimes included among the so-called cultural or human universals, i.e. phenomena that are common to all known human cultures in time and space. The source of information for this study was the authors’ own field research, relevant literature and visual sources documenting the broader context of haircare. The issue is viewed from historical and cultural perspectives, with the main focus on the current haircare of the Altaian people in connection with changes compared to the past. The study focuses on selected phenomena that proved to be the most important in the field research in terms of their existence and the role they currently play in Altaian society. It does not therefore aim to cover the full breadth of the topic, but leaves room for further research on sub-topics.

The evolution-similarity matrix: an evolutionary psychology perspective on cross-cultural advertising

Corrections to the article made on November 24, 2020 The standardization/adaptation debate in cross-cultural advertising is a topic on which little consensus prevails and which remains heavily discussed. Using evolutionary psychology, this paper presents a typology of advertising cues and explains their cross-cultural relevance and transportability. The paper highlights three distinct categories – human universals (evolved similarities), local adaptations (evolved differences), and local socialization (differences not due to evolution). The paper contributes to advertising theory by providing a meta-framework for the study of cross-cultural similarities and differences in the processing of advertising cues. It further assists advertising practice by delivering a framework aiding in cross-cultural advertising copy decisions. By raising the questions that the paper poses to develop the proposed typology categories, advertisers can identify which advertising cues are malleable by advertising and which are based on innate human preferences and are relatively stable. With that knowledge in hand, advertisers can decide when and to what extent to use a standardization approach versus an adaptation approach.

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (1966)

Mary Douglas’s masterpiece Purity and Danger holds a troubled place in the social sciences and humanities. Both classic and cast out, the book’s analysis cannot be ignored. In fact, Douglas’s thesis, “Dirt is matter out of place,” can help explain the fate of the very book that made it famous. Purity and Danger presents a probing cultural analysis. Douglas argued that social systems should be understood by what they expel but also that the true power of dirt lies in the acts of cleansing. Cultural upheaval, decolonization, and war together appeared to render Douglas’s interest in social stability naive, however, and Purity and Danger languished following its publication in 1966. Today’s politics of purity, from white nationalism to rule by imprisonment, makes Purity and Danger more necessary than ever. The tension between the search for human universals and the social and historical particularism at its heart continues to haunt social inquiry today.

Conclusion

The final chapter takes stock of the limited conclusions of this study of the varieties of intelligence and the possibilities for mutual intelligibility. We can, it is argued, appreciate some cross-cultural human universals (language and sociability), yet we must be continually alert to the diversity of human experience and the dangers of imposing Western categories. But the chief lesson to be learned is that when we encounter beliefs and practices that diverge sharply from what we are used to, we should see this as an opportunity, rather than as a threat. The lack of common ground should not be treated as tantamount to denying the possibility of any understanding whatsoever, though such understanding as we can reach will often involve the revision of our own initial assumptions and categories.

Christian Influence on the Roman Calendar. Comments in the Margins of C. Th. 9.35.4 = C. 3.12.5 (a. 380)1/ Wpływ chrześciaństwa na kalendarz rzymski. Uwagi na marginesie C. Th. 9.35.4 = C. 3.12.5 (a. 380)

The text analyses Christianisation of the Roman calendar in the light or the Roman imperial constitutions in the 4th century. The author first of all underlines that only humans recognise religious feasts despite that human perception of time is not that remote from the apperception of time in the case of other animals and that the belief in the supernatural/religion and rituals belong to human universals, the roots of which, together with the judiciary, are to be sought in the evolutionary past of the genus Homo. Furthermore, the author deduces that the first direct Christian influence on the Roman official calendar was probably C. Th. 9,35,4 = C. 3,12,5 (a. 380), prohibiting all investigation of criminal cases by means of torture during the forty days which anticipate the Paschal season, contesting the opinion that dies solis were regarded as dies dominicus (Christian Sunday) already in C. Th. 2,8,1 and C. 3,12,2 (a. 321). Finally, on the margin of the Polish debate concerning the limitation of legal trade during Sundays, when Constantinian roots of dies dominicus were quoted frequently and with great conviction, the limitations of politics of memory are underlined.