Liturgical Time in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Liturgies are communal in nature, and in the context of the medieval Christian economy of time they are developed and utilised to quantify, consecrate, control, utilise and unify time for the comprehensive end of the welfare of the society, both in the Here and in the Here-after. The liturgy was a social institution, and functioned for anniversaries, holy days, holidays and rituals that were the means of medieval social integrity. In the economy of socio-political and ethical life, the medieval Church linked the sacred to the secular by means of the liturgy. They were used for meditation, as well as a measurement of time, and arguably they were manipulated to parody or satirise the strictly hierarchal estates of the medieval society. Though one of the least liturgical books of his time, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is framed by the liturgical institution of the pilgrimage. Actually a pilgrim travelogue, it depicts the secularisation of liturgy and its appropriation for social control, and paradoxically, a carnivalesque celebration of the reversal of social hierarchy.

Study on Representation of Gender in Indian Print Media: A Semiotic Analysis of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Advertisements

The categorisation of gender into femininity and masculinity is purely a social construct. Advertising is a social institution which plays a significant role in the promotion of notions of gender identities at a symbolic level (Gilbert and Taylor, 1991). The purpose of this study is to understand the manifestation of masculinity and femininity in contemporary Indian print advertisements of popular Fast Moving Consumer Goods(FMCG). This study uses the theory of visual social semiotics for the analysis adopting the framework propounded by Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen (1996;2006). The representational and interactive dimensions from the framework will be used for the analysis of the advertisements. This will be further thematised to understand the nature of the representation of masculinity and femininity in them. It will also provide an insight into the relationship between the viewers and participants of these advertisements. The data for the current study includes three popular Indian magazine advertisements of FMCG products published between the years 2019-2020, selected using a purposive sampling technique.

Human aggression and music evolution: a model

Together with language, music is perhaps our most distinctive behavioral trait. Following the lead of paleolinguistic research, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in the species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the theory of self-domestication, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to mammal domestication, triggered by a progressive reduction in reactive aggression levels in response to environmental changes. In the paper, we specifically argue that changes in aggression management through the course of human cultural evolution can account for the behaviors conducive to the emergence and evolution of music. We hypothesize 4 stages in the evolutionary development of music under the influence of environmental changes and evolution of social organization: starting from musilanguage, proto-music gave rise to personal and private forms of timbre-oriented music, then to small-group ensembles of pitch-oriented music, at first of indefinite and then definite pitch, and finally to collective (tonal) music. These stages parallel what has been hypothesized for languages and encompass the diversity of music types and genres described worldwide. Overall, music complexity emerges in a gradual fashion under the effects of enhanced abilities for cultural niche construction, resulting from the stable trend of reduction in reactive aggression towards the end of the Pleistocene, leading to the rise of hospitality codes, and succeeded by increase in proactive aggression from the beginning of the Holocene onward. This paper addresses numerous controversies in the literature on the evolution of music by providing a clear structural definition of music, identifying its structural features that distinguish it from oral language, and summarizing the typology of operational functions of music and formats of its transmission. The proposed framework of structural approach to music arms a researcher with means to identify and comparatively analyze different schemes of tonal organization of music, placing them in the context of human social and cultural evolution. Especially valuable contribution to the understanding of transition from animal communication to human music and language is the theory of so-called “personal song”, described and analyzed here from ethological, social, cultural, cognitive, and musicological perspectives. The emergence of personal song and its development into a social institution are interlinked with the evolution of kinship and placed into the timeline of cultural evolution, based on totality of ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and paleoclimatic data.

Consensus on Constraints in Marital Satisfaction Among Married People in African Context

Marriage is considered as the most important social institution and symbol of adulthood in Africa. However, the trend of divorce has increased alarmingly in recent years. We explored the constraints towards marital satisfaction by using the Delphi technique with assumptions that couples are the experts on their marriages. Participant’s panel included married heterosexual couples divided into two groups: men and women couple’s panels. The group of women’s panel included 31 participants and men’s panel contained 25 males. Then in the final stage, both groups provided their views and discussed on the possible solutions to the identified constraints. Five major themes emerged: satisfaction in sexuality among couples, difficulties in communication, economic and financial conflicts, the role of extended families, and opportunity for behavioural change to achieve marital satisfaction. Our findings support the hypothesis that satisfaction with sexual intercourse, respectful communication, financial stability and careful handling of relatives influence marital satisfaction.

Experience, Emotion, and Exhaustion: How Unionization Influences Emotional Labor

While HRM scholars have built a rich body of knowledge regarding emotional labor (EL), we know comparatively less about the social origins of EL components and individual outcomes in government work contexts. To address this gap, we employ conservation of resources theory to examine how one prominent social institution within government organizations, labor unions, influence the process through which EL shapes one individual-level outcome, emotional exhaustion. We also draw from the process model of EL developed by Brotheridge and Lee to evaluate one specific countervailing resource, person-job fit. Results obtained using data from the 2016 U.S. Merit Principles Survey suggest that unionization indirectly increases emotional exhaustion via increases in the perceived need for false face acting. While unionization does not have a direct relationship with person-job fit, perceived increases in the need for false face acting contributes to emotional exhaustion by reducing person-job fit.

Social Identity Seeking and Sharing as a Creative Activity of Art Consumers

The chapter offers an overview of dynamic processes changing the role and place of museums and art galleries in our societies. After many decades of being static displays of things, they are now changing into places of interaction and communication on a variety of levels. The text is presenting some current patterns of developing a sense of collective belonging and also it is looking at the communication processes between institutions and visitors with a focus on the role of digital technologies and social media in the process of preserving, narrating, and sharing the object of art and beauty. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a framework for further research on digital practice linked with contemporary social identities and art institutions that are a significant social institution with public value and the ability to link the local cultural heritage global context.

Role of Economy as Social Institution in Cholistan Desert

Cholistan is the second largest desert of Pakistan with semi-nomadic culture. Based on its landscape, Cholistan is divided into two parts, i.e., Greater and Lesser Cholistan. This study review highlights the economic activities of native people of Cholistan, challenges faced by people and ways to improve the economic standard of native people. Due to its rough terrain, Cholistan is hardly accessible from outside except specialized vehicles. The entire Cholistan is the least populated area and the existing population is scattered among sand dunes. Cholistan is deprived of socio-economic development and hence there is a lack of basic amenities of life such as drinking water, food, education, healthcare and housing. Due to the scarcity of irrigation water and the landscape of Cholistan, there is hardly any possibility of agri-farming and production grains for livelihood. Animal herds are a major source of livelihood and sustenance for the people of Cholistan. Local people own larger herds of cows, camels, goats and sheep, which are vital for survival, i.e., food sources and money for purchasing necessities. Cholistani people do not possess formal education and skills and are unable to avail any job opportunity in the formal sector. As a result, Cholistani people are choiceless except to depend upon animal husbandry. All the family members, including women, participate in animal husbandry and other small scale agri-farming for earning a livelihood. Life is simple, and daily needs of local people are very limited, and economic activities are few in Cholistan. Social institution is playing their role to educate the people and fulfilling the economic needs of the Cholistani people.

GENDER AND SEXUAL RIGHTS IN EARLY ISLAM

When early Islamic jurists outlined the marriage law, they codified a gendered model of conjugal rights and duties that privileged men over women. A similar development also took place regarding sexual rights as women’s pleasure and sexual gratification became secondary to those of men. Specialists in this period of Islamic history have argued that the gender ideologies prevalent in the early Abbasid society, which enabled an androcentric definition of Islam, should be seen as the primary cause for the inequality within the Islamic marriage system. This paper aims to show that Abbasid gender ideologies, contrary to popular descriptions, were not homogenous. Two major trends in understanding female sexuality during the early Abbasid period will be discussed. The first, androcentric trend that focused primarily on male sexual gratification was in conflict with a more women-friendly attitude; the latter was advocated in a number of literary genres, including medical handbooks, popular stories, educational and ethics literature. These works accentuated the importance of female sexual health and favoured female pleasure as a necessary element for mutual sexual satisfaction and marital happiness. The paper illustrates that some aspects from this more women-friendly approach to sexuality were adopted in later legal opinions that sought to correct the most visible cases of inequality in the social institution of marriage.

Community Involvement in Sekolah Sungai

This study aimed to describe the forms of community involvement in the Sekolah Sungai program. As a social institution, Sekolah Sungai needs support from all parties to tackle the range of problems in the Winongo River and thereby lower the disaster risk. A descriptive qualitative approach was used in this study and data were collected through interviews, observation, and documentation analysis. The results showed that there were two elements of community involvement: 1) contribution: community involvement in the forms of energy, notions, funding and provision of Sekolah Sungai facilities; and 2) attitude. Various forms of community involvement were aimed at maintaining the existence of the program. Without the involvement of the community in the process of building awareness, this program would not have been successful. The involvement of the community allowed Sekolah Sungai Winongo to maintain its existence and provide benefits to the surrounding communities in its efforts to reduce disaster risk and act as a water quality control agent along the Winongo River. Keywords: community involvement, Sekolah Sungai

Digital Mediatization in Medicine: New Models of Clinic-to-Doctor-to-Patient Interaction

Mediatization is an interdisciplinary construct, which allows us to study how the transformation of social institutions is affected by media influence and social theories. Researchers are focusing on peoples digital representations and new interaction models. As digital networks grow and overlap with traditional interaction forms, new models of clinic-doctor-patient interaction emerge. Researching this reveals the efficiency of communicative constructivism. The purpose of the research is to study the transformative effect of mediatization on medicine. The research methodology is based on communicative constructivism and phenomenological approach, including analysis of 70 Instagram accounts of doctors and clinics and in-depth interviews of 10 St. Petersburg-based doctors. The research validates the transformation tendencies in medicine as a social institution.