Marital Practices of the Nahuas and Imposed Sociocultural Change in Sixteenth-Century Mexico

There are many sources that allowed scholars to study the nature and functions of polygamous marriages of the Nahua nobility. Very few studies, however, focus on the marital relations of the Nahua commoners. This article presents exploratory research into various kinds of marriages of the macehualtin—polygamy, sororate, and levirate. Based on the available material (early censuses, inquisitorial records, sixteenth-century accounts) it discusses the functions that these types of unions played in Nahua society. Moreover, it reflects on the effects that the Christianization and prohibition of such marriages had on Nahua society. The Nahuas could either reshape their communities, by adjusting to the new rules, or continue their precolonial practices in hiding. Either way, the imposed Christianization can be analyzed through the notion of the cultural trauma, which occurred when the Nahuas were forced to reshape their communities to adjust to the new rules.

Critical Reflections on the Konyak Naga Ethnography

The Konyak Nagas who inhabit the state of Nagaland in Northeast India have generated considerable anthropological interests since the colonial period. This eastern Naga tribe was mentioned in several colonial reports, but they came into prominence in anthropological literature, following Fürer-Haimendorf’s ethnographic monograph The Naked Nagas: Head-hunters of Assam in Peace and War. Fürer-Haimendorf had conducted fieldwork in Wakching village in the present Mon district between 1936 and 1937, setting off a new genre of ethnographic writing on the Naga tribes. Sifting through Fürer-Haimendorf’s writings, this article attempts a critical analysis of Konyak society and culture in light of recent developments in ethnographic studies. As argued, the Konyak Nagas are far removed from the colonial representations, but they still suffer from exotic imageries in the popular imagination that, in turn, has influenced ethnographic works. This article reflexively analyzes the Konyak Naga ethnography against the backdrop of a rapid sociocultural change facing the community.

The Poetics of Detachment in Medieval Ka-vya: Anthologies and the Path of Literary Sanskrit in the Second Millennium

This essay explores the dialectic of form, content and social life in the new poetry of the medieval Sanskrit anthologies. Did the seeming anarchy of content evinced in unfamiliar tables of contents produce genuine newness of aesthetic effect or affect, new possibilities for social value judgement—a critical and self-critical perspective—in response to changing sociopolitical conditions and the rise of the vernacular? Or else did this poetry simply do what it always did best: to be everything for everyone at the royal court, everywhere and nowhere? This article argues that the anthology may have spawned a contradictory dynamic: crafting a new sociological immediacy for the form, and yet reconciling the courtly ka-vya tradition to a future in which it no longer figured so centrally. Finally, in a methodological annex, the aforementioned case study spawns higher-order reflections on the mutual determination of art and social life in early medieval South Asia, and the materialist analysis of premodern cultural form. Thinking through premodern sociocultural change from the point of view of capitalist modernity fundamentally challenges the historical imagination, revealing self-reflexivity as both its first and last resort.

Sphere ecology: Peter Sloterdijk’s spatial-analytic approach to media environments

This article makes the case for reading the German philosopher and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk as a media ecologist. Tracing the media ecological implications of what is perhaps his most significant work, the three-volume Spheres project, it argues that Sloterdijk’s spatial analysis of human habitats, what he terms spherology, can be interpreted as offering a promising, distinctive approach to the study of media as environments. By redescribing media as morpho-immunological spheres, or shared spatial interiors, Sloterdijk recasts both human existence and sociocultural change as the result of the interplay or mediation between a relative enclosure into a protective space and a world considered to be outside. This framework, which enables Sloterdijk to chart a grand narrative of globalization, yields a therapeutic methodological strategy by means of which media ecologists may increase the spacious dimensions of the world while strengthening the immune systems of newly designed artificial atmospheres.

Sociocultural Influences on Food Choices and Implications for Sustainable Healthy Diets

Background: The global policy discourse on sustainability and health has called for dietary transformations that require diverse, concerted actions from governments and institutions. In this article, we highlight the need to examine sociocultural influences on food practices as precursors to food policy decisions. Discussion: Sociocultural food practices relate to ideas and materials that give rise to food choices and food patterns of a group. We begin with a discussion of how individuals experience, interpret, negotiate, and symbolize the food world around them. We examine primarily the ideational pathways, such as identity, gender, religion, and cultural prohibitions, and their influence on food practices. We then provide guiding questions, frameworks, and a brief overview of food choice values to support policy planning and design. Lastly, we explore how sociocultural change for sustainable or healthy diets is already happening through food movements, food lifestyles, and traditional diets.

Sociocultural Change in Hungary

Although Hungary joined the European Union in 2004, it seems that it has not yet been able to catch up with its Western European neighbors socioeconomically. The reasons for this are numerous, including the fact that this former historical region (Kingdom of Hungary), today the sovereign state of Hungary, has a specific sociocultural image and attitude formed by various historical events. And the nature of these events can explain why Hungary’s economic development and overarching political narrative differ so markedly from Western Europe. The aim of this article is to present the unique location of Hungary in the context of Central and Eastern Europe, and to address such factors as urbanization and industrialization, migration, population, politics, economic development, and social values crisis. We argue that these factors, including the European status quo that emerged after 1945, have influenced the existing sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural differences between Hungary and Western European EU states.

Digital Revolution and Sociocultural Change

The title of this chapter refers to how current developments in technology are not just one further innovation of the industrial era, but will lead to decisive changes in production methods, markets, labour, consumption and, to a considerable extent, personal and social relationships. But these changes will be happening within the economic and political framework of the period prior to digitalisation and will persist in the globalisation of the economy. These pages will focus on what we believe to be key issues: changes to business and work, changes to the education and training of people in general and the active population in particular, and certain activities that will have a profound effect on the way we communicate and relate to each other.No technological innovation, not even this one, exists and acts in isolation from the socio-political framework. Therefore, it is also important to analyse the policies and strategies that might lead the digital economy in one direction or another, towards an increase in inequality or in welfare. Going further, what our analysis does not cover is how the digital revolution could be of great help to curb the climate crisis, with changes in energy production, mobility, construction and protection of the environment, provided there is political will and consequent action.

BJP and Donyi-Polo: New Challenges to Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh and Northeast India

Located on the disputed border with China, Arunachal Pradesh is the most remote of India’s northeastern states. Christianity is growing there—from 1 percent in 1971 to 30 percent in 2011—but that number may have reached a plateau. Arunachal Pradesh is undergoing rapid sociocultural change. While Hinduism is not well-established in the region, there is tremendous interest in a relatively new religion called Donyi-Polo. Some Hindus argue Donyi-Polo is actually a branch of Hinduism, and they are having some success in making this claim. This article explores the changing religious, political, and cultural dynamics of Arunachal Pradesh.