Marxism, Psychoanalysis and Economics: An Anthropological Remark

The basic economic notion of marginal utility is revised in the light of certain well-known Marxian ideas, supported by some new interpretations of psychoanalytic notions, to try to clarify which is the position of human being in the world, within the context of economic anthropology.

What Can Ants Teach Us

The transition of a species in the course of evolution to a social way of life intensifies the use of environmental resources by the population. This destroys the ecosystem. The population faces the problem of adapting to life in a new environment. The ants that entered public life 110-130 million years ago have already solved this problem. They solved it because they evolved by natural selection, the units of which were communities. Mankind, which has passed to social life much later than ants, has yet to solve the problem of adapting to existence in the biosphere it destroys. For it to be solved, it is necessary that humanity evolve through natural selection, the units of which would be societies. Globalization, uniting humanity into one society, will make the natural selection of societies impossible. Therefore, it will be an obstacle to the adaptation of humanity to life in the new biosphere it creates.

Cephalic Index of Adult Igbo’s in Imo State, Nigeria

Cephalic index is of great importance to anatomists, anthropologists and even to forensic scientists, in the determination of head shapes and for medicolegal cases. Cranial and post cranial measurements have typically been used to describe individuals and to compare groups. This study aims at obtaining the Cranial indices of adults Igbos in Imo state, which will help build the forensic database and in identification of age, gender, racial differences in recent and ancient humans, and in the diagnoses of certain developmental disorders of the skull, such as Craniosynostosis, Hydrocephalus, and Postural deformation. Also to correlate the results of males with that of females. One thousand, One hundred and fifty eight (1158) subjects comprising of five hundred and seventy nine (579) males and females respectively, ages 18-52 years. The measurements were done manually with the use of transparent graded ruler, measuring tapes, gliding and sliding calipers or flexible tapes. The following parameters were measured; cranial length, cranial breadth, since Cephalic Index=Cranial breadth/cranial length x 100. The mean cranial length and breadth were 172±92.89 and 160.46±27.65 respectively. The result for males Cranial Length (CL), Cranial Breadth (CB), were respectively 173.93±18.75, 161.05±17.21. The result for females Cranial Length (CL), Cranial Breadth (CB), were respectively; 171.76±30.06, 159.88±35.11. These results were used to calculate the various Cephalic Index; mean Cephalic Index (CI) was 97.26±21.55. The males Cephalic Index (CI) was100.23±26.23, and female Cephalic Index (CI) was 94.29±14.94, Analysis of the results was done using independent t-test and Pearson bivariate correlation. These tests were carried out using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 25). Microsoft office excel was also used during data processing. Analysis showed that there was a significant difference in the mean values of females and males. The result from this study shows that Adults in Imo state are Brachycephalic. This study is a great contribution to the forensic, anthropology, anatomical and medical database.

COVID-19 Pandemic: The Two Sides of the Same Coin

The COVID-19 pandemic appeared suddenly, spreading all over the globe, making an impact on all aspects of our lives, and astonishing the completely unprepared world governments and the health care systems. The aim of this review is to examine the present and future consequences of the pandemic’s psychological, social, political, economic and cultural impacts. Our lives have changed abruptly and dramatically. The high rates of morbidity and mortality, as well as the unpredictable duration of the pandemic, have caused anxiety and fear in many individuals. Facial masks wearing, distance keeping, the people gathering prohibition, and the introduction of quarantine and lockdowns, have profoundly distressed every single individual - of about 5.3 billion of the adult global population. However, designing and producing vaccines has been a great medical success. On the other hand, vaccine nationalism, the politization of the pandemic crisis, and vaccine hesitancy will continue to undermine the main epidemiological goal: a prompt and extensive vaccination of the global population, in the addition to the natural immunity of the survivors. Without a radical political and social reorganization, and individual behaviors changes regarding this crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic could last for several years.

Extirpating Inherently Biased Rote Approaches, Replacing them with Critical Thinking-Based Interpretation of Evidence

Physical anthropology embraces a hunger for understanding the ecosphere in which we live, its impact on the life and health and our impact environmental signature. This has been pursued tenaciously, utilizing speculative approaches, with lesser attention to assuring adherence to fundamentals. The resulting perceptions of the environment and of the people therein, both contemporary and ancient, have been subject to a variety of biases. Although many are obvious and discussed in detail in this manuscript, it seems appropriate to question why they have persisted. What benefit does the biased individual gain? Certainly not advancement beyond circular reasoning, which itself reinforces the proponent and their philosophies. It certainly is easy to pursue studies and their promulgation by rote, minimizing cognitive effort expenditure. It is easier to pontificate a technique, than to pursue and assure its independent validation. It is easier to assume that students are performing correctly, without expending the rigor/time of/for actually testing fundamentals and assuring the validity of one’s own techniques. It is easier to stalwartly defend the status quo that has defined one’s life to date, than to subject it to potential modification and thus to consider critical thinking as an existential threat. Perhaps that explains apparent aversion to and attempts to block promulgation of evidence that application of scientific methodology to physical anthropology provides an opportunity for meaningful contributions beyond salvage work. The latter has value, but physical anthropology can offer much more. Extirpating the biases would be a major step in that direction and resurrect logos.

Worlds Represented: The March of the Penguins towards the Jug of Water

In the search for an understanding of the educational processes that take place in any classroom in the country and the world and that should reflect the complexity of the entire system, this educational ethnography Represented Worlds: The March of the Penguins to the Water Jug1, portrayed for two years how they experienced the transition, from third to fourth grade, two courses of students, one, in a private (private) high school and, the other, in a municipal (public) high school in the Antofagasta commune. The hypotheses raised are related to the way in which emancipatory social representations are constructed, articulated and communicated in social mobilizations. The ethnographic study shows the co-narrative between the events that occurred, at the national level, with which the penguin movement was conceived in 2010 and what was happening in two high school classrooms in Antofagasta. This ethnographic construction constitutes a proposal for the design and analysis of various ways of collecting and making the voice of the actors visible and as a response to the complexity of recording and characterizing dynamic representations in the face of unfolding events. In the last decade we have continued to develop this approach to understand and characterize the cultural, natural and social contexts that surround education, and for this reason, we share this starting point below.