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Historical Moments (historical + moment)
Selected AbstractsVisiting America: notes from an alcohol-focused study tour made in 1961ADDICTION, Issue 12 2008Griffith Edwards ABSTRACT Aims This paper has as its focus a study tour made by the author in 1961. Diary notes are used to capture a historical moment in the evolution of alcohol studies. The paper will argue for the continuing value today of such experiences in support of career development and the building of ,the field'. Data sources Diary notes and personal recollection. Findings The United States was at the time more active than the United Kingdom in its response to alcohol problems. There was, however, a disjunction between the elite American research world and the world of action, which was not informed greatly by research. For the most part, treatment services and prevention strategies seemed driven by opinion rather than by evidence. But at the level of serious scientific endeavour there was opportunity to meet influential figures including Seldon Bacon, Morris Chafetz, Milton Gross, Ebbe Curtis Hoff, Harris Isbell, E. M. Jellinek, Mark Keller, Benjamin Kissen, Robert Strauss, Wolf Schmidt and Abraham Wikler, who generously made their time available. Conclusions These diary notes provide a snapshot of a field of endeavour at a critical stage of transition from uninformed assumptions towards establishment of a research base which can inform public action. The visit was of tangible value to the visitor in several different identified ways. Such an experience is inevitably time-bound and personal, but there are general conclusions to be drawn as to the benefits which will be derived from early travel opportunities in a field such as alcohol studies, which is all too easily culture-bound in its horizons and assumptions. Alcohol science needs to be more reflective on its history and the mechanisms that help to make it happen. [source] Toward a Critical Phenomenology of "Illegality": State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, IsraelINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2007Sarah S. Willen ABSTRACT Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so-called "illegal" migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety-ridden and frightening realities associated with "the condition of migrant illegality," both of specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a "critical phenomenological" approach to the study of migrant "illegality" (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three-dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being-in-the-world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non-consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, "illegal" migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded "Others." Beginning in mid-2002, however, a resource-intensive, government-sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant "illegality" in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign "Others" into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be "illegal" but also its impact on migrants' modes of being-in-the-world. [source] Children investing in their families: The importance of child obligation in successful developmentNEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, Issue 94 2001Thomas S. Weisner Family obligation and assistance are fundamental features of children's development that link general developmental processes with the context of a particular historical moment and a specific cultural community. [source] South Africa, the world and AIDS (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 3 2010Keith Hart South Africa has been at the centre of world history for over a century and it is now the focus of all eyes for the World Cup. The country has been a by-word for racial inequality and more recently for crime and violence. But it is also notable for social progress and cultural vitality. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has claimed more victims there than anywhere else, a tragic sequel to apartheid. Successive political leaders highlight the contradictions of this historical moment in poignant, even Shakespearean ways. The author briefly reviews three books by anthropologists on AIDS there and suggests that South Africa is likely to remain a source of innovation for the discipline. But we need to take a broader view of world history than at present. [source] How Green Was My Valley?LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 4 2003An Examination of Tournament Theory as a Governance Mechanism in Silicon Valley Law Firms The tournament model is a widely used mechanism to control opportunistic behavior by associates in law firms. However, this mechanism can only operate in certain economic (and social) circumstances. When those circumstances do not exist, the model breaks down, and with it the ability to control opportunism in the absence of some alternative mechanism. Prior research has not investigated whether the utilization of a tournament model prevents the opportunistic behaviors identified as grabbing, leaving, and shirking. In order to test the limits of the tournament model, it is necessary to find particular historical moments when the economic environment radically challenges assumptions/premises of the model. The dot-com bubble in Silicon Valley provides precisely such a time and place. This article demonstrates limits to the applicability of tournament theory. Those limits are to be found in the economic environment in circumstances in which: (1) exogenous reward structures offer many multiples of internal rewards; (2) demonstrably high short-term rewards outside the firm starkly contrast with the delayed long-term rewards inside the firm; (3) the managerial strata reduce their emphasis on long-term recruiting of potential partners in favor of short-term productivity by young associates; and (4) firms develop departmental leverage ratios in excess of their capacity to monitor, mentor, and train recruits. [source] The historical dynamics of ethnic conflicts: confrontational nationalisms, democracy and the Basques in contemporary Spain,NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 2 2010FERNANDO MOLINA ABSTRACT. All the historical moments in which the Basque debate reached political protagonism in contemporary Spain coincided with political contexts of institutional democratisation. The debate on patriotism in the Basque Country is connected with a uniform narrative regarding the Basques and their moral distance from the Spanish nation: the ,Basque problem'. This narrative has fostered a confrontational discourse between Spanish and Basque nationalism. It has also promoted recourse to specific stereotypical images of the Basques, which bind ethnicity to collective identity. Such representations reveal that the invention of the Basque country as a uniform ethnic collective had much more to do with the internal contradictions of Spanish national identity , and later of Basque identity , than with the existence of a secular conflict between Basques and Spaniards. The Basque case shows that every ,ethnic conflict' requires adequate contextualisation in order to avoid simplifying its origins and past pathways to make it conform to present uses. [source] Well-being changes in response to 30 years of regional integration in Maya populations from Yucatan, MexicoAMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 5 2001Francisco D. Gurri Infant mortality rate (IMR), overall frequency of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH), sexual dimorphism in LEH, age of onset of LEH, and age at menarche were used as indicators to test the hypothesis that the origin and development of the tourist industry and increased state participation on Maya subsistence agriculturists in the early 1970s had improved the well-being of the Maya. Two historical moments where inferred from the data. The first was derived from cheap and effective immunization and sanitation campaigns that reduced IMR from 143.4/1,000 live births in the early 1960s to 97.4 in the early 1970s. State participation broke the undernutrition,disease cycle enough to reduce LEH frequencies significantly (from 71.9% in individuals born before 1971 to 51.5% in those born in 1971 or after, ,2 = 55.72; 1 df; , = 0.00001) and to eliminate the sex difference in LEH expression (from a 14.8% LEH difference between men and women before 1971 [Male/Female Odds Radio = 0.45, , significant at 0.05] to a nonsignificant 2% difference). Improvement in overall living conditions reflected in a "modern stage" infant mortality regime and an almost disappearance of LEHs, resulted from gradual improvements in living conditions that did not become apparent until the 1980s. Trends in the age at menarche are not statistically significant, probably due to methodological limitations. However, if overall living conditions continue to improve or stay as they are today, accelerations in maturation should become noticeable. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 13:590,602, 2001. © 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] The Walls Came Tumbling Up: The Production of Culture, Class and Native American SocietiesTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2006Gerald Sider In this paper, two historical moments in the continual formation of Native American societies are examined: the creation of distinct and bounded ,Indian' societies in the south-eastern colonial United States, and the recent internal differentiation of the Lumbee Indian peoples in North Carolina. Four issues are at stake: the production of difference and inequality within and between Native American societies; the formation and transformation of ,culture' in this context; a re-examination of the concept of class; and the simultaneous production of culture and class among indigenous peoples and perhaps more generally. This leads to a suggestion concerning the problem of hegemony in struggles over inequality. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 23, Number 4.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 4 2007August 200 Front and back cover caption, volume 23 issue 4 COMMEMORATING THE ,POLISH POPE' The cover of this issue illustrates Ewa Klekot's article about how Pope John Paul II (Karol Jósef Wojtyla, 1920,2005) was popularly commemorated in Poland during the ,Week of Vigil', 1,8 April 2005. One of the longest-serving pontiffs of modern times, and the only non-Italian to have been elected since the Dutch Adrian VI in the 1520s, Pope John Paul II died on 2 April and was buried on 8 April in the grottoes under St Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Tomb of the Popes. During this week unprecedented expressions of grief and mourning were displayed in Polish cities. Whole streets and squares were converted into temporary shrines, decorated with burning candles, flowers, papal portraits, letters to the departed Pope and both papal and Polish flags. The front cover shows a mother and daughter paying homage by lighting and placing candles along John Paul II Avenue, one of the biggest streets in central west Warsaw. The back cover shows a spontaneous memorial in the form of a large cross in Pilsudski Square, Warsaw, where John Paul II had celebrated mass during his first visit to Poland in 1979, the year after he was elected Pope. The memorial incorporates lanterns, flower offerings and a commemoration board made by primary school children. In constructing unofficial, vernacular and temporary commemorative sites from candles and flowers, Polish citizens re-enacted both the rituals of All Saints Day and the tradition of arranging flowers and candles in public places. The latter is, in the Polish context, more than an expression of grief provoked by deaths of important Polish personalities: it is also historically a way of expressing popularly shared feelings and values, and of asserting a degree of autonomy from the government of the day. Until 1990, Pope John Paul II symbolized powerful nationalist-Catholic sentiments that had helped Polish citizens stand up to communism. However, the slogan ,I didn't mourn the pope' which appeared on T-shirts made by a young Polish artists' group suggests that this new alliance between religion and official politics is being contested. Mourning rituals surrounding public figures frequently have a multivocal quality, and are barometers of change. As part of its ongoing engagement with public events, ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY invites debate on how collective memories are punctuated and shaped by historical moments such as these. [source] | ||||||||||