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Rites
Selected AbstractsResolving the biodiversity paradoxECOLOGY LETTERS, Issue 8 2007James S. Clark Abstract The paradox of biodiversity involves three elements, (i) mathematical models predict that species must differ in specific ways in order to coexist as stable ecological communities, (ii) such differences are difficult to identify, yet (iii) there is widespread evidence of stability in natural communities. Debate has centred on two views. The first explanation involves tradeoffs along a small number of axes, including ,colonization-competition', resource competition (light, water, nitrogen for plants, including the ,successional niche'), and life history (e.g. high-light growth vs. low-light survival and few large vs. many small seeds). The second view is neutrality, which assumes that species differences do not contribute to dynamics. Clark et al. (2004) presented a third explanation, that coexistence is inherently high dimensional, but still depends on species differences. We demonstrate that neither traditional low-dimensional tradeoffs nor neutrality can resolve the biodiversity paradox, in part by showing that they do not properly interpret stochasticity in statistical and in theoretical models. Unless sample sizes are small, traditional data modelling assures that species will appear different in a few dimensions, but those differences will rarely predict coexistence when parameter estimates are plugged into theoretical models. Contrary to standard interpretations, neutral models do not imply functional equivalence, but rather subsume species differences in stochastic terms. New hierarchical modelling techniques for inference reveal high-dimensional differences among species that can be quantified with random individual and temporal effects (RITES), i.e. process-level variation that results from many causes. We show that this variation is large, and that it stands in for species differences along unobserved dimensions that do contribute to diversity. High dimensional coexistence contrasts with the classical notions of tradeoffs along a few axes, which are often not found in data, and with ,neutral models', which mask, rather than eliminate, tradeoffs in stochastic terms. This mechanism can explain coexistence of species that would not occur with simple, low-dimensional tradeoff scenarios. [source] HEALING LITURGIES AND RITESINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION, Issue 356-357 2001Article first published online: 25 MAR 200 No abstract is available for this article. [source] TATTOOING AND PIERCING: INITIATION RITES AND MASCULINE DEVELOPMENTBRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, Issue 1 2005Brian Denness ABSTRACT Prompted by the surprising reaction of a young man with a borderline personality to an interpretation of castration anxiety, this paper sets out to explore some of the unconscious determinants of tattooing and piercing. Recognizing that such acts can have an initiatory function, sociological, anthropological and psychoanalytic views of initiation and the role of the father in masculine development are examined. In some boys oedipal development is forestalled and castration anxiety is not experienced. A bifocal approach using object relations theories based on regression and Lacanian perspectives that highlight reactions to an oedipal impasse is used to understand these processes. Symbolic body modifications are differentiated from those that are non-symbolic. [source] Review article: What's new in early medieval burial archaeology?EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 1 2002Tania M. Dickinson Books reviewed in this article: John Hines, Karen Høilund Nielsen and Frank Siegmund (eds), The Pace of Change. Studies in Early,Medieval Chronology. Catherine E. Karkov, Kelley M. Wickham,Crowley and Bailey K. Young (eds), Spaces of the Living and the Dead: An Archaeological Dialogue. Sam Lucy, The Early Anglo,Saxon Cemeteries of East Yorkshire. An Analysis and Reinterpretation. Elizabeth O'Brien, Post,Roman Britain to Anglo,Saxon England: Burial Practices Reviewed. Nick Stoodley, The Spindle and the Spear. A Critical Enquiry into the Construction and Meaning of Gender in the Early Anglo,Saxon Burial Rite. [source] Psychotherapy as a Rite of PassageFAMILY PROCESS, Issue 4 2007C. CHRISTIAN BEELS M.D. Some psychotherapies may work because they resemble rites of passage. To explore this idea, this article describes an "individual" case of depression in which drug, cognitive, and narrative approaches fell short of effectiveness, and change occurred in a series of experiences that resemble a rite of passage. This resemblance is illuminated by examining two apparently quite different healing processes,Alcoholics Anonymous and multifamily group therapy in schizophrenia,to explore the elements they have in common with the case described: the acceptance of what Victor Turner called a liminal experience, and the importance of witnesses to the ritual support for that acceptance. The discussion contributes to a loosening of the distinctions between the processes of individual, family, group, and other social therapies and leads to questions about the expert knowledge the therapist provides. [source] Men's Recollections of a Women's Rite: Medieval English Men's Recollections Regarding the Rite of the Purification of Women after ChildbirthGENDER & HISTORY, Issue 2 2002Becky R. Lee This study examines the recollections of medieval English men, found in proof,of,age inquests, regarding their participation in the rite of the purification of women after childbirth. Because the rite of purification was reserved to women, scant attention has been paid to how this rite and the customs surrounding it played in the lives of medieval men. These men's recollections situate postpartum purification within the festivities celebrating the birth of a man's heir. For them, it is a public event celebrating paternity and lineage, and a forum for the negotiation of social relationships. [source] Joining the Pezzimist Party: Pez Convention as Rite of Passage & Communal BondingTHE JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURE, Issue 2 2002Melinda Fogle First page of article [source] A Question of Rites?HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2006Perspectives on the Colonial Encounter with Sati Although a rare occurrence, sati has become a highly controversial issue in modern India. In the wake of the now notorious burning of Roop Kanwar in 1987, sati and its glorification became a terrain on which wider issues about religion, identity, modernity and tradition were contested. In this debate both supporters and opponents of sati invoked the rhetoric of ,rights'. It is generally agreed that such terms in the contemporary debate have their roots in the colonial period; some supporters of sati go as far as to argue that those who condemn sati as a violation of women's rights are adopting a ,Western' perspective without appreciating sati's ,true' social, religious and cultural significance. In doing so, however, they assume a homogenous and consistent colonial condemnation of sati. New perspectives suggest, however, that the British response to sati was more multifaceted than this allows and the link between colonial discourses and modern protagonists more complex. [source] Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society by Leor HaleviAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2008IAN STRAUGHN No abstract is available for this article. [source] Rites of Passage in Emerging Adulthood: Perspectives of Young MormonsNEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, Issue 100 2003Larry J. Nelson This study explores the role that culture, particularly religious rites of passage, may play in emerging adulthood by examining the demographics, criteria for adulthood, identity development, and risk behavior of Mormon emerging adults. [source] Everyday Harm: Domestic Violence, Court Rites, and Cultures of Reconciliation by Mindie Lazarus-BlackPOLAR: POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW, Issue 1 2010Aisha Khan First page of article [source] Rites to Reform: The Cultural Production of the Reformer in Urban SchoolsANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2010K. Wayne Yang As neoliberal reformers are appointed to manage the "crisis" of U.S. public schools, their power has become a pressing reality for grassroots movements in education. I examine how the Small Schools movement in Oakland, California,just as the school district fell under state administrative control,employed rites of passage to socialize a grassroots identity: the reform officer. These rites represent a form of grassroots cultural power that disrupts the conditions of neoliberal domination.,[neoliberalism, school reform, counterhegemony, community organizing, cultural production] [source] Disastrous Rites: Liminality and Communitas in a Flood CrisisANTHROPOLOGY & HUMANISM, Issue 1 2001Linda Jencson A sense of communitas, well noted by social scientists, occurs in human societies during times of natural disaster. Using the Red River Valley Flood of 1997 as a case example, it is found that disaster communitas has similarities to ritual communitas specifically because people consciously ritualize and mythologize their actions during disaster. While this sacralization of practical action serves to optimize disaster response, it also creates an expanded sense of self, community, and purpose that can leave many survivors of disaster with a sense that they have undergone a profoundly meaningful peak experience. [source] Teaching Rites of PassageANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 2 2003Sian Lazar No abstract is available for this article. [source] One or Several Betrayals? or, When is Betrayal Treason?BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 4 2003Genet, the Argentine Liberal Project Betrayal is one of the key narrative tropes in the fiction of the Argentine writer Roberto Arlt. The psychological and existential implications of the betrayals found in novels such as El juguete rabioso (1926) and El amor brujo (1933) have attracted much critical comment, as have the links between the betrayals found in Arlt's fiction and the work of Jean Genet. Arlt's oeuvre has been read in relation to the turbulent political context of 1920s and 30s Argentina, in particular the failure of the Liberal Project of economic development through immigration that was introduced after the fall of the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1852, the economic collapse of 1929 and the ensuing military coup of 1930. Critics have suggested that betrayal in Arlt represents an attack on bourgeois hypocrisy, a middle-class attempt at transcending one's environment, or a reversal of dominant social values. This paper however intends to deepen the understanding of betrayal in Arlt's fiction by examining it as a political gesture, a quality overlooked by many studies. A reading of the political nature of betrayal in Genet's work and an engagement with Bersani's queer reading of Funeral Rites alongside Said's analysis of Genet as an anti-identarian revolutionary, allows the reader of Arlt to reassess the political gesture contained in betrayal, and to move towards a reading of the development in Arlt's fiction either side of the military takeover of 1930, moving from his critique of the rising petit-bourgeois classes in El juguete rabioso (1926) to a clear realisation and encouragement of class consciousness in the short stories of El criador de gorilas (1936). [source] Confirmation: The Stewardship of BaptismDIALOG, Issue 3 2002Jerry L. Schmalenberger What is confirmation ministry? Confirmation has changed from being understood as a sacrament, marking the time at which a person receives his or her first communion, to a rite, a ritual in which the baptized is reminded of his or her baptismal vows and initiated into the community of discipleship. This articles explores confirmation as the stewardship of baptism among Batak Christians and Asian Lutherans. [source] Confirmation Ministry in the Batak ChurchDIALOG, Issue 3 2002Binsar Nainggolan Historically, confirmation ministry among Batak's took the form of missionaries presenting the Christian religion in an apologetic and persuasive tone, in an effort to ready Batak converts for Baptism. Today, confirmation ministry among Batak Christians is understood as a fleshing out of what it means to be baptized into the church community. This article explores the method and aims of the confirmation rite and ministry among Batak Christians. [source] Psychotherapy as a Rite of PassageFAMILY PROCESS, Issue 4 2007C. CHRISTIAN BEELS M.D. Some psychotherapies may work because they resemble rites of passage. To explore this idea, this article describes an "individual" case of depression in which drug, cognitive, and narrative approaches fell short of effectiveness, and change occurred in a series of experiences that resemble a rite of passage. This resemblance is illuminated by examining two apparently quite different healing processes,Alcoholics Anonymous and multifamily group therapy in schizophrenia,to explore the elements they have in common with the case described: the acceptance of what Victor Turner called a liminal experience, and the importance of witnesses to the ritual support for that acceptance. The discussion contributes to a loosening of the distinctions between the processes of individual, family, group, and other social therapies and leads to questions about the expert knowledge the therapist provides. [source] Men's Recollections of a Women's Rite: Medieval English Men's Recollections Regarding the Rite of the Purification of Women after ChildbirthGENDER & HISTORY, Issue 2 2002Becky R. Lee This study examines the recollections of medieval English men, found in proof,of,age inquests, regarding their participation in the rite of the purification of women after childbirth. Because the rite of purification was reserved to women, scant attention has been paid to how this rite and the customs surrounding it played in the lives of medieval men. These men's recollections situate postpartum purification within the festivities celebrating the birth of a man's heir. For them, it is a public event celebrating paternity and lineage, and a forum for the negotiation of social relationships. [source] Sense of Place in Hanoi's Shop-House: The Influences of Local Belief on Interior ArchitectureJOURNAL OF INTERIOR DESIGN, Issue 1 2010Dinh Quoc Phuong Ph.D. The aim of this article is to seek another way of understanding the interdisciplinary, albeit loosely defined notion of "sense of place" and its manifestation in interior characteristics and design of domestic space in Hanoi. This includes an analysis of one aspect of place identities through material culture, such as those that are reflected in the local system of belief and building rite known as phong thuy,the Vietnamese version of Chinese feng-shui. With a case study research approach,describing and analyzing different types of data collected from a selected case study,this article examines sense of place and phong thuy application in (re)designing a shop-house, the most popular building type in Asian high-density cities like Hanoi. This study helps to explain how sense of place is understood by owner-builders, and how such a view is important to consider when attempting to design and make the home interior a better living place for residents in Hanoi and elsewhere. [source] Ethnicity and Shared Meanings: A Case Study of the "Orphaned Bones" Ritual in Mainland China and OverseasAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2009Bernard Formoso ABSTRACT Several theories of ethnicity emphasize the analysis of intergroup relations. They neglect, however, the conflation of ideas and values structuring these relations,notably the cross-cultural aggregates of shared cultural meanings that underlie forms of cooperation and competition between interacting groups. In this article, I explore this kind of process through a multisite ethnography of the Xiu gugu ("refining of orphaned bones"), a ritual that the Chaozhou people of northeast Guangdong province, an ethnic subgroup of the Han, perform periodically. The celebration of this rite in Chaozhou is compared to versions resulting of the ritual in Malay Muslim and Thai Buddhist contexts. In the latter case, close conceptions of malevolent death underlie a fascinating interethnic cooperation, with most of the unfortunate dead whose bones are "refined" during the Chaozhou ritual being Thai. [source] New challenges in working with traditional-aged college studentsNEW DIRECTIONS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION, Issue 144 2008Jennifer R. Keup Although the transition from high school to college is a predictable rite of passage for students in their late teens and early twenties, much about the nature of these students and their environments is changing. [source] Developing a Caregiving Tradition in Opposition to One's Past: Lessons from a Longitudinal Study of Teenage MothersPUBLIC HEALTH NURSING, Issue 2 2000D.N.Sc., Lee SmithBattle R.N. Although teenage mothering has been exhaustively studied, the cross-sectional designs and the deficit-finding focus of empirical-rational studies have exaggerated the negative consequences of an early pregnancy and have obscured how teenage mothering is often a rite of passage to adulthood, particularly in the absence of middle-class resources and aspirations. In examining the experiences of young mothers, an 8-year longitudinal study sought to understand how teenage mothers extend and develop family caregiving traditions. The original sample included 16 families and 39 subjects. Multiple individual and family interviews were conducted once the teen's first-born infant reached 8 to 10 months of age, and then 4 and 8 years later. Data from all three study periods were analyzed using the interpretive method. The following analysis provides an in-depth account of how young mothers with an oppressive past strive to become the parents they want to be. In addition, the teen mother's difficulties and struggles of creating a more positive maternal legacy and the role that positive and negative examples of parenting play in fostering or hindering the development of a new caregiving tradition are described. Study findings have implications for how clinical practice and social policy can better assist mothers to become the mothers they want to be. [source] Journeying Between Desire and Anthropology: A Story in SuspenseTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2000Anita Lundberg Anthropology is a discipline based on the motif of the journey and ,the myth of the eternal return'. This is the journey out to the ,other'in order to return to constitute ,self, and this movement is a movement of desire. The desire is for wholeness, for self-presence, for a unified self. It is a desire for origins. And this desire is evident in anthropological practices as it is in myths and fairytales,all tell stories that speak of the desire for a separate, an original, self. Yet ,the myth of the eternal return'reveals that the enactment of the story is itself originating. The origin is not a thing to be hunted down and appropriated,it is no thing. Like the archetypes which flow through stories, it is alive in the telling. The story I tell in this paper is about my own desires. It speaks of the desire to undergo the rite of passage of anthropology, and of how this journey was interrupted by the anthropologist who always journeys before me. And yet. it is through the inextricable relations with the writings of the "other, anthropologist that alluring moments of different desiring are fleetingly revealed. In the end. my relations with anthropology tell of a paradox: of the desire for a transcendental journey in order to constitute self and the seductive desire for immersion,to lose self, the story remains in suspense. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 22, Number 5.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 5 2006October 200 Front and back cover caption, volume 22 issue 5 Front cover Kayapo men of Brazilian Amazonia dance at a meeting of all Kayapo villages held in March 2006 with the aim of forging a united movement against the encroachment of agribusiness and large-scale development projects into the Xingú river valley. Up to the time of this meeting the widely dispersed Kayapo communities had never joined together as a single political organization under a common leadership. That they were able to do so at this meeting owed much to their ability to draw upon their shared tradition of collective ritual dance performances, which serve as the principal means of reproducing the social and political structures of their separate villages. At the meeting, held at the Kayapo village of Piaraçu on the Xingú, members of rival communities with mutually suspicious leaders joined in dances such as this one, drawn from the ritual for war, that expressed their solidarity in opposition to the common external threat. For the general audience, periodic interludes of dancing also provided a dramatic way of showing solidarity with one another and jointly expressing support for the orators, who were mostly leaders of the different communities. The meeting closed with a new ritual created for the occasion that began with a collective dance and culminated in a rite symbolizing the new level of common chiefly authority and leadership, encompassing Kayapo society as a whole, that had been created at the meeting. Back cover COMPETITIVE HUMANITARIANISM The back cover of this issue shows a detail from a map of ,Humanitarian actors involved in tsunami-related activities in Sri Lanka'. This excerpt lists but a few dozen of the many hundreds of agencies competing to provide relief in the wake of the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in December 2004. In most disasters, a major problem facing relief agencies is a lack of resources. In the case of the 2004 tsunami, however, agencies were forced into competition with each other for effective distribution of an embarrassment of riches. Yet this distribution had to be in line with international standards, and needed to meet the requirements of those who had donated to the various appeals in other parts of the world and had specific ideas of what constituted relief. The result was an over-concentration on the visible and the photogenic rather than the arguably more important work of rebuilding institutions and social networks. As well as needing to meet international standards, relief agencies were subject to the bureaucratic requirements that they should expend their resources in an accountable fashion. Their slow reaction opened the way for a plethora of small and inexperienced organizations (and individuals) to enter the relief business. The aid they dispensed was often poorly directed and technically inferior, but the visibility of their operations prompted an easy criticism of the more ponderous activities of the larger relief organisations. While ready availability of resources marked out the tsunami relief effort from most other disasters, what seems to characterize aid operations in the wake of such disasters is a high degree of competition between relief agencies, and a continual call for a greater degree of co-ordination between relief organizations. Yet competitive pressures mean that co-ordination is unlikely to be attainable over more than the short term. From an anthropological point of view the following paradox is worthy of study: while philanthropy can be seen as the antithesis of self-interest, philanthropic organisations are inherently part of a self-interested, market-orientated social order. What starts out as a ,free gift' from the public of Europe, Asia or elsewhere ends up as a commodity in the marketplace of competitive humanitarianism. [source] Psychotherapy as a Rite of PassageFAMILY PROCESS, Issue 4 2007C. CHRISTIAN BEELS M.D. Some psychotherapies may work because they resemble rites of passage. To explore this idea, this article describes an "individual" case of depression in which drug, cognitive, and narrative approaches fell short of effectiveness, and change occurred in a series of experiences that resemble a rite of passage. This resemblance is illuminated by examining two apparently quite different healing processes,Alcoholics Anonymous and multifamily group therapy in schizophrenia,to explore the elements they have in common with the case described: the acceptance of what Victor Turner called a liminal experience, and the importance of witnesses to the ritual support for that acceptance. The discussion contributes to a loosening of the distinctions between the processes of individual, family, group, and other social therapies and leads to questions about the expert knowledge the therapist provides. [source] Death and Memory in Early AmericaHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 2 2006Matthew Dennis Death is a historical phenomenon , although pervasive and unavoidable, it has not been understood or experienced in a uniform fashion over time. Death has visited some times and places more heavily than others; ideas about death, rites surrounding it, and the memorials and monuments commemorating it have varied over time and place. This article emphasizes the omnipresence of death in early America, an historical reality of great importance that we are peculiarly conditioned today to miss or avoid, both because of the nationalist biases of American history and because American culture is so insulated from actual physical death and mortal remains. Finally, the essay suggests why death mattered and how Americans made sense , and made use , of death and mortal remains in early America. [source] Gay Divorce: Thoughts on the Legal Regulation of MarriageHYPATIA, Issue 1 2007CLAUDIA CARD Although the exclusion of LGBTs from the rites and rights of marriage is arbitrary and unjust, the legal institution of marriage is itself so riddled with injustice that it would be better to create alternative forms of durable intimate partnership that do not invoke the power of the state. Card's essay develops a case for this position, taking up an injustice sufficiently serious to constitute an evil: the sheltering of domestic violence. [source] Roman Period fetal skeletons from the East Cemetery (Kellis 2) of Kellis, EgyptINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OSTEOARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 5 2005M. W. Tocheri Abstract Much can be learned about the religious ideology and mortuary patterns as well as the demographic and health profiles of a population from archaeological human fetal skeletons. Fetal skeletons are rare, however, largely due to poor preservation and recovery, misidentification, or non-inclusion in general burial populations. We present an analysis of 82 fetal/perinatal skeletons recovered from Kellis 2, a Roman Period cemetery dated to the third and fourth centuries AD, located in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt. Most of the fetal remains were individually wrapped in linen and all were buried among the general cemetery population in a supine, east,west orientation with the head facing to the west. Gestational age estimates are calculated from diaphysis lengths using published regression and Bayesian methods. The overall similarity between the fetal age distributions calculated from the regression and Bayesian methods suggests that the correlation between diaphysis length and gestational age is typically strong enough to avoid the ,regression' problem of having the age structure of reference samples adversely affecting the age distribution of target samples. The inherent bias of the regression methods, however, is primarily reflected in the gestational age categories between 36 and 42 weeks corresponding with the expected increase in growth variation during the late third trimester. The results suggest that the fetal age distribution at Kellis 2 does not differ from the natural expected mortality distribution. Therefore, practices such as infanticide can be ruled out as having a significant effect on the observed mortality distribution. Moreover, the Kellis 2 sample is well represented in each gestational age category, suggesting that all premature stillbirths and neonatal deaths received similar burial rites. The age distribution of the Kellis 2 fetal remains suggests that emerging Christian concepts, such as the ,soul' and the ,afterlife', were being applied to everyone including fetuses of all gestational ages. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Fear of the Dead as a Factor in Social Self-OrganizationJOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 2 2005AKOP P. NAZARETYAN The image of dead person returning to life was the most ancient source of irrational fear (i.e. fear not caused by objective menace) appeared in culture. This conclusion is argued with empirical data from archeology and ethnography. Fear has been expressed in funeral rites, the tying of extremities, burning and dismemberment of dead bodies, and ritual cannibalism (compensatory necrophilia) etc. At the same time, it was attended by effective care for helpless cripples, which seems to descend to the Lower Paleolithic as well. Dread of posthumous revenge played a decisive regulative role at the earliest stage of anthropogenesis, as the disparity between artificial weapons (the tools) and natural aggression-retention mechanisms (the instincts) became self-destructive. In the new conditions, individuals with normal animal mind were doomed to catastrophe. Those hominid groups proved viable, in which mystical fear, a product of unnaturally developed imagination, bounded lethal conflicts among kinsmen. The phobias corresponded to the psycho-nervous system's "strategic pathology"; that was a condition for early hominids' self-preservation. As a result, a causal connection between instrumental potential, cultural regulation quality and social sustainability (the techno-humanitarian balance law) was formed, which has been a mechanism of social selection for all of human history and prehistory. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||