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Michael Daly

eHRAF World Cultures - 0 views

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    Slave society was stratified into three castes: a small number of Whites, a smaller number of "free people of color" (generally mulattoes), and a huge Black slave population. White-minority rule led to the development of a "white bias": European phenotypic and cultural traits were more highly valued than their African or Creole counterparts. With Emancipation, the castes were transformed into classes, but the White bias persisted, resulting in a "color-class pyramid": a White upper class, a "Brown" middle class, and a Black lower-class majority. The addition of Chinese, East Indian, and Lebanese immigrants, who did not have a clear place in the color-class pyramid, made stratification more complex. Color and ethnicity still influence social interactions, but the White bias and the color-class pyramid have become less evident since the mid-twentieth century. Nevertheless, Jamaica is still highly stratified by wealth; it has a very small, prosperous upper class, a small middle class, and a huge, impoverished lower class. In the mid-1960s Jamaica had the highest rate of income inequality in the world.
Michael Daly

eHRAF World Cultures - 0 views

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    Slave society was stratified into three castes: a small number of Whites, a smaller number of "free people of color" (generally mulattoes), and a huge Black slave population. White-minority rule led to the development of a "white bias": European phenotypic and cultural traits were more highly valued than their African or Creole counterparts. With Emancipation, the castes were transformed into classes, but the White bias persisted, resulting in a "color-class pyramid": a White upper class, a "Brown" middle class, and a Black lower-class majority. The addition of Chinese, East Indian, and Lebanese immigrants, who did not have a clear place in the color-class pyramid, made stratification more complex. Color and ethnicity still influence social interactions, but the White bias and the color-class pyramid have become less evident since the mid-twentieth century. Nevertheless, Jamaica is still highly stratified by wealth; it has a very small, prosperous upper class, a small middle class, and a huge, impoverished lower class. In the mid-1960s Jamaica had the highest rate of income inequality in the world.
Michael Daly

eHRAF World Cultures - 1 views

  • mbly until the peasant uprising at Morant Bay in 1865. This event ignited fear among the White oligarchy that democracy would lead to Black rule; so the British abolished the assembly in
  • Union
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    Slave society was stratified into three castes: a small number of Whites, a smaller number of "free people of color" (generally mulattoes), and a huge Black slave population. White-minority rule led to the development of a "white bias": European phenotypic and cultural traits were more highly valued than their African or Creole counterparts. With Emancipation, the castes were transformed into classes, but the White bias persisted, resulting in a "color-class pyramid": a White upper class, a "Brown" middle class, and a Black lower-class majority. The addition of Chinese, East Indian, and Lebanese immigrants, who did not have a clear place in the color-class pyramid, made stratification more complex. Color and ethnicity still influence social interactions, but the White bias and the color-class pyramid have become less evident since the mid-twentieth century. Nevertheless, Jamaica is still highly stratified by wealth; it has a very small, prosperous upper class, a small middle class, and a huge, impoverished lower class. In the mid-1960s Jamaica had the highest rate of income inequality in the world.
craiglindsley

eHRAF World Cultures - 0 views

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    WE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES ARE A MIXED BREED. WE HAVE COME from all parts of the world; all races of men compose our biological aggregate. We have created an official ideology to fit this condition which declares than men of all races and all cultures are equally precious in the eyes of God and are, therefore, equal,-and here we pause for a long afterthought-"At least, they should be equal, in the thoughts and actions of men." In the second thought we see the ever-present basic conflict that permeates our way of life: a deep faith in the principles of equality which we proudly proclaim, and a fundamental, unofficial, unacknowledged, and almost guilty belief that certain Americans are the "real" ones and superior, while all others are second-class citizens and inferior. Our communities' social systems reflect this conflict when attempting to organize the lives of men who hold these opposing beliefs. Commonsense observation of these communities, buttressed by the more exact findings of social science, demonstrates that despite our equalitarian credo two types of separate and subordinate groups have emerged in the United States. All dark-skinned races with Mongoloid or Negroid ancestry are placed by our social system in subordinate groups, and all deviant cultural groups, speaking different languages, professing different faiths, and exhibiting exotic manners and customs are set apart and classed as inferior.
J Scott Hill

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1 views

  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, is an analysis of the history of science, published in 1962 by the University of Chicago Press. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of scientific knowledge and it triggered an ongoing worldwide assessment and reaction in—and beyond—those scholarly communities. In this work, Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in "normal science". Scientific progress had been seen primarily as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of such conceptual continuity in normal science were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science.
  • What is arguably the most famous example of a revolution in scientific thought is the Copernican Revolution. In Ptolemy's school of thought, cycles and epicycles (with some additional concepts) were used for modeling the movements of the planets in a cosmos that had a stationary Earth at its center. As accuracy of celestial observations increased, complexity of the Ptolemaic cyclical and epicyclical mechanisms had to increase to maintain the calculated planetary positions close to the observed positions. Copernicus proposed a cosmology in which the Sun was at the center and the Earth was one of the planets revolving around it.
  • Copernicus' contemporaries rejected his cosmology, and Kuhn asserts that they were quite right to do so: Copernicus' cosmology lacked credibility.
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  • One of the aims of science is to find models that will account for as many observations as possible within a coherent framework. Together, Galileo's rethinking of the nature of motion and Keplerian cosmology represented a coherent framework that was capable of rivaling the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic framework.
  • In any community of scientists, Kuhn states, there are some individuals who are bolder than most. These scientists, judging that a crisis exists, embark on what Thomas Kuhn calls revolutionary science, exploring alternatives to long-held, obvious-seeming assumptions. Occasionally this generates a rival to the established framework of thought. The new candidate paradigm will appear to be accompanied by numerous anomalies, partly because it is still so new and incomplete. The majority of the scientific community will oppose any conceptual change, and, Kuhn emphasizes, so they should. To fulfill its potential, a scientific community needs to contain both individuals who are bold and individuals who are conservative.
  • Those scientists who possess an exceptional ability to recognize a theory's potential will be the first whose preference is likely to shift in favour of the challenging paradigm. There typically follows a period in which there are adherents of both paradigms. In time, if the challenging paradigm is solidified and unified, it will replace the old paradigm, and a paradigm shift will have occurred.
  • Chronologically, Kuhn distinguishes between three phases. The first phase, which exists only once, is the pre-paradigm phase, in which there is no consensus on any particular theory, though the research being carried out can be considered scientific in nature. This phase is characterized by several incompatible and incomplete theories.
  • If the actors in the pre-paradigm community eventually gravitate to one of these conceptual frameworks and ultimately to a widespread consensus on the appropriate choice of methods, terminology and on the kinds of experiment that are likely to contribute to increased insights, then the second phase, normal science, begins, in which puzzles are solved within the context of the dominant paradigm. As long as there is consensus within the discipline, normal science continues.
  • Over time, progress in normal science may reveal anomalies, facts that are difficult to explain within the context of the existing paradigm. While usually these anomalies are resolved, in some cases they may accumulate to the point where normal science becomes difficult and where weaknesses in the old paradigm are revealed. Kuhn refers to this as a crisis. Crises are often resolved within the context of normal science. However, after significant efforts of normal science within a paradigm fail, science may enter the third phase, that of revolutionary science, in which the underlying assumptions of the field are reexamined and a new paradigm is established. After the new paradigm's dominance is established, scientists return to normal science, solving puzzles within the new paradigm.
  • SSR is viewed by postmodern and post-structuralist thinkers as having called into question the enterprise of science by demonstrating that scientific knowledge is dependent on the culture and historical circumstances of groups of scientists rather than on their adherence to a specific, definable method.
  • SSR has also been embraced by creationists who see creationism as an incommensurate worldview in contrast to naturalism while holding science as a valuable tool.[7]
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    Good highlights of Kuhn's book and the notion of Paradigm shift in science.
J Scott Hill

Welcome - 0 views

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    To understand the genetic basis of human genetics and the limitations of race concepts describing that variation...I encourage you to read some of the essays attached to this page.  If you find something of interest, highlight it and share it to our class page.
J Scott Hill

Marcel Mauss - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1 views

  • n his classic work The Gift, Mauss argued that gifts are never "free". Rather, human history is full of examples that gifts give rise to reciprocal exchange. The famous question that drove his inquiry into the anthropology of the gift was: "What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?" (1990:3). The answer is simple: the gift is a "total prestation", imbued with "spiritual mechanisms", engaging the honour of both giver and receiver (the term "total prestation" or "total social fact" (fait social total) was coined by his student Maurice Leenhardt after Durkheim's social fact).
  • The giver does not merely give an object but also part of himself, for the object is indissolubly tied to the giver: "the objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them" (1990:31). Because of this bond between giver and gift, the act of giving creates a social bond with an obligation to reciprocate on part of the recipient. To not reciprocate means to lose honour and status, but the spiritual implications can be even worse: in Polynesia, failure to reciprocate means to lose mana, one's spiritual source of authority and wealth.
  • In a gift economy, however, the objects that are given are inalienated from the givers; they are "loaned rather than sold and ceded". It is the fact that the identity of the giver is invariably bound up with the object given that causes the gift to have a power which compels the recipient to reciprocate. Because gifts are inalienable they must be returned; the act of giving creates a gift-debt that has to be repaid
J Scott Hill

Code of Ethics - 0 views

  • Approved February 2009 I. Preamble Anthropological researchers, teachers and practitioners are members of many different communities, each with its own moral rules or codes of ethics. Anthropologists have moral obligations as members of other groups, such as the family, religion, and community, as well as the profession. They also have obligations to the scholarly discipline, to the wider society and culture, and to the human species, other species, and the environment. Furthermore, fieldworkers may develop close relationships with persons or animals with whom they work, generating an additional level of ethical considerations. In a field of such complex involvements and obligations, it is inevitable that misunderstandings, conflicts, and the need to make choices among apparently incompatible values will arise. Anthropologists are responsible for grappling with such difficulties and struggling to resolve them in ways compatible with the principles stated here. The purpose of this Code is to foster discussion and education. The American Anthropological Association (AAA) does not adjudicate claims for unethical behavior. The principles and guidelines in this Code provide the anthropologist with tools to engage in developing and maintaining an ethical framework for all anthropological work.
  • Download the Code of Ethics (PDF)
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    The AAA Code of Ethics provides a thought provoking and informative look into some of the responsibilities Anthropologists have to their research subjects, the community of anthropologists, and the wider public.   The nature of anthropological fieldwork is particularly fraught with ethical conundrums.  
Maeve Couzens

ScienceDirect.com - Cognitive Psychology - Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and E... - 0 views

  • Does the language you speak affect how you think about the world?
  • English and Mandarin talk about time differently—English predominantly talks about time as if it were horizontal, while Mandarin also commonly describes time as vertical
  • Another study showed that the extent to which Mandarin–English bilinguals think about time vertically is related to how old they were when they first began to learn English.
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  • In another experiment native English speakers were taught to talk about time using vertical spatial terms in a way similar to Mandarin.
  • language is a powerful tool in shaping thought about abstract domains and
  • one's native language plays an important role in shaping habitual thought (e.g., how one tends to think about time) but does not entirely determine one's thinking in the strong Whorfian sense.
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