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J Scott Hill

Cultural universal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Cultural_universal

universal cultural

shared by J Scott Hill on 28 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • J Scott Hill on 28 Jan 13
     
    Here is a relatively long list of "cultural universals." 
Courtney Morrow

What Are the Inuit Tribe's Politics? | eHow.com - 0 views

www.ehow.com/111_inuit-tribes-politics.html

politics inuit 5 organization assimilation show

shared by Courtney Morrow on 29 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • The prized Inuit cultural value of independence, the lack of a written language, and the harsh reality of surviving in the unforgiving Arctic environment were ill-suited to any centralized political structure.
  • Increased Political Awareness and Activism In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the increasing numbers of educated Inuit youth returning to their settlements energized the Inuit, particularly with regard to regaining traditional territories with their abundant natural resources. A main focus of the Inuit's emerging political activism was to ensure they would have greater involvement in the decisions surrounding the disposition of the land's resources, particularly in the energy sector, and to obtain a greater measure of economic stability and prosperity through the processing and sale of these resources. Throughout the late 1900s, the Inuit were generally successful in reaching settlements with national governments granting their claims to large expanses of their traditional territory.
  • Courtney Morrow on 29 Apr 13
     
    The prized Inuit cultural value of independence, the lack of a written language, and the harsh reality of surviving in the unforgiving Arctic environment were ill-suited to any centralized political structure.
J Scott Hill

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...ture_of_Scientific_Revolutions

Kuhn science philosophy paradigm revolutions

shared by J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13 - Cached
  • 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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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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]
  • J Scott Hill on 29 Jan 13
     
    Good highlights of Kuhn's book and the notion of Paradigm shift in science.
andrew carlino

What are the major accusations or questions of debate concerning "Darkness in El Dorado?" - 70 views

The major issue to me in this article was the fact that many of Neel and Chagnon's findings were very loosely based on fact when they were further explored. Other anthropologists had studied many ...

questions

started by J Scott Hill on 31 Jan 13 20 follow-ups, last by andrew carlino on 07 Feb 13
Claire Alexander

Inuitinfo - Location, Environment, and Population - 0 views

inuitinfo.wikispaces.com/n,+Environment,+and+Population

location environment population 2

shared by Claire Alexander on 28 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Claire Alexander on 28 Apr 13
     
    The Inuit, otherwise known as Eskimo, are an aboriginal people who have made their home in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Siberia and North America, more specifically around Canada (Greenland); United States (Alaska); Aleutian Islands; Russia (Siberia). The word "Eskimo" was given upon resourceful hunters by their neighbors, the Algonquin Indians of eastern Canada. It means "eaters of raw meat." However, it has recently begun to be replaced by the Eskimos' own name for themselves, "Inuit," which means, "real people." The Inuit people descended from whale hunters who migrated from Alaska to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic around 1000 AD. Major changes in Inuit life and culture occurred during the Little Ice Age (1600-1850), when the climate in their homelands became even colder. European whalers who arrived in the latter part of the nineteenth century had a strong impact on the Inuit because they carried over infectious diseases that largely reduced the Inuit population. The Inuit people mainly live along the far northern seacoasts of Russia, the United States, Canada, and Greenland. There are more than 100,000 Inuit, most of whom live south of the Arctic Circle, and the majority, which is about 46,000, live in Greenland. There are approximately 30,000 on the Aleutian Islands and in Alaska, 25,000 in Canada, and 1,500 in Siberia. The Inuit homeland is one of the regions of the world least hospitable to human habitation because the majority of the land is flat, infertile tundra where only the top few inches of the frozen earth defrost during the summer months.
andrew carlino

'Darkness in El Dorado': Shame in the Amazon - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0072.htm

egotistical murder

shared by andrew carlino on 07 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Unfortunately, Tierney says, the portrait was inaccurate: "The Yanomami have a low level of homicide by world standards of tribal culture and a very low level by Amazonian standards ... The attempt to portray the Yanomami as archetypes of ferocity would be pathetic were it not for its political consequences." Indeed, the book became anthropology's bestseller, which brought the modern world to the tribe's doorstep. Other anthropologists wanted a piece of the action; filmmakers wanted to document their lifestyle; the Atomic Energy Commission wanted their unique, untainted blood for radiation studies. The Yanomami wanted to be left alone, but no one listened.
  • In the three decades chronicled in the book, the invading hordes gave them measles and weapons to kill each other, destroyed their homes and damaged their culture beyond repair.
J Scott Hill

A Family Tree in Every Gene - 0 views

raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Leroi

race culture racism genetics adaptation evolution

shared by J Scott Hill on 26 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Who speaks of "racial stocks" anymore? After all, to do so would be to speak of something that many scientists and scholars say does not exist. If modern anthropologists mention the concept of race, it is invariably only to warn against and dismiss it. Likewise many geneticists. "Race is social concept, not a scientific one," according to Dr. Craig Venter—and he should know, since he was first to sequence the human genome.
  • But now, perhaps, that is about to change
  • The dominance of the social construct theory can be traced to a 1972 article by Dr. Richard Lewontin, a Harvard geneticist, who wrote that most human genetic variation can be found within any given "race." If one looked at genes rather than faces, he claimed, the difference between an African and a European would be scarcely greater than the difference between any two Europeans.
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  • Three decades later, it seems that Dr. Lewontin's facts were correct, and have been abundantly confirmed by ever better techniques of detecting genetic variety. His reasoning, however, was wrong. His error was an elementary one, but such was the appeal of his argument that it was only a couple of years ago that a Cambridge University statistician, A. W. F. Edwards, put his finger on it.
  • Genetic variants that aren't written on our faces, but that can be detected only in the genome, show similar correlations. It is these correlations that Dr. Lewontin seems to have ignored. In essence, he looked at one gene at a time and failed to see races. But if many—a few hundred—variable genes are considered simultaneously, then it is very easy to do so. Indeed, a 2002 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Stanford showed that if a sample of people from around the world are sorted by computer into five groups on the basis of genetic similarity, the groups that emerge are native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America and Australasia—more or less the major races of traditional anthropology.
  • J Scott Hill on 26 Feb 13
     
    "A Family Tree in Every Gene By Armand Marie Leroi Published on: Jun 07, 2006 Armand Marie Leroi, an evolutionary developmental biologist at Imperial College in London, is the author of Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body." This Article is a fairly sensible, nuanced, defense of the race concept based on recent genetic analyses of hundreds of genetic variables at a time.   
J Scott Hill

RACE - Are We So Different? :: A Project of the American Anthropological Association - 0 views

www.understandingrace.org/home.html

race culture racism history adaptation evolution AAA genetics anthropology science

shared by J Scott Hill on 26 Feb 13 - Cached
  • J Scott Hill on 26 Feb 13
     
    This cite is mentioned in Kottak's text...it has a lot of good information about Race.
andrew carlino

Promotion of Sports - Ministry of Sports and Culture - 0 views

www.minispoc.gov.rw/...promotion-of-sports.html

Sports Recreation Rwanda

shared by andrew carlino on 01 May 13 - No Cached
  • The sport has a natural and universal power of attraction, inspiration, motivation and commitment. It can be used to encourage individuals, communities and even countries to take part in activities promoting health. It can also be an effective tool in mobilizing resources for public health.
  • Furthermore, sport is of paramount importance to the economic level. It creates and sustains sector jobs assembling media producer and marketer of sports equipment, sports clubs, doctors, lawyers, coaches and advisers of all kinds; firms specializing in architectural design Stadiums and other sports facilities. Some professional athletes also derive income from their sport.
  • The government of Rwanda has invested in sports and leisure infrastructure which has made a progressive impact in the past decade. Despite what has been done so far, the need in terms of sporting and leisure facilities is concerned is still enormous. The need for Sporting and other leisure activities is important for the psychological and Physical development of the youth.
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  • They contribute to their personal development through promoting good health, personal discipline, leadership and team building skills.
andrew carlino

Jungle Fever - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0246.htm

bribing machette

shared by andrew carlino on 07 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Demonstrating his own power has been not only a necessary condition of Chagnon's fieldwork, but a main technique of investigation. In a scientific reprise of a losing military tactic, he also attempted to win the hearts and minds of the people by a calculated redistribution of material wealth, and in so doing, managed to further destabilize the countryside and escalate the violence. Tierney quotes a prominent Yanomami leader: "Chagnon is fierce. Chagnon is very dangerous. He has his own personal war." Meanwhile, back in California a defender of Chagnon in the e-mail battles has lauded him as "perhaps the world's most famous living social anthropologist." The Kurtzian narrative of how Chagnon achieved the political status of a monster in Amazonia and a hero in academia is truly the heart of Darkness in El Dorado. While some of Tierney's reporting has come under fire, this is nonetheless a revealing book, with a cautionary message that extends well beyond the field of anthropology. It reads like an allegory of American power and culture since Vietnam.
J Scott Hill

Code of Ethics - 0 views

www.aaanet.org/...Code-of-Ethics.cfm

ethics AAA research

shared by J Scott Hill on 07 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • 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)
  • J Scott Hill on 07 Feb 13
     
    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.  
andrew carlino

Darkness in El Dorado, Greg Grandin - 0 views

anthroniche.com/...0421.htm

machetes murder

shared by andrew carlino on 07 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Most cultural anthropologists now believe that the wars Chagnon witnessed were provoked by Chagnon himself. He offered axes, machetes, fishhooks and pots in exchange for ethnographic information, creating tensions among villages that vied for monopoly control of his wares. Within months of Chagnon's arrival in 1964, three different fights broke out between villages that had previously been at peace for decades. Anthropologist Brian Ferguson reports that Chagnon was "very much involved in the fighting and the wars. Chagnon becomes a central figure in determining battles over trade goods and machetes." A Yanomami reports that Chagnon offered him an outboard motor in exchange for help, including the procurement of a Yanomami wife. Shotguns, a seemingly unlimited supply of trade goods and willingness to don feathers, face paint and a loincloth allowed Chagnon to transform himself from an "improverished Ph.D. student at the bottom of the totem pole to being a figure of preternatural power." Tierney argues that many of Chagnon's data are simply false. The Yanomami do not have a particularly high murder rate, nor do men who kill reproduce more than those who don't. Neither are the Yanomami particularly well-nourished--a claim that Chagnon uses to argue that men fight over women and not food.
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