Relaciones y prácticas que cambian la realidad alimenticia: una aproximación desde la antropología ecológica y feminista

From the 1990s, through the first decade of the XXI century, the food industry has intensified its production in technologically and genetically sophisticated ways. It has introduced transgenic and genetically modified foods, taking into account an economical push to obtain higher quantities in less time. Today, the foods that we consume seem more like products created in a laboratory than ones that come from working directly with the earth and with animals. These changes in the food industry are just a part of a long and complicated story in which economical interests figure heavily. The single-crop farming era begins in the 1970s in The United States and Europe. In some regions in Spain having a strong agricultural tradition, small private and family-owned farms that provided food to surrounding populations started disappearing, being uprooted in favor of the creation of large, multi-national companies. The market would expand with the growth of production facilities housing large quantities of animals living numbered and crowded. They mainly house cows, chickens, and pigs from which we obtain different products like milk, eggs and meat. The way these “industrial animals” live today does not even come close to what we think of as a balanced ecosystem, seeing as they are surrounded by machines and by the general use of sophisticated techniques to achieve the best return possible...

La antropología de Pedro Laín Entralgo, y su aplicación a la enfermería

Introduction. Current times are distinguished, among other things, by the instability of the events, facts and ideas that follow one another vertiginously. The circumstances that surround our society are extremely changing, as well as the way of understanding things and assessing recent developments. The material world dominates over human life. Productive tasks take first place. Appearances are unstable and the ephemeral confirms its power in the 21st century’s mentality. We are immersed in the aesthetics of seduction and image. And in human life, the expansion of needs in all walks of life has become part of the structure of human beings’ existence in the current world. The consumerist fever, the euphoria for new things have made the sense of life virtually insubstantial. All this hardly fits into the nature of healthcare professions. In our case, nursing science has scarce support in our society for continuing the research about the meaning of being a nurse that the reality of the profession requires...

Estudio genético HLA en poblaciones iraníes: epidemiología, antropología y farmacogenética

The HLA system is the most polymorphic genetic system described in humans. It consists of several closely linked loci encoding cell surface glycoproteins whose best known function is activating immune system response through antigenic presentation. New loci and new alleles have been described since the discovery of this genetic system and the presently available DNA typing and sequencing of these new alleles have increased the variety of HLA allelism. Due to the fact that HLA gene frequencies have a large degree of variability and a remarkable geographical correlation, HLA genes are an important and useful tool to infer genetic background and ethnical composition of modern human populations and also for tracing migration of ancient ones. In addition, certain combinations of contiguous alleles due to the strong linkage disequilibrium between HLA neighbouring loci show a characteristic frequency or are distinctive in many present day populations. Thus, HLA genetic system is a unique tool for studying the origin of relatively isolated groups, like Turkmen, Azeri and Kurd people, the populations under study, living in North Iran, in the surrounding area of Caspian Sea. Finally, HLA polymorphism is crucial for the compatibility between donor and receptor in organ transplantation and several HLA alleles have been linked to diseases and to response to drug treatments, which accomplishes relationships of certain variants with different pathologies treatment including AIDS. This is important in personalized treatments design. Turkmen could be descendants of Oghuz tribes from Seljuq branch coming from Transoxiana region (Central Asia) contemporarily to the foundation of the Seljuk Empire in 10th century AD. Conversely, this people could belong to another group within the Oghuz, arriving to Iran five centuries later. Migrations of this people were initially developed peacefully, being vassals of the Safavid Empire, and later by violent raids. They speak a language belonging to the Turkish-Oghuz group. In Iran, Turkmen live in Golestan province, mainly in Türkmensähra (“Turkmen plain”) area and amount 1.5 million people (2% of Iranian population). Most of this people are Sunni Muslims...

Antropología social, enfoques (auto)biográficos y vigilancia epistemológica

El artículo evalúa las posibilidades de conocimiento generadas por la utilización de enfoques biográficos, desde una doble premisa: la necesidad de recabar datos que ponen en juego la temporalidad, y la obligación de tener presentes tanto las falsas expectativas como las dificultades que dicho uso engendra. Se examinan sucesivamente las posiciones respectivas de los investigadores y de sus informantes, la influencia de los hábitos de pensamiento del conocimiento ordinario, así como lo que cabe esperar de herramientas heurísticas como el análisis contextual (social, intra-textual e intertextual) y la práctica comparativa.

Antropología y Derechos Humanos: multiculturalismo, retos y resignificaciones

A modo de introducción y presentación de este volumen monográfi co, se repasa la evolución y los principales objetos en juego de la Antropología de los Derechos Humanos tal como se presenta actualmente. Teniendo en cuenta la importancia adquirida por éstos como medio de expresión de las luchas sociales, de denuncia de las violaciones de distinta índole y de instrumento de promoción de equidad y de justicia social, se destaca su naturaleza fundamentalmente cultural, histórica y dinámica. Asimismo, se señalan las premisas epistemológicas y teóricas ligadas al desarrollo de esta perspectiva: excluyendo unos enfoques legalistas o culturalistas, se indican los cambios de paradigmas antropológicos, la naturaleza discursiva de los derechos humanos, la intervención de los agentes sociales, colectividades e instituciones locales en su adopción o recreación, así como sus consecuencias simbólicas y prácticas tanto en las personas como para las formas de convivencia.