History, an Exit Strategy: The Retrofuture Fabulations of kara lynch

A cartographer constructs a map of an individual creative history, that of the American artist kara lynch, as it emerges in connection to a collective history of African American cultural expression. Positioning history as complex, dynamic systems of interwoven memory networks, the map follows lynch’s traversals through various “zones of cultural haunting”: places where collective memories made invisible through systematic processes of cultural erasure may be recovered and revived. Through these traversals, which are inspired by lynch’s “forever project” Invisible, the map covers such terrains as haunted narratives, mechanisms of abstraction and coding within African American media production, water as an informational technology, the distribution of memory in blood, the dialectics of materiality and immateriality that frame considerations of black subjectivity, and the possibility that place of music might not be the site of sound but instead the social production of memory.

Transcending cultural differences: the role of language in migrants' integration

This research seeks to contribute to current debates on migration by examining the role of language in the process of migrants’ integration. It will consider how migrant workers living in an area with little history of international immigration navigate their way within a new destination to cope with language difference. The paper is based on empirical research (interviews and focus groups) conducted in Northern Ireland, an English speaking region with a small proportion of Irish-English bilinguals (10.3 percent of population had some knowledge of Irish in the 2001 Census). Much of the research to date, while acknowledging the importance of culture and language for migrants’ positive integration, has only begun to unpack the way in which cultural difference such as language is dealt with at an individual, family or societal level. Several themes emerge from the research including the significance of social and civil structures and the role of individual agents as new culture is created through the celebration of difference.

Risk: A Study of Its Origins, History and Politics

Over a period of several centuries, the academic study of risk has evolved as a distinct body of thought, which continues to influence conceptual developments in fields such as economics, management, politics and sociology. However, few scholarly works have given a chronological account of cultural and intellectual trends relating to the understanding and analysis of risks. Risk: A Study of its Origins, History and Politics aims to fill this gap by providing a detailed study of key turning points in the evolution of society's understanding of risk. Using a wide range of primary and secondary materials, Matthias Beck and Beth Kewell map the political origins and moral reach of some of the most influential ideas associated with risk and uncertainty at specific periods of time. The historical focus of the book makes it an excellent introduction for readers who wish to go beyond specific risk management techniques and their theoretical underpinnings, to gain an understanding of the history and politics of risk.

Cognitive Adaptation to the Experience of Social and Cultural Diversity

Diversity is a defining characteristic of modern society, yet there remains considerable debate over the benefits that it brings. The authors argue that positive psychological and behavioral outcomes will be observed only when social and cultural diversity is experienced in a way that challenges stereotypical expectations and that when this precondition is met, the experience has cognitive consequences that resonate across multiple domains. A model, rooted in social categorization theory and research, outlines the preconditions and processes through which people cognitively adapt to the experience of social and cultural diversity and the resulting cross-domain benefits that this brings. Evidence is drawn from a range of literatures to support this model, including work on biculturalism, minority influence, cognitive development, stereotype threat, work group productivity, creativity, and political ideology. The authors bring together a range of differing diversity experiences and explicitly draw parallels between programs of research that have focused on both perceiving others who are multicultural and being multicultural oneself. The findings from this integrative review suggest that experiencing diversity that challenges expectations may not only encourage greater tolerance but also have benefits beyond intergroup relations to varied aspects of psychological functioning.

Missing Links, Cultural Modernity and the Dead: Anatomically Modern Humans in the Great Cave of Niah (Sarawak, Borneo)

The Great Cave of Niah in Sarawak (northern Borneo) came into the gaze of Western Science through the work of Alfred Russell Wallace, who came to Sarawak in the 1850s to search for ‘missing links’ in his pioneering studies of evolution and the natural history of Island Southeast Asia and Australasia. The work of Tom and Barbara Harrisson in the 1950s and 1960s placed the Great Cave, and particularly their key find, the ‘Deep Skull’, at the nexus of the evolving archaeological framework for the region: for decades the skull, dated in 1958 by adjacent charcoal to c.40,000 BP, was the oldest fossil of an anatomically modern human anywhere in the world and thus critical to ideas about human evolution and dispersal. Although several authorities later questioned the provenance and antiquity of the Deep Skull, renewed investigations of the Harrisson excavations since 2000 have shown that it can be attributed securely to a specific location in the Pleistocene stratigraphy, with direct U-series dating on a piece of the skull indicating an age for it of c.37,500 BP and the first evidence for associated human activity at the site going back to c.50,000 BP. The new work also indicates that the skull is part of a cultural deposit, perhaps a precursor to the long tradition in Borneo of processing of the dead and secondary burial. These indicators of cultural complexity chime with the complexity of the subsistence behaviour of the early users of the caves discussed by Philip Piper and Ryan Rabett in chapter ten of this volume.

Knowledge Formation and the Great Divergence between China and Europe: Manuscripts and Printed Books, ca. 581–1840

Literature dealing with the history of Chinese printed books and printing is voluminous. Yet studies of how knowledge in general and utilitarian forms of knowledge in particular were generated, accumulated and circulated by printed books and their relationship with the long-term socio-economic transformation of China are rare. This paper aims to open up the subject by examining the long-term trends in the production of manuscripts and books and focusing on the connections between the generation and dissemination of useful knowledge in China and the production and circulation of printed books over the centuries and dynasties from circa 581 to 1840 compared to Europe. It connects trends in this indicator for knowledge formation and diffusion to economic growth, urbanization, changes in higher forms of education, the rise of literacy, the development of printing technologies, and changes in perceptions of the natural world. It concludes that human capital formation in China probably proceeded at a slower rate,which is relevant for narratives of the “divergence” between China and Europe.

A cultural practice of drinking realgar wine leading to elevated urinary arsenic and its potential health risk

Toasting friends and family with realgar wines and painting children's foreheads and limbs with the leftover realgar/alcohol slurries is an important customary ritual during the Dragon Boat Festival (DBF); a Chinese national holiday and ancient feast day celebrated throughout Asia. Realgar is an arsenic sulfide mineral, and source of highly toxic inorganic arsenic. Despite the long history of realgar use during the DBF, associated risk to human health by arsenic ingestion or percutaneous adsorption is unknown. To address this urine samples were collected from a cohort of volunteers who were partaking in the DBF festivities. The total concentration of arsenic in the wine consumed was 70 mg L(-1) with all the arsenic found to be inorganic. Total arsenic concentrations in adult urine reached a maximum of ca. 550 mu g L(-1) (mean 220.2 mu g L(-1)) after 16 h post-ingestion of realgar wine, while face painting caused arsenic levels in children's urine to soar to 100 mu g L(-1) (mean 85.3 mu g L(-1)) 40 h after the initial paint application. The average concentration of inorganic arsenic in the urine of realgar wine drinkers on average doubled 16 h after drinking, although this was not permanent and levels subsided after 28 h. As would be expected in young children, the proportions of organic arsenic in the urine remained high throughout the 88-h monitoring period. However, even when arsenic concentrations in the urine peaked at 40 h after paint application, concentrations in the urine only declined slightly thereafter, suggesting pronounced longer term dermal accumulation and penetration of arsenic. Drinking wines blended with realgar or using realgar based paints on children does result in the significant absorption of arsenic and therefore presents a potentially serious and currently unquantified health risk. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Transnational connections in European crime film series (1908–1914)

This article addresses the issue of ‘European popular cinema’ by discussing a very specific phenomenon, i.e. the crime series produced in the years immediately preceding World War I (e.g. Victorin Jasset’s Nick Carter, Viggo Larsen’s Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock, Ubaldo Maria del Colle’s Raffles, il ladro misterioso, Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas, George Pearson’s Ultus). On the one hand, the transnational circulation of these films is seen as the result of the development of the European cultural industries since the late nineteenth century; on the other hand, the rapid decline of this genre testifies of the historical peculiarity of this production. In particular, the popular heroic figure of the ‘gentleman thief’ seems to express at the same time the liberating, anti-hierarchial ethos of modernization and the dream of a quiet conciliation of the new and the traditional values: as a consequence, it might be regarded as a telling example of the economical, social and ideological transformations of that crucial phase in European history, when the development of the second industrial revolution and the first phase of ‘globalization’ pointed at the birth of a supranational sphere before the outbreak of World War I, which would temporarily stop this process.

Resistance is Feral: Digital Culture, Community Arts, and the New Cultural Gatekeepers

The Community Arts sector in Australia has a history of resistance. It has challenged hegemonic culture through facilitating grassroots creative production, contesting notions of artistic processes, and the role of the artist in society. This paper examines this penchant for resistance through the lens of contemporary digital culture, to establish that the sector is continuing to challenge dominant forms of cultural control. It then proposes that this enthusiasm and activity lacks ethical direction, describing it as feral to encompass the potential of current practices, while highlighting how a level of taming is needed in order to develop ethical approaches.

Cultural and Genetic Influences on the “Biological Standard of Living”

This study suggests an improvement of a popular measure of living standards, namely the biological standard of living. One influence on it is a population's consumption pattern. Since there are different dietary patterns all over the world, researchers estimate the influences of national diets on final average male height. These habits are predominantly related to income, but also to genetics, cultural history, and decisions regarding whether to trade or consume high-quality foodstuffs. Systematic differences are found when analyzing protein-consumption habits among 51 countries between the 1960s and the 1980s. The author calculates metric correction values which can facilitate international comparisons of male average height. While the proposed correction values make a little difference on average, they can be valuable in a comparison of countries with markedly different dietary patterns.