Nostalgia, music and the television past revisited in American dreams

The 1960s-set NBC family drama American Dreams presents not just the recent American past but its musical television as well. This paper examines how the show’s recreation of and interaction with the music show American Bandstand ties together the divergent experiences of a turbulent decade. American Dreams’ reshooting and appropriation of original broadcast footage is intricately interwoven with dramatic action allowing for new layers of commentary and meaning to be read across the music and image relationship. Through intercutting and juxtaposition, its use of music performance goes beyond the regressive recycling of images of nostalgia, as critiqued by Jameson and other theorists of postmodernity, to engage political and social debates through a complex web of reference, reproduction and commentary, presenting a politicised reading of the 1960s that problematises these charges of nostalgia texts as apolitical and ‘historicist’.

Allele frequency of hereditary equine regional dermal asthenia in American Quarter horses in Brazil determined by quantitative real-time PCR with high resolution melting analysis

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Dispelling the Mascot Myth: The Misuse of Indigenous Peoples as Mascots in American Schools

This workshop details the deculturalization process that takes place when Indigenous Peoples are used as mascots in school-related activities; examines the arguments(s) and defensive tactics used by sports fans and school officials to maintain these hegemonic images; and offers successful strategies for developing policy toward the elimination of Indigenous Peoples as mascots.

Parental Ethnotheories of Child Development: Looking Beyond Independence and Individualism in American Belief Systems

Over the past several decades, the topic of child development in a cultural context has received a great deal of theoretical and empirical investigation. Investigators from the fields of indigenous and cultural psychology have argued that childhood is socially and historically constructed, rather than a universal process with a standard sequence of developmental stages or descriptions. As a result, many psychologists have become doubtful that any stage theory of cognitive or socialemotional development can be found to be valid for all times and places. In placing more theoretical emphasis on contextual processes, they define culture as a complex system of common symbolic action patterns (or scripts) built up through everyday human social interaction by means of which individuals create common meanings and in terms of which they organize experience. Researchers understand culture to be organized and coherent, but not homogenous or static, and realize that the complex dynamic system of culture constantly undergoes transformation as participants (adults and children) negotiate and re-negotiate meanings through social interaction. These negotiations and transactions give rise to unceasing heterogeneity and variability in how different individuals and groups of individuals interpret values and meanings. However, while many psychologists—both inside and outside the fields of indigenous and cultural psychology–are now willing to give up the idea of a universal path of child development and a universal story of parenting, they have not necessarily foreclosed on the possibility of discovering and describing some universal processes that underlie socialization and development-in-context. The roots of such universalities would lie in the biological aspects of child development, in the evolutionary processes of adaptation, and in the unique symbolic and problem-solving capacities of the human organism as a culture-bearing species. For instance, according to functionalist psychological anthropologists, shared (cultural) processes surround the developing child and promote in the long view the survival of families and groups if they are to demonstrate continuity in the face of ecological change and resource competition, (e.g. Edwards & Whiting, 2004; Gallimore, Goldenberg, & Weisner, 1993; LeVine, Dixon, LeVine, Richman, Leiderman, Keefer, & Brazelton, 1994; LeVine, Miller, & West, 1988; Weisner, 1996, 2002; Whiting & Edwards, 1988; Whiting & Whiting, 1980). As LeVine and colleagues (1994) state: A population tends to share an environment, symbol systems for encoding it, and organizations and codes of conduct for adapting to it (emphasis added). It is through the enactment of these population-specific codes of conduct in locally organized practices that human adaptation occurs. Human adaptation, in other words, is largely attributable to the operation of specific social organizations (e.g. families, communities, empires) following culturally prescribed scripts (normative models) in subsistence, reproduction, and other domains [communication and social regulation]. (p. 12) It follows, then, that in seeking to understand child development in a cultural context, psychologists need to support collaborative and interdisciplinary developmental science that crosses international borders. Such research can advance cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, and indigenous psychology, understood as three sub-disciplines composed of scientists who frequently communicate and debate with one another and mutually inform one another’s research programs. For example, to turn to parental belief systems, the particular topic of this chapter, it is clear that collaborative international studies are needed to support the goal of crosscultural psychologists for findings that go beyond simply describing cultural differences in parental beliefs. Comparative researchers need to shed light on whether parental beliefs are (or are not) systematically related to differences in child outcomes; and they need meta-analyses and reviews to explore between- and within-culture variations in parental beliefs, with a focus on issues of social change (Saraswathi, 2000). Likewise, collaborative research programs can foster the goals of indigenous psychology and cultural psychology and lay out valid descriptions of individual development in their particular cultural contexts and the processes, principles, and critical concepts needed for defining, analyzing, and predicting outcomes of child development-in-context. The project described in this chapter is based on an approach that integrates elements of comparative methodology to serve the aim of describing particular scenarios of child development in unique contexts. The research team of cultural insiders and outsiders allows for a look at American belief systems based on a dialogue of multiple perspectives.

Transmission of Human Herpesvirus Type 8 Infection Within Families in American Indigenous Populations From the Brazilian Amazon

Background. The intrafamilial dynamics of endemic infection with human herpesvirus type 8 (HHV-8) in Amerindian populations is unknown. Methods. Serum samples were obtained from 517 Amerindians and tested for HHV-8 anti-latent nuclear antigen (anti-LANA) and antilytic antibodies by immunofluorescence assays. Logistic regression and mixed logistic models were used to estimate the odds of being HHV-8 seropositive among intrafamilial pairs. Results. HHV-8 seroprevalence by either assay was 75.4% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 71.5%-79.1%), and it was age-dependent (P-trend<.001). Familial dependence in HHV-8 seroprevalence by either assay was found between mother-offspring (odds ratio [OR], 5.44; 95% CI: 1.62-18.28) and siblings aged >= 10 years (OR 4.42, 95% CI: 1.70-11.45) or siblings in close age range (<5 years difference) (OR 3.37, 95% CI: 1.21-9.40), or in families with large (>4) number of siblings (OR, 3.20, 95% CI: 1.33-7.67). In separate analyses by serological assay, there was strong dependence in mother-offspring (OR 8.94, 95% CI: 2.94-27.23) and sibling pairs aged >= 10 years (OR, 11.91, 95% CI: 2.23-63.64) measured by LANA but not lytic antibodies. Conclusions. This pattern of familial dependence suggests that, in this endemic population, HHV-8 transmission mainly occurs from mother to offspring and between close siblings during early childhood, probably via saliva. The mother to offspring dependence was derived chiefly from anti-LANA antibodies.

Legal presumptions in national tax systems (Italy and Belgium) and in EU law

The thesis deals with the concept of presumptions, and in particular of legal presumptions, in the context of national tax systems (Italy and Belgium) and EU law. The purpose was to investigate the concept of legal presumption under a twofold comparative perspective. After having provided a general overview of the common core concept of presumption in the European context, an insight in the national approach to legal presumptions was given by examining two different national experiences, namely the Italian and Belgian tax systems. At this stage, the Constitutional framework and some of the most interesting and relevant at EU level presumptive measures were explored, with a view to underlining possible divergences and common grounds. The concept of (national) legal presumption was then investigated in the context of EU law, with the attempt to systematize under a uniform perspective a matter which has been traditionally dealt with either from the merely national point of view or, at EU level, through a fragmented form. In this instance, the EU law relevant framework and the most significant EUCJ case-law, in particular in the field of customs duties, VAT, on the issue of the repayment of taxes levied in breach of EU law and in the area of direct taxation, were examined so as to construe the overall EU approach to national legal presumptions. This was done with the finality of determining if and to what extent a common analytical framework may be identified, from which were extracted certain criteria governing the compatibility of national legal presumptions with EU law.

Campus Architecture and Student Culture in American Higher Education

Human-environment interaction theory, as it specifically relates to architectural determinism, has an indispensible impact on student culture on college campuses. Under the assumptions of architectural determinism, this thesis examines the relationship between architecture and student culture on 30 American college campuses. Specifically, this thesis looks at uniformity of architectural style and color and the prevalence of traditional styles of architecture in relation to the institutions' campus cultures. The results of the study found that a significant relationship exists between student culture and uniformity of building color, but not between student culture and uniformity of style or the prevalence of traditional styles on a given campus. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the findings, limitations of the study, and suggestions for further research.

The Cultural Construction Of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Sociopolitical Responses To Psychological Trauma In American And Vie

In my thesis, I incorporate both psychological research and personal narratives in order to explain why, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the United States officially recognized Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder while the Vietnamese government did not. The absence of Vietnamese studies on the impact of PTSD on veterans, in comparison to the abundance of research collected on American soldiers, is reflective not of a disparity in the actual prevalence of the disorder, but of the influence of political policy on the scope of Vietnamese psychology. Personal narratives from Vietnamese civilians and soldiers thus reveal accounts of trauma otherwise hidden due to the absence of Vietnamese psychological research. Although these two nations conspicuously differed in their respective responses to the prevalence of psychological trauma in war veterans, these responses demonstrated that both the recognition and rejection of PTSD was a result of sociopolitical factors: political ideologies, rather than scientific reasons, dictated whether the postwar trajectory of psychological research focused on fully exploring the impact of PTSD on veteran populations. The association of military defeat with psychological trauma thus fixed attention on certain groups of veterans, including former American and South Vietnamese soldiers, while ignoring the impact of trauma on veterans of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army. The correlation of a soldier¿s ideological background with psychological trauma, rather than exposure to actual traumatic experiences, demonstrates that cultural and sociopolitical factors are far more influential in the construction of PTSD than objective indicators of the disorder¿s prevalence. Culturally-constructed responses to disorders such as PTSD therefore account for the subjective treatment of mental illness. The American and Vietnamese responses to veterans suffering from PTSD both demonstrated that the evidence of mental health problems in an individual does not guarantee an immediate or appropriate diagnosis and treatment regimen. External authorities whose primary aims are not necessarily concerned with the objective treatment of all victims of mental illness subjectively dictate mental health care policy, and therefore risk ignoring or marginalizing the needs of individuals in need of proper treatment.