Anthropology

This paper analyzes theological, quantitative and qualitative data regarding the relationships between economic status and religious adherence, with specific reference to Islam and Muslims. At the outset this paper contextualizes poverty as theological and legal concepts, as they are expressed within sacred texts of Islam. Secondly, this paper re-examines existing national data on religious adherence and practice from over thirty countries, using support for Islamic law and engagement of ritual prayer as the main indicators. We compare this data with national levels of economic status from the respective years of data collection. Lastly, this paper provides a qualitative case study of the way in which Muslims view the role of poverty and wealth as affecting religious adherence. The findings of the theological, quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate greater complexity than some suggest and indicate that more emphasis needs to be placed on contextualization and qualitative studies for future research.

Après « Mondes clos. Jardins », voici « Mondes clos. Les îles ». Un groupe de chercheurs d’horizons différents s’interroge sur les rapports que les hommes entretiennent avec ces objets de fantasmes, de rêves mais aussi de désillusion que sont les îles. Qu’elles soient réelles ou imaginaires, les îles occupent une place privilégiée dans l’art, la littérature ou la religion. Comment, dans des cultures et des époques variées, l’espace insulaire se fabrique-t-il, quelle place l’homme lui attribue-t-il, quelle place s’y prête-t-il ?

The aim of the research was to analyze anthropometric variables in children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM) in relation with the stage of pubertal development at onset of disease and quality of metabolic control over five-year long observation. Diagnosed children were taller than their peers. This especially referred to age group between 4 and 9.5 years. On the whole, weight of the patients and healthy controls did not differ. However, the diagnosed children had substantially lower weight in puberty than healthy controls. Body mass index was significantly lower in the group of diagnosed children on the whole and in puberty. During a five-year long observation patients have had a significant retardation of growth. However, that retardation referred primarily to patients in prepuberty. Growth retardation was more pronounced with bad metabolic control. Growth was satisfactory if onset of disease had been in puberty. A significant weight gain was observed in patients in puberty where...

This paper reveals the way in which musical pitch works as a peculiar form of cognition that reflects upon the organization of the surrounding world as perceived by majority of music users within a socio-cultural formation. The evidence from music theory, ethnography, archeology, organology, anthropology, psychoacoustics, and evolutionary biology is plotted against experimental evidence. Much of the methodology for this investigation comes from studies conducted within the territory of the former USSR. To date, this methodology has remained solely confined to Russian speaking scholars. A brief overview of pitch-set theory demonstrates the need to distinguish between vertical and horizontal harmony, laying out the framework for virtual music space that operates according to the perceptual laws of tonal gravity. Brought to life by bifurcation of music and speech, tonal gravity passed through eleven discrete stages of development until the onset of tonality in the seventeenth century. Each stage presents its own method of integration of separate musical tones into an auditory-cognitive unity. The theory of “melodic intonation” is set forth as a counterpart to harmonic theory of chords. Notions of tonality, modality, key, diatonicity, chromaticism, alteration, and modulation are defined in terms of their perception, and categorized according to the way in which they have developed historically. Tonal organization in music, and perspective organization in fine arts are explained as products of the same underlying mental process. Music seems to act as a unique medium of symbolic representation of reality through the concept of pitch. Tonal organization of pitch reflects the culture of thinking, adopted as a standard within a community of music users. Tonal organization might be a naturally formed system of optimizing individual perception of reality within a social group and its immediate environment, setting conventional standards of intellectual and emotional intelligence.

In reviewing his observations of Maori life following the first voyage of the Endeavour, Captain Cook noted of Maori houses, that"... they do not always live in them especially in the summer season when many of them live dispersed up and down in little temporary hutts ...

Understanding the geomorphic setting of the Sigatoka dune field on the south coast of Viti Levu in Fiji is critical for interpreting the associated archaeological site, with culture levels dating back to 3000 years ago. The dune field lies along the seaward fringe of the Holocene delta of the Sigatoka River, which drains interior highlands astride the boundary between the wet windward and dry leeward climatic zones of Viti Levu. Sand brought down to the shoreline by the Sigatoka River is transported longshore westward by surf along the delta front and blown inland oblique to the shore by the prevailing trade winds. Three successive culture levels, dating to approximately 900-400 B.C., A.D. 100-400, and A.D. 1300-1500, respectively, occur in three discrete paleosol horizons that are buried near the present beach face under younger dune sand. Our geomorphic analysis of the Sigatoka delta plain arid its environs reveals a complex Holocene history of progradation and aggradation, shifti...

... In this Introduction we comment on issues ... Clade haplotypes from mainland China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo, and Sulawesi indicates that if people did disperse from Taiwan to ... So what is the origin of the pigs associated with both the Lapita cultural complex in Island Mel ...

... FRANK VIGNERON is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the Chinese University ... Shao'ang] began to study painting with the Lingnan school mas-ter, Gao Qifeng, as a ... In his Conversion of the Monkey King (Xin hou gui zheng ) [Figure 3], he substituted Sun ...