Body-directed gesture and expressions of social difference in Chachi and Afro-Ecuadorian discourse

Gesture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simeon Floyd
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Hair Texture

Abstract This paper presents an analysis of a data set consisting of instances of body-directed gesture that occurred in racializing expressions of social difference during ethnographic interviews with two neighboring peoples of Ecuador: the indigenous Chachi, speakers of the Cha’palaa language, and Afro-Descendant people, who speak a variety of Spanish. When talking about differences among social groups and categories, a particular sub-type of body-directed gestural practice was salient: using indexical-iconic self-directed gestures as a way to describe other people’s physical bodies or appearances, including references to skin color, hair texture, clothing and ornamentation, and embodiments of carrying objects close to the body. The paper describes the trends seen in the forms and meanings of these gestures in their role here as part of socially categorizing and racializing discourses in the Latin American socio-historical context.

Race and the Brazilian Body

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Roth-Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Racial Differences ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
The Body ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Racial Conflict ◽  
Racial Mixture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hair Texture

Based on the spontaneous conversations of shantytown youth hanging out on the streets of their neighborhoods and interviews from the comfortable living rooms of the middle class, Race and the Brazilian Body asks how racial ideas about the superiority of whiteness and the inferiority of blackness continue to play out in the daily lives of Rio de Janeiro’s residents. The book draws on over 20 years of research to explain what is called Brazil’s “comfortable racial contradiction,” in which embedded structural racism that very visibly privileges whiteness exists alongside a deeply held pride in the country’s history of racial mixture and lack of overt racial conflict. This linguistic and ethnographic account describes how cariocas (people who live in Rio de Janeiro) carefully “read” the body for racial signs. The amount of whiteness or blackness a body displays is determined not only through observations of phenotypical features, including skin color, hair texture, and facial features, but also through careful attention paid to cultural and linguistic practices, including the use of nonstandard speech that is commonly described as slang (gíria). It is through adherence to implicit social norms that encourage individuals to display whiteness (by demonstrating a “good appearance”), to avoid blackness, and to “be cordial” (by not noticing racial differences), that Rio residents determine who belongs on the world famous beaches of Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon, who deserves to shop in privatized, carefully guarded, air conditioned shopping malls, and who merits the rights of citizenship.

Tuning of a Basic Coordination Pattern Constructs Straight-Ahead and Curved Walking in Humans

2004 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 1524-1535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grégoire Courtine ◽  
Marco Schieppati
Keyword(s):  
Principal Components ◽  
Lower Limb ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Body Movement ◽  
The Body ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Coordination Pattern ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Coordination Patterns ◽  
Straight Ahead

We tested the hypothesis that common principles govern the production of the locomotor patterns for both straight-ahead and curved walking. Whole body movement recordings showed that continuous curved walking implies substantial, limb-specific changes in numerous gait descriptors. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to uncover the spatiotemporal structure of coordination among lower limb segments. PCA revealed that the same kinematic law accounted for the coordination among lower limb segments during both straight-ahead and curved walking, in both the frontal and sagittal planes: turn-related changes in the complex behavior of the inner and outer limbs were captured in limb-specific adaptive tuning of coordination patterns. PCA was also performed on a data set including all elevation angles of limb segments and trunk, thus encompassing 13 degrees of freedom. The results showed that both straight-ahead and curved walking were low dimensional, given that 3 principal components accounted for more than 90% of data variance. Furthermore, the time course of the principal components was unchanged by curved walking, thereby indicating invariant coordination patterns among all body segments during straight-ahead and curved walking. Nevertheless, limb- and turn-dependent tuning of the coordination patterns encoded the adaptations of the limb kinematics to the actual direction of the walking body. Absence of vision had no significant effect on the intersegmental coordination during either straight-ahead or curved walking. Our findings indicate that kinematic laws, probably emerging from the interaction of spinal neural networks and mechanical oscillators, subserve the production of both straight-ahead and curved walking. During locomotion, the descending command tunes basic spinal networks so as to produce the changes in amplitude and phase relationships of the spinal output, sufficient to achieve the body turn.

Twitter users exhibited coping behaviours during the COVID-19 lockdown: an analysis of tweets using mixed methods

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruchi Mittal ◽  
Wasim Ahmed ◽  
Amit Mittal ◽  
Ishan Aggarwal
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
The Body ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Twitter Data ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The World ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
The Government ◽  
Using Data

Purpose Using data from Twitter, the purpose of this paper is to assess the coping behaviour and reactions of social media users in response to the initial days of the COVID-19-related lockdown in different parts of the world. Design/methodology/approach This study follows the quasi-inductive approach which allows the development of pre-categories from other theories before the sampling and coding processes begin, for use in those processes. Data was extracted using relevant keywords from Twitter, and a sample was drawn from the Twitter data set to ensure the data is more manageable from a qualitative research standpoint and that meaningful interpretations can be drawn from the data analysis results. The data analysis is discussed in two parts: extraction and classification of data from Twitter using automated sentiment analysis; and qualitative data analysis of a smaller Twitter data sample. Findings This study found that during the lockdown the majority of users on Twitter shared positive opinions towards the lockdown. The results also found that people are keeping themselves engaged and entertained. Governments around the world have also gained support from Twitter users. This is despite the hardships being faced by citizens. The authors also found a number of users expressing negative sentiments. The results also found that several users on Twitter were fence-sitters and their opinions and emotions could swing either way depending on how the pandemic progresses and what action is taken by governments around the world. Research limitations/implications The authors add to the body of literature that has examined Twitter discussions around H1N1 using in-depth qualitative methods and conspiracy theories around COVID-19. In the long run, the government can help citizens develop routines that help the community adapt to a new dangerous environment – this has very effectively been shown in the context of wildfires in the context of disaster management. In the context of this research, the dominance of the positive themes within tweets is promising for policymakers and governments around the world. However, sentiments may wish to be monitored going forward as large-spikes in negative sentiment may highlight lockdown-fatigue. Social implications The psychology of humans during a pandemic can have a profound impact on how COVID-19 shapes up, and this shall also include how people behave with other people and with the larger environment. Lockdowns are the opposite of what societies strive to achieve, i.e. socializing. Originality/value This study is based on original Twitter data collected during the initial days of the COVID-19-induced lockdown. The topic of “lockdowns” and the “COVID-19” pandemic have not been studied together thus far. This study is highly topical.

Beyond censorship: politics, teens, and ELA teacher candidates

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Dávila ◽  
Meghan E. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
English Language ◽  
Teacher Education Program ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The Body ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Secondary English ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Practical Experiences

Purpose Grounded in the scholarship addressing teacher self-censorship around controversial topics, this paper aims to investigate a three-part research question: How do secondary English language arts (ELA) teacher–candidates (TCs) in the penultimate semester of their undergraduate teacher education program position political texts/speeches, interpret high school teens’ political standpoints and view the prospects of discussing political texts/speeches with students? The study findings provide insights to the ways some TCs might position themselves as novice ELA teachers relative to political texts/speeches, students, colleagues and families in their future school communities. Design/methodology/approach Audio-recorded data from whole-class and small-group discussions were coded for TCs’ positioning of political texts/speeches, interpretations of teens’ political standpoints and viewpoints on discussing with students President Obama’s speech, “A More Perfect Union” (“A.M.P.U.”) The coded data set was further analyzed to identify themes across the TCs’ perspectives. Findings The data set tells the story of a group of TCs whose positionalities, background knowledge and practical experiences in navigating divergent perspectives would influence both their daily selection and censorship of political texts/speeches like “A.M.P.U.” and their subsequent willingness to guide equitable yet critical conversations about controversial issues in the secondary ELA classroom. Originality/value In advance of the 2018 midterm elections, this paper considers how the common core state standards’ (CCSS) recommendations to include more nonfiction documents in ELA instruction positions ELA teachers to provide interdisciplinary support in helping students think critically about political issues. It expands on the body of scholarship that, thus far, has been primarily grounded in the research on social studies instruction.

scholarly journals Computation of electrostatic fields in anisotropic human tissues using the Finite Integration Technique (FIT)

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 309-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. C. Motresc ◽  
U. van Rienen
Keyword(s):  
Coordinate System ◽  
Electromagnetic Fields ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Local Coordinate System ◽  
Anisotropic Materials ◽  
The Body ◽  
Integration Technique ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Computer Data ◽  
Finite Integration Technique

Abstract. The exposure of human body to electromagnetic fields has in the recent years become a matter of great interest for scientists working in the area of biology and biomedicine. Due to the difficulty of performing measurements, accurate models of the human body, in the form of a computer data set, are used for computations of the fields inside the body by employing numerical methods such as the method used for our calculations, namely the Finite Integration Technique (FIT). A fact that has to be taken into account when computing electromagnetic fields in the human body is that some tissue classes, i.e. cardiac and skeletal muscles, have higher electrical conductivity and permittivity along fibers rather than across them. This property leads to diagonal conductivity and permittivity tensors only when expressing them in a local coordinate system while in a global coordinate system they become full tensors. The Finite Integration Technique (FIT) in its classical form can handle diagonally anisotropic materials quite effectively but it needed an extension for handling fully anisotropic materials. New electric voltages were placed on the grid and a new averaging method of conductivity and permittivity on the grid was found. In this paper, we present results from electrostatic computations performed with the extended version of FIT for fully anisotropic materials.

scholarly journals Book Review: Beauty around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 301
Author(s):  
Stacey Marien
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
The Body ◽  
Identity Performance ◽  
State University ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
The Caribbean

Kenny is an assistant professor of anthropology at Missouri State University with research experience in East and West Africa. Nichols is a professor of Spanish at Drury University with her research specializing in cultures of Latin America. Nichols has also co-written Pop Culture in Latin American and the Caribbean (ABC-CLIO, 2015) and authored a chapter on beauty in Venezuela for the book The Body Beautiful? Identity, Performance, Fashion and the Contemporary Female Body (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2015). Both authors have taught extensively on the topic of beauty and bodies (xi). 

scholarly journals Body weight change and its association with food and beverage consumption during COVID-19 confinement: A study in 12 Ibero-American countries

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian M. Cavagnari ◽  
María Fernanda Vinueza-Veloz ◽  
Valeria Carpio-Arias ◽  
Samuel Durán-Agüero ◽  
Isabel Ríos-Castillo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Body Weight ◽  
Weight Gain ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Weight Change ◽  
The Body ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Alcoholic Beverages ◽  
Sugary Drinks ◽  
Fried Foods ◽  
Latin American Countries

Abstract Background: SARS-CoV-2, a newly identified coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, has challenged health services and profoundly impacted people's lifestyle. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic on food consumption patterns and body weight in adults from 12 Ibero-American countriesMethods: Multicentric, cross-sectional study. Data was collected using an online survey disseminated by social networks. Sample included 10 552 people from Spain and 11 Latin American countries who were selected by snowball sampling.Results: While 38.50% of the sample reported weight gain, 16.90% reported weight lost. Weight change was associated to sex, age, country of residence and education level. People who were not confined, more often reported having maintained their weight in comparison to people who were confined. All Latin American countries showed an increased consumption of sweetened drinks, pastry products, fried foods and alcoholic beverages during confinement. Consumption of eggs and dairy products was independent from body weigh change. People who consumed more fruits and vegetables during the confinement more often reported having lose weight. In contrast, body weight gain during confinement was associated with increased intake of sugary drinks, baked goods and pastries, pizza, fried foods and alcoholic beverages.Conclusions: During COVID-19 confinement all the Latin American countries included in this study showed a change in their consumption patterns toward less healthy diets, which in turn was associated with an increase in the body weight of their population.

scholarly journals Review of the Literature on Latin America in Ketab-e-Jom’eh

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Jom’ehToloo Riazi
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Literature And Society ◽  
Revolutionary Movements ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Interpretative Approach ◽  
Symbolic Approach ◽  
Selection Of

This paper aims to analyze a weekly magazine called Ketab-e-Jom’eh (Friday’s Book) and the reflection of Latin American’s revolutionary movements in it. Ketab-e-Jom’eh, published from July 26, 1979, to May 22, 1980, was supervised by a number of the most legendary Iranian authors and poets, such as Ahmad Shamloo1 and Gholam Hossein Saedi. I focus on the way a particular perspective on Latin American movements is constructed and perpetuated among Ketab-e-Jom’eh’s lectors. With a symbolic approach, I analyze those texts through their symbolic representation in the Iranian society, which requires me to study those symbols and their concomitant relevance in Iran. Eventually, I will use an interpretative approach to examine this magazine’s ideologically motivated articles in the broader context of the Iranian society with its particular traits. The dialectic relationship between literature and society helps us understand literature as the product of social conditions and influential factors in society. The position that I develop here echoes Louis de Bonald’s belief that “through a careful reading of any nation’s literature ‘one could tell what this people had been’” (as cited in Hall, 1979, p. 13). I employ such an expansive horizon to scrutinize the selection of literature on Latin American guerillas. I shall unfold the magazine’s ideological orientation from the angle of the context in which it is used. I aim to show that the historical context of the Iranian society at the moment gives those articles specific meanings. In pursuit of my goals, I will recontextualize the articles to determine their primary significance in the Iran of the 1970s and 1980s.

scholarly journals Czech households’ income conditions according to the EU SILC statistics

2010 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ladislav Stejskal ◽  
Jana Pustinová ◽  
Jana Stávková
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Income Level ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Data Usage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Quantitative Indicators ◽  
The Eu

Article is devoted to evaluation of the Czech population’s income situation according to the inquiry realized within the frame of the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) project. This was carried out by the Czech Statistical Office in the year 2005. Selected introductive analyses are presented with the view of pointing at the primary data usage possibilities. Main aim of the paper is to explicate basic quantitative indicators of Czech households’ income situation in general, then in division according to social groups and regional belonging. Consequent aim encompasses the identification and analysis of the income unevenness measure by the help of alternative methodological approach. The essential findings and income characteristics are introduced, including recomputation to the physical and so-called standardized member. In compliance with the predefined threshold the households endangered with the insufficient income level are identified. Insufficient income level means that household earnings cannot cover standard living costs. This part is followed by the brief statistical analysis of the data set of this group of households and the reference to other studies which are currently being pursued. Conclusion comprehends the spectrum of processes and analyses that could follow, or are already worked out, in concurrence with the existing findings. First of these, for example, is the income situation evaluation of seniors involved in the enquiry. Reason is that this segment is traditionally perceived as economically weak and more or less dependent on the social system settings.

scholarly journals System to assist in the Diagnosis of Diabetes using Ontology and Machine Learning

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 9971-9975
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Public Health Problem ◽  
Medical Data ◽  
The Body ◽  
Machine Learning Method ◽  
Learning Method ◽  
Automatic Learning ◽  
Early Diabetes ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Medical Tests

Diabetes mellitus has become a public health problem in both developed and developing countries. If it is not treated early, diabetes-related complications in many vital organs of the body can become fatal. Its early detection is very important for early treatment that can prevent the disease from progressing to such complications. This article focuses on designing a system to assist in the diagnosis of diabetes disease based on medical ontology and automatic learning. The proposed method uses automatic learning algorithms as a classifier for the diagnosis of diabetes based on a medical data set. The ontology suggests a pre-processing of a coherent, consistent, interoperable and shareable knowledge basis of data and the machine learning method focuses on classification based on symptoms and medical tests. Based on the experimental results, DDAS not only offers better performance in predicting and diagnosing diabetes in individuals, but also has better accuracy in recommending useful treatment to patients.

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