Abstract:

This article examines the emergence of post-GDP civilizational indicators in Africa through the lens of informal economies, relational wellbeing, and pluriversal epistemologies. Conventional economic metrics erase the complexity and creativity of African livelihoods, particularly the informal, communal, and spiritual dimensions that sustain resilience across rural and urban lifeworlds. Drawing from anthropology of value (Graeber), wellbeing theory (Nussbaum, Sen), pluriversal philosophy (Santos, Escobar), and African relational ethics, the paper conceptualizes wellbeing as a multidimensional constellation encompassing ecological embeddedness, relational solidarity, capabilities, meaning-making, and community resilience. Informal economies—often dismissed as “unproductive”—are in fact crucial laboratories for post-GDP thinking. Empirical insights from Kinshasa, Lagos, Dakar, and Kigali show the emergence of hybrid value systems based on cooperation, digital micro-innovation, spiritual cohesion, gendered care networks, and ecological reciprocity. These dynamics provide fertile ground for a new generation of African indicators centered on regenerative value, relational flourishing, and community capabilities. The paper introduces the concept of Pluriversal Wellbeing Matrices (PWM)—a methodological and conceptual tool for capturing Africa’s post-GDP prosperity landscape, integrating ecological data, socio-cultural relations, informal economic creativity, and spiritual foundations of resilience.

Abstract: Domestication involves the close co-existence of two different organisms, with at least one subjected to artificial selection. Humans domesticated numerous plants and animals. It is said that domestication by humans is a gradual process, starting with managing some aspects of other organisms' existence and ending with control over their reproduction through selecting traits that meet human needs. This selection results in a “domestication syndrome” that produces altered behaviour, anatomy, and physiology in domesticates (e.g., tameness, smaller brains, longer lactation in animals, and differing size and properties of fruits in plants). Archaeologically documented human domesticates date back to the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene (around 12,000 years ago). However, signs of changes in human populations indicating different methods of exploiting environmental resources date back to the transition from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Upper Palaeolithic (about 50-40 thousand years ago). At this time, there is also a shift in human populations, indicating self-domestication (reduction in cranial capacity, gracilisation of the body, neotenisation). This paper discusses the possibility that human self-domestication was linked to the management of herds of large mammals during the Late Pleistocene being an initial step towards domestication. However, this idea lacks firm support based on the available archaeological evidence.

Abstract: This study reviews the ontological and worldview dimensions of the Williche indigenous people who inhabit the coasts of the Chiloé archipelago in southern Chile, whose effects are beneficial for coastal human, but also for non-human populations in the intertidal zone and on the beach. These dimensions act by mediating people's behaviour when implemented as a long-standing traditional custom in a practical way (e.g. gathering or fishing), mitigating the potential negative impacts on the environment. Although there exist regulations that protect these areas, their cultural heritage and ancestral techniques, they differ substantially from the actions and effects of other territorial actors aimed at the exploitation of nature. This research simultaneously employs a methodology based on classical ethnographic techniques and an autoethnography carried out by one of the authors of this article, who identifies herself as Wapiche, a Williche islander.

Abstract: Higher education inculcates in students an enduring curiosity about the world. Accomplishing this goal requires helping undergraduates recognize that learning is a social process occurring within multiple communities of practice. Each of these collectives provides different lenses through which aspects of reality are illuminated, none encompassing all there is to know about a subject. Students thus appreciate that learning is an open-ended processes driven by a curiosity that is never satisfied. Knowledge resulting from that process is forever being refined, a project to which undergraduates can contribute. Appreciating the many ways of knowing the world requires engaging meaningfully with these distinct communities. This is best done by participating directly in the work and lives of multiple such collectives. Field schools provide excellent opportunities in which students come to perceive, think about, and act in worlds constituted by the communy of archaeologists and that comprised of people hosting and participating in the investigations. We use our experiences directing an archaeological field school in northwest Honduras from 1983-2008 to illustrate how we used this learning environment to help undergraduates make original contributions to knowledge of the area’s past while rethinking who they are and what they are capable of achieving.

Abstract: The rapid advancement of biogerontology, particularly through interventions like senolytic therapies and stem cell rejuvenation, is transforming the prospect of radical life extension and even biological immortality from science fiction into a plausible future scenario. This impending paradigm shift necessitates a profound re-examination of existential psychology, which has traditionally posited awareness of mortality as the fundamental source of life's meaning, motivation, and authenticity. This article argues that the psychological phenomenon of death awareness would not simply vanish with the elimination of biological finitude. Instead, it would undergo a critical functional transformation. It proposes the concept of an "existential alarm clock," a reconstituted internal mechanism that shifts from serving as a chronological limit to acting as a qualitative regulator of existence. In a state of immortality, this alarm would awaken the individual from the unique perils of an endless lifespan: existential apathy, identity stagnation, and the "bad infinity" of undifferentiated time. The article analyzes the mechanisms of this alarm—triggering identity crises, combating profound boredom, and stimulating self-transcendence—and explores its vast social, cultural, and ethical implications. It concludes that, paradoxically, a continued dialogue with the concept of death remains a crucial condition for a meaningful and authentic life, even in the context of biological immortality.

Abstract: This contribution examines the anthropological concept of ambiguity through the foundational work of Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner on liminality, originally applied to traditional societies and ritual contexts. Liminality, derived from the Latin limes meaning threshold, refers to a state of being betwixt and between social roles, spaces, and times, characterized by ambiguity and transformation. Van Gennep’s tripartite model of rites of passage—separation, liminal phase, and incorporation—is illustrated with ethnographic examples, while Turner’s contributions highlight the dynamic and transformative nature of the liminal phase as a condition of social possibility and change. Extending beyond the ritual sphere, Mary Douglas successfully relocated the concept of liminality into the everyday life of Western societies. She linked ambiguity to notions of purity and pollution, emphasizing how phenomena that defy clear categorization—represented metaphorically by the viscous, neither liquid nor solid—challenge social order and create discomfort. This contribution thus situates liminality not only as a key concept for understanding social transitions in traditional rituals but also as a powerful analytical tool for exploring ambiguity and social boundaries in contemporary life.

Abstract: Braga was known as Bracara Augusta during the Roman period and artifacts recovered include ceramic building materials (CBM) with animal footprints. This study provides one of the largest samples of CBM with prints that has been analyzed. These marks offer a means to understand the environment of the tilery, the animals present, and the everyday life of those who worked and lived in the area. In this study, 152 tiles were examined with 420 prints of humans, dogs, cats, sheep, and goats. The only wild animals were represented by a few wild bird prints. The human prints included both bare foot and shoe prints. Dogs are the most common prints found and were from small and medium sized dogs. Only a few cat prints were present but help us to understand the spread of this domesticated animal. The presence of domesticated sheep and goats suggests small settlements and farms once existed near the tilery. The sheep and goats provided meat, milk, and wool for spinning and garments. The rain cycles and the presence of prints from young sheep and goats, suggest that production relating to forming and drying tiles started in the spring and ended in early fall.

Abstract: Social Impact Assessment (SIA) remains marginalized in many developing contexts where Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is weakened by tokenistic participation, political expedience, and weak enforcement. In Pakistan, EIA regulations exist but lack explicit triggers for social dimensions, leaving consultation and resettlement largely discretionary. This article examines the 2025 demolition of the Madni Mosque in Islamabad as a critical case of SIA neglect and instrumentalization. Applying an audit framework derived from international benchmarks (World Bank ESS10, IFC Stakeholder Engagement, ADB Safeguard Policy), we assess compliance across disclosure, consultation, continuity planning, and grievance redress. Findings show that ‘consent’ was narrowly framed to include only mosque administrators. Broader community voices were excluded, and no baseline or alternatives were considered, and grievance pathways were absent. These omissions fueled public unrest, legal reversal, and reputational costs for authorities. The study advances the concept of enforcement framing as a mechanism that systematically bypasses social due diligence. We argue that even where formal EIA triggers are absent, proportionate SIA processes are indispensable for legitimacy and stability. Policy lessons emphasize embedding mandatory SIA triggers, inclusive engagement, grievance mechanisms, and resettlement planning into Pakistani law and practice, with broader implications for international IA systems confronting politically sensitive projects.

Abstract: In this article I contrast the semiotic role of the hospital from its creation in Rome in the 2nd century BC with several contemporary Montreal hospitals. The hospital was founded as a site to isolate the sick to limit the symbolic pollution of the allegedly perfect social body of the Roman state. Today, however, the hospital has become a semiotic engine that allows patients to construct a new temporal matrix and affirm their individuality to counter contemporary hospital practices that standardise patients according to their illness while ignoring patients’ biographies. I propose that patient narratives in the modern context use the hospital as raw material to construct a temporal framework that substitutes the rhythms of everyday life that illness and the institutional culture of the hospital have interrupted. These narratives adhere to the same basic structure: the entrance scenario is always admission to the hospital; the plot structure is built with the non-medical details of the daily hospital routine. Surrounded by a neoliberal ethos that insists on the autonomy of the self and silenced by the mechanisation of illness, contemporary patients transform hospitals into semiotic engines where patients use their immediate environment to re-engineer new voices of the self. In other words, hospitals are sites where people combat depersonalisation with new biographies.

Abstract: This study takes comparative evolutionary approaches to relative contribution of various factors to women’s reproductive behaviour in low-fertility societies like China. A series of theoretical hypotheses about second-birth intentions and behaviour—a key to understanding low-fertility behaviour—are raised and then tested by dominance analysis of longitudinal data from a sample of one-child mothers in China. It is found that behavioural ecology approach has the largest explanatory power. All members within nuclear family were complete stakeholders of reproduction: Husband’s fertility attitude, i.e. injunctive norms of him as perceived by wife, made the largest contribution to fertility intentions, followed by wife’s own attitudes, which were further followed by firstborn’s. Among incomplete stakeholders, injunctive norms of peer relatives and friends contributed less to fertility intentions than parents’, but the opposite held for descriptive norms, i.e. actual number of children. Regarding the actual behaviour followed over 2.5 years, fertility intentions were the dominating predictor of it; husband’s, firstborn’s and wife’s fertility attitudes were equally important predictors; neither injunctive nor descriptive norms of other social-network members were significant contributing factors. Perceived challenge in investing in children was an important factor for both fertility intentions and behaviour and other constraints only became important at the latter stage. The study consolidates the theoretical foundation of collective decision-making in family reproduction, helps to clarify kin influence on women’s fertility, suggests cultural evolution of fertility by horizontal transmission of new pronatalist norms in current China, and further supports comparative evolutionary approaches to reproductive behaviour and fertility policies in modern low-fertility societies.

Abstract: Archaeological surface features on desert pavements, including geoglyphs, are notoriously difficult to assess. Absent temporally diagnostic artifacts they may be impossible to place chronologically, limiting their inferential utility. Whether they are cultural or natural in origin itself may sometimes be uncertain, not only again crippling their interpretative value but potentially creating problems for heritage management. Not surprisingly, a series of controversies have developed in the North American desert west over certain of these features. We describe methods for chronometrically constraining the ages of desert pavement features using three approaches to rock varnish dating: varnish lamination (VML) and lead-profile dating, as well as cation-ratio (CR) as an additional tool. Each of these techniques may be applied to rock varnished cobbles that have been upthrust into areas that have been previously cleared of the original pavement through cultural or natural processes. We apply these methods to three unresolved archaeological issues: the age of the intaglios (geoglyphs) along the lower Colorado River corridor; whether the Topock (or ‘Mystic’) Maze is the product of Precontact Indigenous or late nineteenth century railroad construction; and if commonly occurring cleared circles are natural features likely associated with now-missing vegetation and/or bioturbation, or were cultural products.

Abstract: This paper examines the Ifugao Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordillera as a living archaeological landscape whose conservation poses ethical questions about heritage, livelihood, and community agency. While UNESCO has designated these terraces as a World Heritage cultural landscape, conservation policies and tourism discourses often prioritize preserving their iconic rice cultivation for external consumption. Such approaches risk overlooking the dynamic social, economic, and environmental pressures facing Ifugao communities today. Using frameworks from archaeology, and historical ecology, this paper argues that conservation must move beyond aesthetic or static models to support local livelihoods, intangible heritage, and adaptive strategies. We analyze the terraces as a product of communal labor, indigenous engineering, and ritual systems, while also documenting the contemporary shift from heirloom tinawon rice to commercial crops under market and climate pressures. We also critique unequal tourism economies and explore models for equitable stewardship, including community-based tourism and environmental service fees. Finally, we call for an ethical conservation practice grounded in shared responsibility and local agency, recognizing that heritage landscapes are not relics to be frozen but living systems to be sustained in partnership with the people who maintain them.

Abstract: Background/Objectives: International students pursuing higher education in the United States face unique challenges that increase their risk for food insecurity, including limited financial resources, employment restrictions, and cultural barriers. While food insecurity among domestic students has been widely studied, limited research focuses on the lived experiences of international graduate students. This study explores the challenges, perceptions, and coping strategies related to food insecurity among international graduate students at a large public university in North Texas. Methods: This qualitative, ethnographic study involved 20 semi-structured interviews with international graduate students who were clients of the university’s food pantry. Participants were recruited using purposive convenience sampling. Interviews focused on students’ experiences with food access, financial constraints, campus resources, and cultural food preferences. Data were analyzed using thematic coding in MAXQDA. Two standardized food insecurity measures—USDA and FAO scales—were also administered and analyzed using SPSS. Results: Findings revealed that 85% of participants experienced limited access to nutritious and culturally appropriate foods, with 70% reporting hunger due to financial constraints. Themes included lack of cooking skills, limited campus food options, difficulty accessing familiar groceries, and limited job opportunities. Students expressed that food insecurity significantly impacted their physical health, mental well-being, and social lives, though many continued to prioritize academics over personal nourishment. Conclusions: Food insecurity among international graduate students is multifaceted, shaped by financial, cultural, and institutional barriers. Addressing this issue requires culturally sensitive interventions, improved access to diverse food options, tailored student support services, and institutional efforts to better understand and meet the needs of international students.

Abstract: Traditional Ecological Knowledge encompasses the experiences and practices that Indigenous peoples have developed and passed down over the years, enabling them to live in balance with the land. This paper examines how the integration of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) supports the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, aiming to help address problems related to global sustainability. When TEK principles are compared to the SDGS, the study highlights how they can contribute to reducing poverty, ensuring food security, strengthening efforts for biodiversity conservation, and making societies more resilient to climate change. TEK focuses on solutions that align with local cultures and are environmentally friendly, in addition to utilising modern science and policy. On the other hand, the marginalization of Indigenous people, difficulties with intellectual property laws and the loss of important traditions stand in the way of applying the policies. By focusing on documentation, ensuring institutions work hand in hand, and utilising inclusive governance, TEK can play a central role in global sustainability. It makes the case for combining TEK with modern methods to build resilience, fairness and sustainable communities.

Abstract: People with migration backgrounds (PwM) and their loved ones living with dementia often encounter multiple disparities for appropriate care and support. Simultaneously, care professionals may feel inadequately prepared to address the needs of PwM effectively. As a response to these concerns, research and practice have increasingly emphasized the importance of culturally sensitive care. These efforts center on understanding the cultural norms and beliefs of migrant communities, and developing professional strategies tailored to these cultural factors. However, while cultural factors clearly play a role in the care experiences of PwM, the emphasis on culture in research and practice has drawn criticism from various scholars. In our contribution to this debate, we highlight the shortcomings of the concept of culturally sensitive care within the context of dementia, and propose a perspective that responds to these shortcomings. We present the following arguments. (1) The concept of culture and culturally sensitive care, combined with segregated tools designed to address the needs of PwM, falls short of providing comprehensive guidance for inclusive care. (2) Instead of attributing care-related obstacles to cultural differences, we must shift our focus to understanding individual experiences of inequality as well as the systemic structures that perpetuate inequality. (3) To address the diverse needs of PwM and the challenges of ongoing diversity within Western societies, dementia care services should embrace diversity as the norm rather than an exception requiring segregated tools. This requires a paradigm shift in which professionals are trained to navigate relationships in ways that minimize reliance on rigid (ethnic and cultural) categorizations.

Abstract: Humans are a curious mix of biology and culture, and one interaction area between these two that has recently come into focus is located in the senses, our biological apparatus to connect with the world. In this essay I address the variation in appreciation of the senses in various cultures, both historical and contemporaneous, in order to glean the measure in which culture steers not so much our observations, as our appreciation of the epistemological weight of our various senses. I concentrate on three, vision, hearing and smell, and show how the relative weight attributed to each of them shifts in different cultures or historical periods. Using data from anthropology, literature, psychology and linguistics, I argue that vision, sound and smell accrue different positions in various cultures, and that our sensorial balance shifts with culture. Thus, our present epistemological dominance of sight over all other senses, is neither a biological given, nor a cultural necessity.

Abstract: Early scholars such as Darwin noted that a series of similar trait changes occurred between domesticated mammals and their wild counterparts, and that similar trait changes occurred in humans. Follow-up studies in recent years have further confirmed the findings of earlier scholars. These changes are known as domestication syndrome (DS). Human DS variation occurred over thecourse of two to three hundred thousand years before and after the formation of Homo sapiens, and is thought to be the result of human self-domestication. The main way to realize human self-domestication has been an important topic in recent years. And more than theoretical explanations have been proposed. In this paper, the main methods of previous research are briefly reviewed, and some related concepts are slightly revised. For example, the attributes and efficacy of selective reproduction in silver fox domestication experiments, the approximate correspondence between DS and the reduction of sexual dimorphism, and the correlation between DS causes and sexual selection.On this basis, this paper proposes a preliminary judgment on the causes of human DS that is different from the past : according to our present knowledge (empirical facts), there are two powerful drivers of DS variation, namely,exogamy and coming-of-age ceremony in tribal institutions. These two systems existed completely before the colonization of Australian tribes. This paper usesthe early classical ethnography of Australia by Fison, Howitt, Spencer, and Gillen to analyze and summarize the basic content of these two systems (reconstructing the original state of the system before colonization). Then, its domestication function and efficacy are discussed. Based on this, it is concluded that the joint effect of exogamy and coming-of-age ceremony is the main way for human beings to achieve self-domestication. We are very fortunate to have evidence about the Australian tribes in the early stages of civilization before colonization. We can trace their origins and examine their evolution accordingly. The alliance of two multimale-multifemale（mm-mf） groups through non-violent approach is the first step in the speciation of Homo sapiens.The tribal system formed in this historical link is the initial process of human civilization and an important foundation for human prosperity to this day.

Abstract:

Why are rock art sites found in certain places and not others? Can locational or environmental variables inform an understanding of the function and meaning of the art? How can we move beyond observed patterning in spatial associations to a credible explanation of such meanings and ensure that we are not confusing correlation with causation? And what variables were most relevant in influencing site locational choices? These and related problems, whether recognized or not, are the subtext of the last three decades of rock art site distributional and landscape studies. They are now especially important to resolve given the need for accurate predictive modeling due to the rapid transformation of certain regions from undeveloped rural areas into rural industrial landscapes. Partly with this problem in mind, Whitley (2024) developed a descriptive model that provides an explanation for the location of Native Californian rock art in the Mojave Desert. It identifies the variables most relevant to site locations based on ethnographic Indigenous ontological beliefs about the landscape. These concern the geographical distribution of supernatural power and its association with certain landforms, natural phenomena and cultural features. His analysis further demonstrated that this model can account for two unusually large concentrations of sites and motifs: the Coso Range petroglyphs and the Carrizo Plain pictographs. But unanswered was the question of whether the model was applicable more widely, especially to smaller sites and localities made by different cultural groups. We documented and analyzed three petroglyph localities with seven small petroglyph sites in the southern Mojave Desert, California, to test this model. These sites are attributed to the Takic-speaking Cahuilla and Serrano tribes. Our study revealed a good fit between the expected natural and cultural variables associated with rock art site locations, with the number of such variables present at any given locale potentially correlated with the size of the individual sites. In addition to the research value of these results, this suggests that the model may be useful in predictive modeling of rock art site locations for heritage management purposes.

Abstract: As the human population has grown and expanded, increasing pressure is being put on natural habitats in Sri Lanka. This situation has led to a noticeable increase in human-primate conflicts. To understand the situation, we studied the interactions between humans and macaques in three administrative divisions of Kurunegala District. Data was gathered from 875 informants through interviewer-administered questionnaires between 2020 and 2022. The monthly economic loss by commercial farmers due to macaque damage to fruits and vegetables doubled by 2022, amounting to approximately 5000 LKR. In non-fruiting seasons, losses from coconut damage increased, ranging from 3000 to 14,000 LKR/month, decreasing by over 50% during fruiting seasons. Property damage per household averaged between 850 ~4,000 LKR/month. A cost of approximately 1200~3000 LKR was borne per household/month to deter monkeys from the fields. Macaques were the primary culprits for crop damage in this area, and were also responsible for property damage, surpassing that of other animals. The consensus among the community is that either relocating macaques to other forested areas or sterilizing them to control their population could mitigate the issue to some extent. An integrated management plan involving relevant stakeholders is necessary to address the conflict arising from human-macaque crop utilization.

Abstract: Humans have been monitoring light from the solar system to tell the time and plan activities since Time Immemorial. This is an analysis regarding why Native Americans living in the upper Colorado River Basin chose to monitor light from the western sky using a light marker that is approximately 4.02 miles long and 2.07 miles wide or approximately 12.7 square miles. The light catching is accomplished in a massive geoscape by a carefully calibrated engineered stone markers. The scale of this light marker and its functional topographic components makes it one of the biggest and most elaborate in North America. As such it is a World Balancing geosiste. The analysis is based on 522 ethnographic interviews with 316 conducted during the Canyonlands National Park (Canyonlands NP) ethnographic study and 206 during the two BLM Ethnographic studies. The findings are situated in ethnographic understands from more than a dozen other studies conducted by the authors.