Recent scholarship has called for greater attention to white supremacy. This is closely linked to broader efforts to foreground the structural and institutional dimensions of racism. In the Nordic context, such a perspective challenges longstanding assumptions of exceptionalism by highlighting the historical and contemporary presence of coloniality and racism in the Nordic countries. This article examines the concept of white supremacy in relation to the Nordic countries, arguing that white supremacy has constituted a longstanding feature of Nordic societies and that the erasure of Indigenous concerns and voices presents one way in which white supremacy has been expressed. It uses two recent cases involving artist production connected to Iceland, Kalaallit Nunaat, and Denmark to analyze the links between the past and the present. The historical embedded analysis of these cases demonstrates that white supremacy has been an enduring feature of Nordic societies. Nordic Indigenous critiques, as well as discussions concerning Indigenous people within and beyond the Nordic countries, reveal thus how white supremacy operates through everyday structural and institutional practices in the Nordic context. These findings underscore the importance of addressing white supremacy as a pervasive and normalized aspect of Nordic social and political life.
This article investigates a unique iconographic anomaly in late medieval Dunhuang silk paintings: the conflation of the bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra. Focusing on two key artifacts from the 9th and 10th centuries and tracing their legacy to later folk prints, this study argues the phenomenon is not a scribal error but a creative Anomaly—a deliberate ritual synthesis. The analysis reveals this synthesis was driven by two forces: a phonetic re-semanticization in the local dialect and a theological logic born from the integration of Huayan School doctrines with Esoteric ritual practice. The paper demonstrates how Huayan metaphysics were operationalized through condensed Esoteric invocations, turning the inscription into a functional ritual shorthand. Crucially, this study demonstrates the genealogical survival of this Silk Road variant in Ming and Qing dynasty woodblock prints. It uncovers a parallel, non-canonical lineage of visual piety, sustained through workshop copybooks rather than elite textual discourse. This trajectory challenges the linear narrative of Buddhist art history, highlighting the generative power of localized adaptations existing outside the purview of the written canon.
We present a pseudocode algorithm for translating our (Elementary) Mathematical Data Model schemes into relational ones and associated sets of non-relational constraints, used by MatBase, our intelligent data and knowledge base management system prototype. We prove that this algorithm is very fast, solid, complete, and optimal. We apply it to a mathematical scheme modeling the genealogical trees subuniverse. We also provide examples of SQL and VBA code for enforcing some of its non-relational constraints, as well as guidelines to develop code for enforcing such constraints.
P. Despoix’s book K.B.W. La Bibliothèque Warburg, laboratoire de pensée intermédiale marks a point in Warburg studies, not only for its erudition of primary sources in German, but also for its innovative approach to Warburgian studies. The importance of P. Despoix’s work lies in its refusal to reduce Warburg’s thought to the iconological approach of art history. Instead, it delves into the complex foundations of Warburg’s heuristic science in his Library. P. Despoix’s study frees Warburgian scholarship from the semantic and visual paralexia largely caused by a small number of theoretical publications by the author by himself. P. Despoix’s book, for the first time, presents an in-depth investigation into the Warburg archives, to uncover unexplored conceptual dimensions of the Warburg Library. P. Despoix interprets Warburg’s library for cultural sciences through the lens of intermedial thought, examining the dynamic interplay between images, words, and symbols across diverse media: photography, image, iconology, advertising, arts, archaeology, literature, journalism, astronomy and sciences. The book is a precious guide for revealing the genealogy of the epistemic knots that structure Warburg’s intermedial science of images between mnemonic symbols and words.
The article is dedicated to the archpriest, chief priest of the Main Staff of the Guards and Grenadier Corps, confessor of Emperor Nicholas I and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna Nikolai Vasilyevich Muzovsky. The work pays special attention to the family and clan ties of the confessor of the imperial family, as well as the main stages of his career. Considering the extremely scant information about Muzovsky’s relatives, the author considered it possible to talk in more detail about his father and children. Surviving archival documents and private correspondence make it possible to classify Muzovsky as one of the most educated members of the court clergy of the first half of the 19th century. At the same time, according to the recollections of his contemporaries, Muzovsky did not have brilliant oratory and was not one of the talented mentors. In any case, the future Empress Alexandra Feodorovna remained disappointed by her experience with Muzovsky, who was tasked with preparing her to accept the Orthodox faith. However, Muzovsky’s teaching practice at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum showed that the confessor of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich was not completely devoid of teaching talent, given the interest of the lyceum students in his studies on the Law of God. Extremely unpretentious to living conditions and his appearance, Muzovsky spent most of his salary, which in some years exceeded 9 thousand rubles, on the maintenance of his family members. Obviously, after the death of his wife Ekaterina Mikhailovna, Nikolai Vasilyevich took upon himself all the troubles of arranging and supporting his children. In the office documents there are numerous appeals from Muzovsky to the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod and the Minister of the Imperial Court for assistance in arranging the fate of his children.
History of Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics, History and principles of religions
Typology is a subfield of linguistics that focuses on the study and classification of languages based on their structural features. Unlike genealogical classification, which examines the historical relationships between languages, typology seeks to understand the diversity of human languages by identifying common properties and patterns, known as universals. In recent years, computational methods have played an increasingly important role in typological research, enabling the analysis of large-scale linguistic data and the testing of hypotheses about language structure and evolution. This article provides an illustration of the benefits of computational statistical modeling in typology.
Consider a branching Markov process, $X = (X(t), t \ge 0)$, with non-local branching mechanism. Studying the asymptotic behaviour of the moments of X has recently received attention in the literature [6, 7] due to the importance of these results in understanding the underlying genealogical structure of $X$. In this article, we generalise the results of [7] to allow for a non-simple leading eigenvalue and to also study the higher order fluctuations of the moments of $X$. These results will be useful for proving central limit theorems and extending well-known LLN results.
In this article, we focus on Bienaymé-Galton-Watson processes with linear-fractional offspring distributions. At a fixed generation, we consider a sample of the individuals alive, drawn in two different ways: either through Bernoulli sampling, where each individual is selected independently with a given probability, or through uniform sampling, where a fixed number of individuals are chosen uniformly at random. We analyze the genealogical trees generated by the sampled individuals. In particular, we establish a relationship between the distributions of the trees resulting from the two sampling schemes.
This paper presents a pseudocode algorithm for translating (Elementary) Mathematical Data Model ((E)MDM) schemes into Entity-Relationship data models. We prove that this algorithm is linear, sound, complete, and semi-optimal. As an example, we apply this algorithm to an (E)MDM scheme for a genealogical tree sub-universe. We also provide the main additional features added to the implementation of this data science reverse engineering algorithm in MatBase, our intelligent knowledge and database management system prototype based on both the Entity-Relationship, (E)MDM, and Relational Data Models.
For multicultural family members who live in cosmopolitan environments, concepts such as ethnic identity and integration have different significance. Some individuals can report, for example, that ethnic identity and integration have never played an important role in their lives and even feel that they represent old-fashioned notions from which modern societies should rather move on. For others, these concepts are much more relevant and are experienced in more challenging and complex ways. This article explores the influence that identity complexity—a cognitive disposition to perceive overlaps between different social identities, plays in this process. Forty parents of Estonian–foreign children (a traditionally cosmopolitan segment) were interviewed in Estonia and prompted to talk about topics such as their own ethnic identity(ies), their (and their family’s) feelings of integration into the Estonian society, and the way in which they represent their children’s ethnic identities, e.g., mostly Estonian/foreign, fifty–fifty, global citizen, etc. Thematic analysis combined with intersectionality suggests that there are associations between the identity complexity of interviewees and their attitudes towards these topics. Furthermore, results show that beyond the traditional dichotomy of high vs. low identity complexity, some interviewed parents have transitioned from higher to lower levels of identity complexity and vice versa at different times in their lives for different reasons. This study sheds light on identity complexity as a relevant predictor of acculturation and ethnic identity development outcomes among multicultural family members. It also contributes to the literature on cosmopolitan populations as a diverse group.
The gender binary, like many colonial acts, remains trapped within socio-religious ideals of colonisation that then frame ongoing relationships and restrict the existence of Indigenous peoples. In this article, the colonial project of denying difference in gender and gender diversity within Indigenous peoples is explored as a complex erasure casting aside every aspect of identity and replacing it with a simulacrum of the coloniser. In examining these erasures, this article explores how diverse Indigenous gender presentations remain incomprehensible to the colonial mind, and how reinstatements of kinship and truth in representation fundamentally supports First Nations’ agency by challenging colonial reductions. This article focuses on why these colonial practices were deemed necessary at the time of invasion, and how they continue to be forcefully applied in managing Indigenous peoples into a colonial structure of family, gender, and everything else.
This study constitutes a preview of a broader research project on kinship, family, and society in colonial La Rioja. In this context, the results obtained from the study of five generations of the Villafañe and Guzmán family are presented. Various aspects such as family organization, inheritance system, conflicts between families, the construction of a distinct identity, and the strategies that allowed this family to preserve its heritage and maintain a prominent status in the local elite are examined and analyzed in detail.
Records of asylums, schools, and benevolent organisations that intervened in the lives of disabled children in Scotland during the long nineteenth century have survived to varying degrees in public and institutional archives. This might suggest the existence of detailed primary source material that stands in contrast to the sparse data about those disabled children who ‘escaped’ the attention of organisations that aimed to support and direct their lives. However, the records of these formal organisations are inconsistent in what they reveal about the lives of the children under their patronage. This article explores the challenges presented by the records of three organisations, namely, the Scottish National Institution for the Education of Imbecile Children in Larbert, Edinburgh’s Gayfield Square blind school, and East Park Home for Aiding Infirm Children in the Maryhill district of Glasgow. Among the deficiencies of surviving institutional records are the frequent paucity of insights into the lives of their young residents. This article will consider how some of their life journeys can nonetheless be researched by marshalling data from the likes of mandatory registration records and decennial census enumerators’ books. In addition to benefits afforded to genealogists, such records provide historians with materials from which disabled lives can be reconstructed and analysed.
Jimmy Gonzalez Nuñez, Jayson Paulose, Wolfram Möbius
et al.
When biological populations expand into new territory, the evolutionary outcomes can be strongly influenced by genetic drift, the random fluctuations in allele frequencies. Meanwhile, spatial variability in the environment can also significantly influence the competition between sub-populations vying for space. Little is known about the interplay of these intrinsic and extrinsic sources of noise in population dynamics: When does environmental heterogeneity dominate over genetic drift or vice versa, and what distinguishes their population genetics signatures? Here, in the context of neutral evolution, we examine the interplay between a population's intrinsic, demographic noise and an extrinsic, quenched random noise provided by a heterogeneous environment. Using a multi-species Eden model, we simulate a population expanding over a landscape with random variations in local growth rates and measure how this variability affects genealogical tree structure, and thus genetic diversity. We find that, for strong heterogeneity, the genetic makeup of the expansion front is to a great extent predetermined by the set of fastest paths through the environment. The landscape-dependent statistics of these optimal paths then supersede those of the population's intrinsic noise as the main determinant of evolutionary dynamics. Remarkably, the statistics for coalescence of genealogical lineages, derived from those deterministic paths, strongly resemble the statistics emerging from demographic noise alone in uniform landscapes. This cautions interpretations of coalescence statistics and raises new challenges for inferring past population dynamics.
Matthias Birkner, Florin Boenkost, Iulia Dahmer
et al.
Consider an advantageous allele that arises in a haploid population of size $N$ evolving in continuous time according to a skewed reproduction mechanism, which generates under neutrality genealogies lying in the domain of attraction of a Beta$(2-α, α)$-coalescent for $α\in (1,2)$. We prove in a setting of moderate selection that the fixation probability $π_N$ of the advantageous allele is asymptotically equal to $α^{1/(α-1)} s_N^{1/(α-1)} $ , where $s_N$ is the selection strength of the advantageous allele. Our proof uses duality with a suitable $Λ$-ancestral selection graph.
Along with other types of racially mixed families, families built through transracial adoption in the United States have solidified as an increasingly recognized family form. Along with this increasing acknowledgement, transracial families must also contend with narratives that formulate transracial adoption as an act of humanitarianism on the one hand and as a replication of systemic racism and colonialism on the other. This article explores how members of transracial families respond to these contradictory narratives through interviews with 30 transracial adoptees and their white siblings. Their experiences highlight three responses that transracial family members have regarding the idea of their families being classified as a humanitarian project: recreating transracial adoption as humanitarianism within their own lives, reclaiming their identity and family as separate from humanitarianism, and resisting the humanitarian aspects of transracial adoption altogether. Specifically, this study adds nuance to the question of how mixed families navigate the enduring power of humanitarianism within their own lives.
Frank T. Burbrink, Brian I. Crother, Christopher M. Murray
et al.
Abstract Species‐level taxonomy derives from empirical sources (data and techniques) that assess the existence of spatiotemporal evolutionary lineages via various species “concepts.” These concepts determine if observed lineages are independent given a particular methodology and ontology, which relates the metaphysical species concept to what “kind” of thing a species is in reality. Often, species concepts fail to link epistemology back to ontology. This lack of coherence is in part responsible for the persistence of the subspecies rank, which in modern usage often functions as a placeholder between the evolutionary events of divergence or collapse of incipient species. Thus, prospective events like lineages merging or diverging require information from unknowable future information. This is also conditioned on evidence that the lineage already has a detectably distinct evolutionary history. Ranking these lineages as subspecies can seem attractive given that many lineages do not exhibit intrinsic reproductive isolation. We argue that using subspecies is indefensible on philosophical and empirical grounds. Ontologically, the rank of subspecies is either identical to that of species or undefined in the context of evolutionary lineages representing spatiotemporally defined individuals. Some species concepts more inclined to consider subspecies, like the Biological Species Concept, are disconnected from evolutionary ontology and do not consider genealogy. Even if ontology is ignored, methods addressing reproductive isolation are often indirect and fail to capture the range of scenarios linking gene flow to species identity over space and time. The use of subspecies and reliance on reproductive isolation as a basis for an operational species concept can also conflict with ethical issues governing the protection of species. We provide a way forward for recognizing and naming species that links theoretical and operational species concepts regardless of the magnitude of reproductive isolation.
We consider the counting problem of the number of \textit{leaf-labeled increasing trees}, where internal nodes may have an arbitrary number of descendants. The set of all such trees is a discrete representation of the genealogies obtained under certain population-genetical models such as multiple-merger coalescents. While the combinatorics of the binary trees among those are well understood, for the number of all trees only an approximate asymptotic formula is known. In this work, we validate this formula up to constant terms and compare the asymptotic behavior of the number of all leaf-labelled increasing trees to that of binary, ternary and quaternary trees.
This paper reviews what we know about the experiences of adopted people who discover in later-life that they are adopted. It begins by discussing how and why various facets of the adoption experience have come to the fore over the 20th and 21st century time span of contemporary adoption. The paper concludes with the fact that research on the late discovery of adoption is in its infancy. It also points to parallels that will exist for people who have been conceived by anonymous donation and raises additional areas for possible research.
Evaluation warriorship, as defined by ¡Milwaukee Evaluation! Inc., links the practice of evaluation learning, reflection, and storytelling to the evaluator’s social responsibility as a warrior for justice. Unchecked global capitalism has led to extreme economic and racial injustice, undermined democracies, and accelerated environmental catastrophe. This paper argues that more evaluation warriorship is needed to resist this particular system of oppression. It presents examples of how evaluators reproduce neoliberal logic (e.g., in landscape analyses and collective impact assessments), which ultimately undermines transformative change. Evaluator reflexivity questions are proposed to incite change within the field and to help individual evaluators and evaluation teams unpack neoliberalism in their own practice. Evaluation education should include instruction on the effects of neoliberalism and how it shapes both programs and evaluation approaches. Future research should expand the body of knowledge of how neoliberalism has impacted the field of evaluation, support the development of an anti-capitalist praxis, and offer new opportunities for evaluation resistance.