Кузнецова О.А., Негашева М.А., Хафизова А.А.
et al.
Введение. Формирование дефинитивной длины тела определяется генетическими факторами и факторами окружающей среды. Актуальной задачей является межсистемный анализ связей секулярной динамики длины тела с изменениями во времени социально-экономических и демографических показателей. Подобная модель взаимосвязей была разработана для изменений длины тела населения России во второй половине XX в. на основе флуктуаций во времени социально-экономических и демографических показателей. Цель данной работы – проверка работоспособности общероссийской модели на региональных материалах – анализ общих тенденций и выявление особенностей на примере четырех крупных городов России.
Материалы и методы. Материалами послужили временные ряды антропометрических, социально-экономических и демографических показателей из открытых источников. Использованы данные по длине тела, собранные авторами в 2020-2024 гг. в результате обследования молодежи 17-23 лет в четырех городах России: Барнаул, Москва, Петрозаводск и Краснодар. Длина тела для демографических когорт с 1930-39 гг. до начала 2000-х гг. рождения получена из источников литературы.
Результаты и обсуждение. Показано, что изменчивость длины тела в отдельных городах и федеральных округах сходна с общероссийской. В первой половине XX в. наблюдается резкое увеличение дефинитивной длины тела с последующим снижением прироста и выходом на плато. Для современной когорты обследованных (2000-2006 гг. рождения) в некоторых крупных городах отмечено уменьшение длины тела.
Заключение. Проверка регрессионной модели общероссийского секулярного тренда длины тела в связи с изменениями во времени социально-экономических и демографических показателей на региональных данных показала близкие результаты. Выявленные региональные особенности могут быть обусловлены разновременной динамикой изменений социально-экономических условий. Незначительное уменьшение длины тела в некоторых городах России у молодежи 2000-2006 гг. рождения может свидетельствовать об изменении направления секулярного тренда, что подтверждает общебиологическую гипотезу о волнообразном характере трансэпохальной динамики дефинитивной длины тела.
Финансирование. Работа выполнена при поддержке гранта РНФ № 23-18-00086 «Региональные особенности влияния социально-экономических и социокультурных факторов на секулярный тренд размеров тела современной молодёжи на рубеже XX-XXI веков».
Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology, Physical anthropology. Somatology
Irina V. Lapteva, Svetlana D. Tribushinina, Yulia Kuznetsova
Introduction. The study is conducted within a cultural studies framework, with a focus on the processes of sociocultural integration in one of Russia’s multiethnic regions, the Republic of Mordovia, and is grounded in the theoretical foundations of cultural studies, ethnology, and social anthropology. The tension between the need to preserve the unique ethnocultural code of the Mordovian people and the successful sociocultural integration of new (foreign and non-local) members of the regional population generates the risk of both social isolation of newcomers and the formation of parallel communities, as well as spontaneous assimilation that disregards the cultural needs of all parties involved. Despite the existence of extensive literature on migration, adaptation, and national policy, the academic discourse continues to reveal a deficit of empirically grounded and conceptually elaborated models of integration specifically oriented toward the national republics of the Russian Federation. The aim of the study is to examine integration as a complex process of the self-organization of sociocultural integrity, proposing a replicable methodology suitable for scaling in other comparable multicultural constituent entities of the country. Materials and Methods. The methodological foundation of the study is grounded in the principles of axiological analysis and the synergetic model of cultural interaction, which made it possible to examine in detail the practices of harmonizing interethnic relations within the specified regional context. The primary material of the research consists of project-based activities carried out by the Mordovian Regional Public Organization “Cultural and Linguistic Diversity of the Territory”, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, National Policy and Archival Affairs of the Republic of Mordovia, aimed at the cultural adaptation of foreign nationals and non-local citizens arriving for long-term employment or study. Results and Discussion. The authors propose a model of active cultural education grounded in the principles of mutual respect, engagement with traditional values, and, as a result, sociocultural integration through contemporary communication formats. The project initiatives of non-profit organizations are manifested in heterogeneous activities (conducting interactive lectures in workplaces and educational settings, involving participants in artistic and craft practices, organizing dialogue platforms with the participation of representatives of diverse multiethnic communities, etc.). Conclusion. In the context of ethnocultural diversity, the unity of the Russian people is not a static condition but a dynamic process that requires sustained constructive effort on the part of the state, society, and citizens themselves. The contribution of this study to scholarship lies in its interpretation of cultural diversity as a key resource for sustainable development, one that fosters the strengthening of civic solidarity and the formation of a shared identity while taking regional specificity into account.
UMAR IBRAHIM, MUSTAPHA IBRAHIM GARBA, Chinyere Uchegbu-Ekwueme
This study is a sociolinguistic analysis of the use of proverbs in The gods are Not to Blame by Ola Rotimi. The study examines the sociolinguistic functions of proverbs in Ola Rotimi's text with particular attention to how these oral forms reflect and construct Yoruba societal values, norms, and social relationships. While proverbs are widely acknowledged as multifunctional communicative devices in African literary traditions, limited research has systematically analyzed their role in dramatizing social structures and communal ideologies. Drawing on thirty-one purposively selected proverbs from the play, this study employs Dell Hymes' Ethnography of Communication framework, specifically the SPEAKING model, to analyze how Rotimi's strategic deployment of Yoruba proverbs enacts cultural truths, justifies actions, conveys advice, negotiates social hierarchies, issues warnings, and articulates social commentaries. The analysis reveals that proverbs function not merely as decorative linguistic ornaments but as dynamic vehicles for indigenous knowledge transmission, reflections of communal identity, commentaries on social justice, articulations of leadership principles, negotiations of power dynamics, and expressions of social conflict. The study demonstrates the essential function of proverbs in dramatizing social attitudes and strengthening cultural affinity, ultimately portraying how language simultaneously reflects and shapes social cohesion, cultural continuity, and communal values in African dramatic literature.
By applying an interdisciplinary approach that combines theoretical and methodological perspectives through which specific cultural content and phenomena can be interpreted, this paper analyzes the role of music documentaries in the culture of remembrance in the post-Yugoslav space. The aim of the paper is to explore how this particular film (sub)genre has contributed to the construction of memory surrounding Yugoslav rock music over the past two decades. Additionally, the paper seeks to broaden the understanding of the time and space in which this music was created (The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) and to expand the analytical framework for understanding its role as a place of memory within the broader context of popular memory as a field of struggle over the meaning of the past. The analysis aims to demonstrate that the role of music documentaries in the culture of remembrance cannot be viewed solely through a commercial lens, but should also be understood in relation to broader social phenomena and cultural practices in the post-Yugoslav space.
El objetivo del presente trabajo es poner de relieve una de las preocupaciones centrales del pensamiento de Theodor W. Adorno: la imbricación entre las relaciones sociales atravesadas por la lógica de acumulación capitalista y el modo en que estas constituyen la subjetividad de los individuos vivos insertos en dicha sociedad hasta en sus fibras más íntimas. Se tratará de acometer esta tarea exponiendo su diagnóstico de la aniquilación del individuo en el capitalismo posliberal, procurando señalar a lo largo de la exposición la importante herencia marxiana del mismo. El trabajo se desarrollará de la siguiente manera: en primer lugar, expondremos de forma sucinta los elementos del pensamiento de Marx que a nuestro entender están a la base de las reflexiones de Adorno, intentando trazar para ello algunos puntos de conexión entre el Marx de los Manuscritos y el de la Crítica de la Economía Política. A continuación, presentaremos la cuestión de la aniquilación o disolución del individuo, situando brevemente esta aportación en su contexto histórico para indicar el sentido preciso en el que, según Adorno, la categoría del individuo se ha vaciado de contenido en las sociedades del capitalismo posliberal. Seguidamente, señalaremos cómo para Adorno esta descomposición del tradicional papel social del individuo no está en modo alguno reñida con la producción social de atomización e individualismo, sino que estos rasgos proliferan y se recrudecen amparados por una apariencia de individualidad que, borrando su génesis histórica y social, sigue operando plenamente aunque no tenga un correlato en el estado real de los sujetos vivos, cada vez más dañados e impotentes. A modo de conclusión, apuntaremos algunas breves notas sobre la vigencia de ciertas reflexiones de Adorno, así como de la necesaria distancia que nos separa de ellas en el presente.
History (General), Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology
Archaeology has always been a field of investigation equally concerned with both natural and social phenomena. This position poses specific epistemic problems, that have been the subject of fierce debates. On the other hand, over the last decades the social relevance of archaeology has been questioned. Here the solution is advocated of archaeology as an integrated research program, equally devoted to both natural and cultural phenomena, with the aim to reflect on alternative solutions for the crises of the contemporary world. The life and work of Peter Kropotkin, a naturalist and a revolutionary, is offered as an inspiration in this direction.
The period of the Xiongnu renaissance marked a time of profound transformation in the ethnogenetic processes of numerous groups across the Eurasian steppe. During this era, the symbols employed by rulers and the aristocracy also evolved, establishing a distinct order within the independent artistic tradition of the Xiongnu elite. The social and economic organization of the Xiongnu Empire characterized by a highly structured and centralized state system, fostered imperial cohesion across vast regions of Eurasia. In terms of artistic geopolitics, this centralized framework facilitated a form of cultural globalization that integrated the shared features of Eurasian nomadic art. Standardized artistic objects produced within the Xiongnu Empire circulated widely, extending from the Lake Baikal region and southern Siberia to East Asia, and even reaching the Middle East. Ongoing socio-cultural research on the Xiongnu within the field of ancient world history continues to demonstrate that they represented a major power that preserved key characteristics of the ancient mongols through their material culture, technological and artistic achievements, and ethnocultural interactions. Moreover, the Xiongnu’s made a distinctive contribution to the globalization of East and North Asian artistic elements, synthesizing influences from a wide range of ethnic and cultural traditions.
The paper explores the phenomenon of keeping pets as family members from an anthropological perspective. It traces the historical and cultural transformation of dogs and cats from utilitarian working animals to emotional companions and kin. Drawing on anthropological literature, the paper highlights how human–animal relationships are socially constructed and culturally variable. Pets are no longer perceived solely as property or function-bearing beings, but as sentient subjects involved in household dynamics. Through concepts such as anthropomorphism, sentimental projection, and emotional reciprocity, the paper analyzes how animals are integrated into kinship systems. The notion of "companion species" (Haraway) is used to argue for an ethics of mutuality, responsibility, and care. This paper critically engages with Baudrillard’s idea of “sentimental racism,” suggesting that empathy toward animals is not always a form of domination or projection. Instead, relationships with pets often reveal deep emotional and social bonds that reshape our understanding of family and domestic life. Ethnographic and theoretical insights show that pets are active participants in social life, not passive symbols. By analyzing pets as kin, the study contributes to multispecies anthropology and challenges anthropocentric notions of belonging. Ultimately, it calls for a reconsideration of the moral and political status of animals in human communities.
In highly ideologized societies, such as socialist-era Serbia, every form of activity was officially declared as the result of the consensual free will of conscious participants. From a discursive perspective, ethnographic museum work also represented a kind of prism through which curators, experts, and institutional leadership set the tone and value framework for interpreting the folk culture of traditional communities. Looking back, this ideologically influenced system of professional selection, documentation, consideration, and subsequent representation within ethnographic museum practices can, from today’s perspective, be viewed as a form of ethnographic museum folklore. This so-called museum (ethnographic) folklore emerged and was maintained within a small yet, authoritative and informal social group of curators operating within the cultural heritage protection system. Recognizing the need for research into this phenomenon, as well as the initial hypothesis on the existence of such a form of folkloric activity, could be further considered within the broader context of motives, goals, and outcomes that characterized the processes of retraditionalization among various social groups during late socialism, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the ongoing transition period.
Social recommendation, which seeks to leverage social ties among users to alleviate the sparsity issue of user-item interactions, has emerged as a popular technique for elevating personalized services in recommender systems. Despite being effective, existing social recommendation models are mainly devised for recommending regular items such as blogs, images, and products, and largely fail for community recommendations due to overlooking the unique characteristics of communities. Distinctly, communities are constituted by individuals, who present high dynamicity and relate to rich structural patterns in social networks. To our knowledge, limited research has been devoted to comprehensively exploiting this information for recommending communities. To bridge this gap, this paper presents CASO, a novel and effective model specially designed for social community recommendation. Under the hood, CASO harnesses three carefully-crafted encoders for user embedding, wherein two of them extract community-related global and local structures from the social network via social modularity maximization and social closeness aggregation, while the third one captures user preferences using collaborative filtering with observed user-community affiliations. To further eliminate feature redundancy therein, we introduce a mutual exclusion between social and collaborative signals. Finally, CASO includes a community detection loss in the model optimization, thereby producing community-aware embeddings for communities. Our extensive experiments evaluating CASO against nine strong baselines on six real-world social networks demonstrate its consistent and remarkable superiority over the state of the art in terms of community recommendation performance.
The transformation of the symbolic space of the city of Halych from the second half of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century is investigated in the article. The work is based on the analysis of archival and historical documents, field materials collected by the author through the method of participant observation during the 2022–2023. The symbolic space term is used currently in various scientific studies: in cultural anthropology (O. Hrytsenko, H. Bondarenko), in semiotics (R. Barthes), in urban studies (E. Soja, R. Čepaitienė and others), in Ukrainian sociology (V. Sereda, O. Obukhova). The planning and architecture of the city, its landscape, toponymy, monuments as well as the elements of external design of the streets, squares and buildings are used together to create a symbolic space, where collective memory, identity and social dynamics of local communities are formed. In the 1930s, the places of worship have dominated in the urban space of Halych: the Greek-Catholic Church of Christmas (the 14th century), the Roman-Catholic Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Volodymyr’s Orthodox Church, the synagogue and the Karaite Kenesa, thus reflecting the ethnic and confessional structure of the population of the city. Part of the walls of Halych Castle is preserved on the Castle Hill, being the evidence of the historical significance of the city. The process of communization has started after the incorporation to the Soviet Union (September, 1939): streets and squares are renamed, Soviet monuments are erected. The places of worship are destroyed or reequipped. The Church of Christmas has become an Orthodox one forcibly and the only active. Participation in parades and meetings to commemorate the Soviet holidays has become a common practice for the population. A tradition to lay flowers at the monument to Lenin by the newly wedded couple has appeared. The central part of the city is a zone of official, formal events of ideological matter at that time as well as the Halych Castle remains a favourite place of family, youth leisure, the space for informal intercourse. Essential transformations of the urban public space of the city of Halych start after Ukraine has gained independence. In 1990 the monument to Lenin is dismantled and the central square of the city has got the Christmas Square name. In 1988 a monumental equestrian sculpture to King Danylo Halytskyi has appeared there. The process of streets’ renaming continues. New churches and chapels (over 20) are built, a number of commemorative plaques and monuments to the participants of the Ukrainian national resistance, public and cultural figures of the city and the region (about 10) have been placed on municipal houses. Nine memorial annotation plaques are dedicated to soldiers died in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Christmas Square today is the main symbolic space of the city, a place where various activities and communications take place (both public and private). Halych Castle continues to occupy an important place in the cultural life of the city. Many significant scientific and cultural events representing Ukrainian historical and musical heritage occur here, influencing the formation of the identity of the local population.
The research possibilities of a qualitative approach have a long tradition in the social sciences and humanities, including different perspectives on theoretical foundations, research strategies, techniques, and data collection and analysis methods. The qualitative methodology first developed in cultural anthropology and ethnology, where the anthropological works of Malinowski, Strauss, Boas, and others marked the foundations of the field method of collecting data and conducting ethnographic studies. However, to date, there is no single definition of qualitative methodology, just as there are no studies that do not require the dimensions of different approaches. Starting from the observation that the question of the compatibility of qualitative and quantitative research methods is still a source of disagreement among researchers, arising from academic criticism of the quality and reliability of qualitative research, this study aims to highlight the role and importance of qualitative research in the scientific and educational process. Through the theoretical analysis of the relevant sources of methodological studies, the authors present some fundamental principles of the qualitative approach and its leading research strategies, illustrating the theoretical aspects with the most important constructs in this methodological area. The findings of this article show that despite the diversity of scientific literature and research on defining the value of qualitative research, a systematic and in-depth study of qualitative methodological issues is still needed to contribute to the improvement of the literature and increase the value of this approach in scientific and educational research practice. Accordingly, although the authors sustain a mixed research approach, they also emphasize the importance of qualitative methods, which should not be viewed separately from the research process.
Ashmal Vayani, Dinura Dissanayake, Hasindri Watawana
et al.
Existing Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) generally focus on only a few regions and languages. As LMMs continue to improve, it is increasingly important to ensure they understand cultural contexts, respect local sensitivities, and support low-resource languages, all while effectively integrating corresponding visual cues. In pursuit of culturally diverse global multimodal models, our proposed All Languages Matter Benchmark (ALM-bench) represents the largest and most comprehensive effort to date for evaluating LMMs across 100 languages. ALM-bench challenges existing models by testing their ability to understand and reason about culturally diverse images paired with text in various languages, including many low-resource languages traditionally underrepresented in LMM research. The benchmark offers a robust and nuanced evaluation framework featuring various question formats, including true/false, multiple choice, and open-ended questions, which are further divided into short and long-answer categories. ALM-bench design ensures a comprehensive assessment of a model's ability to handle varied levels of difficulty in visual and linguistic reasoning. To capture the rich tapestry of global cultures, ALM-bench carefully curates content from 13 distinct cultural aspects, ranging from traditions and rituals to famous personalities and celebrations. Through this, ALM-bench not only provides a rigorous testing ground for state-of-the-art open and closed-source LMMs but also highlights the importance of cultural and linguistic inclusivity, encouraging the development of models that can serve diverse global populations effectively. Our benchmark is publicly available.
Conventional economic and socio-behavioural models assume perfect symmetric access to information and rational behaviour among interacting agents in a social system. However, real-world events and observations appear to contradict such assumptions, leading to the possibility of other, more complex interaction rules existing between such agents. We investigate this possibility by creating two different models for a doctor-patient system. One retains the established assumptions, while the other incorporates principles of reflexivity theory and cognitive social structures. In addition, we utilize a microbial genetic algorithm to optimize the behaviour of the physician and patient agents in both models. The differences in results for the two models suggest that social systems may not always exhibit the behaviour or even accomplish the purpose for which they were designed and that modelling the social and cognitive influences in a social system may capture various ways a social agent balances complementary and competing information signals in making choices.
Bots have been in the spotlight for many social media studies, for they have been observed to be participating in the manipulation of information and opinions on social media. These studies analyzed the activity and influence of bots in a variety of contexts: elections, protests, health communication and so forth. Prior to this analyses is the identification of bot accounts to segregate the class of social media users. In this work, we propose an ensemble method for bot detection, designing a multi-platform bot detection architecture to handle several problems along the bot detection pipeline: incomplete data input, minimal feature engineering, optimized classifiers for each data field, and also eliminate the need for a threshold value for classification determination. With these design decisions, we generalize our bot detection framework across Twitter, Reddit and Instagram. We also perform feature importance analysis, observing that the entropy of names and number of interactions (retweets/shares) are important factors in bot determination. Finally, we apply our multi-platform bot detector to the US 2020 presidential elections to identify and analyze bot activity across multiple social media platforms, showcasing the difference in online discourse of bots from different platforms.
AbstractChinese anthropology and ethnology studies are shaped by diverse schools of thought, including Western anthropology, classical Marxist ethnic theory, the Soviet school of ethnology, and Chinese experience and theory. In particular, Western anthropology, classical Marxist ethnic theory, and the Soviet school have had a tremendous impact on Chinese anthropology and ethnology studies across different historical periods. In China, practical and theoretical studies on anthropology and ethnology have become increasingly embedded in those three academic traditions. In this sense, Chinese anthropology and ethnology studies are by no means a simple replica of disciplinary progress made in other countries, nor are they a mixed-up combination of overseas studies in the Chinese context. On the contrary, Chinese anthropology and ethnology studies have developed as an independent Chinese school of thought guided by Marxist principles and a research area through the efforts of generations of Chinese scholars with lessons learned from practical experiences and global research results to produce new theories and methodologies adapted to the Chinese social context. This research area aims to improve the well-being of Chinese people, featuring Chinese academic legacy and confidence. The Chinese anthropology and ethnology as an academic discipline represents the fifth way in global anthropology and ethnology studies, following its predecessors established in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States. This tradition marks a unique contribution from the developing world, one that enriches and advances global anthropology and ethnology studies. In other words, with a focus on national and contemporary imperatives, Chinese anthropology and ethnology studies have leveraged and examined other anthropological and ethnological doctrines to propose innovative concepts and theories. Furthermore, it provides valuable “Chinese experience” for developing countries to navigate anthropology and ethnology.
The number of citizens in Serbia vaccinated against COVID-19 was among the highest in Europe in early 2021. It started to stagnate as it approached 50% total population coverage, while the number of cases started to rise. The paper presents the cultural thought that leads people to decline COVID-19 vaccination, and aims to show that such cultural thought can be described as social solipsism. This means that illusions about reality are used as a cognitive reference point for organizing the world around us. It has been noted that there is no uniform category of opponents of the fight against the pandemic. There are those who, in their negative attitude to everything that is being undertaken to curb the pandemic, are led by the idea that the illness does not exist; then there are those who are opposed to vaccination in general, but also those who oppose only COVID-19 vaccination; in addition, there are those who prioritize their own principles based on legal, moral or religious norms over vaccination, interpreting those norms in this way, and those who believe that their lifestyle and state of health protect them from illness, and that this, rather than vaccination, should be the guideline for the fight against the pandemic; then there are those who are doubtful about everything they read and hear in the media about COVID-19, as well as those who are unable to provide a more specific explanation about the reasons for refusing to be vaccinated, and those who have lost all trust in politicians, i.e. in the way that our society has been organized under the influence of state and social actors; then, there are those whose trust in the medical profession has declined. Finally, there is a distinct subgroup of respondents, namely those who are able to put together a small pseudotheoretical system which links the pandemic as a global fact with events which may or may not be connected with it in the local, Serbian sociocultural context, in a manner which they perceive as being causal. What characterizes the cultural thought that leads them to refuse vaccination is distrust of the dominant social discourses, primarily political and scientific and, above all, medical discourses, and they consequently ignore the objective facts these discourses are based on. Such cultural thought can be termed postlogical because it ignores those social discourses – primarily scientific ones – which talk about the objective state of factual reality; instead, it draws on arguments that are not characteristic of causal, factographically informed thought, influencing public opinion by appealing to convictions and feelings rather than facts.
The book Social Impact of Wine Marketing: The Challenge of Digital Technologies to Regulation is part of Springer’s series Contributions to Management Science dedicated to emerging theoretical and empirical research. The author, Mojca Ramšak, Ph.D., is a professor of ethnology and philosophy at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and her research interests are folklore, health and illness, public health, and alcohol addiction. The author, merging cultural anthropology expertise with a focus on public health, delves into the impact of alcohol marketing and addiction on people’s lives. Particularly concerned about adolescents, she stresses the pressing requirement for better legal control of alcohol marketing and improved public health campaigns. The book is divided into 15 chapters. Each chapter begins with an abstract that summarizes the key points being discussed in the chapter and covers a specific aspect of digital marketing or social behavior involving drinking. Therefore, readers can choose specific chapters that interest them, or read the book as a whole to get a more comprehensive perspective on the subject. The introductory chapter titled Wine and Technology Between Cultural Attitudes to Alcohol, Sales, Legislation, and Health begins by stating the aim of the book which is to “decode the strategies of alcohol advertising, which are cleverly embedded in the context of hedonism, luxury, social power and influence, and the concept of choice” (p. 1). The main concept explored in the book is “digiwine”, “a neologism [which] refers to the production