24 research outputs found
Exploring evolution in the context of molecular genetics and ecology: a dual perspective
No full textAbstract The teaching of evolution stands as a cornerstone in the realm of biological sciences, yet how best to frame and teach the complex web of concepts that are a part of evolutionary theory is still under debate. To address this issue, we propose two sequences for teaching the evolution ideas and concepts that are included in the Israeli curriculum for upper secondary school, starting from either the foundational principles of molecular genetics or the intricate dynamics of ecology or integrating both. This approach involves considering the strengths of both molecular genetics and ecology as frameworks for understanding evolution, recognizing that each perspective offers valuable insights that can enrich students' understanding of the topic. Molecular genetics is the area of evolutionary theory that relies on terms such as genes, alleles, and mutations. Ecology offers a broader, more holistic view of evolution and includes the dynamic interplay between organisms and their environment. The molecular genetics sequence focuses on the mechanism of evolution and the ecology sequence focuses on the external factors that affect the mechanism. This dual approach creates options for teachers; they can take into consideration each path’s advantages and use the characteristics of their classes to choose one of the suggested perspectives or integrate both perspectives to teach evolution
The Moral Reasoning of Genetic Dilemmas Amongst Jewish Israeli Undergraduate Students with Different Religious Affiliations and Scientific Backgrounds
No full textShould I Perform Genetic Testing? A Qualitative Look into the Decision Making Considerations of Religious Israeli Undergraduate Students
No full textA Qualitative Look into Israeli Genetic Experts’ Insights Regarding Culturally Competent Genetic Counseling and Recommendations for Its Enhancement
No full textBeyond the clinic? Eluding a medical diagnosis of anorexia through narrative
No full textThe persistence and recurrence of anorexia nervosa poses a clinical challenge, and provides support for critiques of oppressive and injurious facets of society inscribed on women’s bodies. This essay illustrates how a phenomenological, linguistic anthropological approach fruitfully traverses clinical and cultural perspectives by directing attention beyond the embodied experience of patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa to those who are not clinically diagnosed. Extending a model of illness and recovery as entailing sufferers’ emplotting of past, present, and imagined future selves, I argue that women’s accounts of their experiences do not simply reflect lived reality, but actually propel health-relevant states of being by enlivening and creating these realities in the process of their telling. In indexical interaction with public and clinical discourses, narratives’ grammar, lexicon, and plot structures modify subjects’ experiences and interpretations of the events and feelings recounted. This article builds on the insight that linear narratives of “full recovery” that adopt a clinical and feminist voice can help tellers stay recovered, whereas for those “struggling to recover,” a genre of contingent, uncertain, sideshadowing narratives alternatively renders recovery an elusive and ambivalently desired object. This essay then identifies a third narrative genre, eluding a diagnosis, which combines elements of the first two genres to paradoxically keep its teller simultaneously sheltered from, and invisible to the well-meaning clutches of medical care, leaving her suffering, yet free, to starve. This focus on narrative genres illustrates the utility of linguistic analyses for discerning and interpreting distress in subclinical populations.First author draf
The Evolution of Women\u27s Education
No full textThe author discusses the history of women\u27s education, focusing on the time periods of ancient Mesopotamia, the Victorian era, and the early half of the twentieth century
Tình Yêu trăn trở: Giới, giai cấp, và ‘theo bóng bên lề’ gia đình hạnh phúc tại Việt Nam
No full textThough socially and politically different, Vietnam's Confucian, colonial, socialist, and marketizing regimes share a common master narrative of ideal women as the moral bedrock of their nation: virtuous, self‐sacrificing mothers. Drawing on ethnographic material collected in Đà Nẵng, this essay examines how women deploy discourses about ethical sentiments and national development to make sense of their experiences of love. I focus on women's moral struggles with and reasoning about sacrifice and care to complicate understandings of romantic love as linked to capitalist individualism and modernity. Instead, I show how women subtly critique, yet remain committed to, forms of love that reinforce—through state policy and common practice—hierarchical gender, intergenerational, and class relations. This is achieved through the telling and living of sideshadowing narratives, that is, subjunctive tales that invite contingency and contradiction. This nonteleological narrative practice reveals the precarious nature of ethical life and the ways love entangles political economy, moral sentiments, and moral reasoning. [morality and ethics, love, class and gender, narrative practice, Vietnam]Résumé: Quoique socialement et politiquement différents, les régimes confucéen, colonial, socialiste et de marché partagent undiscours commun sur la femme idéale, fondation morale de la nation vietnamienne, en tant que mère vertueuseet sacrificielle. Sur la base d’une enquête ethnographique menée àĐàNẵng, cet article examine comment les femmes vietnamiennes signifient leur expérienceamoureuseà travers des discours sur les sentiments moraux et le développement national. En mettant l’accent sur les conflits moraux et les raisonnements sur le sacrifice et le care, il approfondit la compréhensions de l’amour romantique en lien avec l’individualisme inhérent au capitalismeet la modernité. Il montre que les femmes critiquent subtilement–tout en y restant attachées–des formes d’amour qui renforcent, sous l’effet de politiqueset de pratiques, des rapports hiérarchiques de genre, de génération et de classe. Cette critique est rendue possible par l’expression de discours latéraux et évolutifs (sideshadowing), notamment des récits subjunctifs qui évoquent la contingence et la contradiction. Ces pratiquesnarrativesrévèlentla nature précaire de la vie morale et l’enchevêtrement de l’amour avec l’économie politique, les sentiments moraux et le raisonnement éthique.Tóm tắt: Mặc dù khác nhau trong khía cạnh xã hội và chính trị, các chếđộKhổng giáo, thực dân, xã hội chủnghĩa, và thịtrường tại Việt Nam có cùng một diễn ngôn chủđạo vềngười đàn bà lý tưởng tạo thành nền tảng luân lý của dân tộc: những người mẹđức hạnh và giàu lòng hy sinh. Dựa vào dữliệu thu thập theo phương pháp điều tra dân tộc học thực hiện tại Đà Nẵng, tôi khảo sát cách phụnữsửdụng những diễn ngôn vềcảm xúc đạo đức và sựphát triển đất nước trong cách hiểu của họvềtình yêu thương. Tôi tập trung vào những đấu tranh đạo đức trong cách họlý giải sựhy sinh và chăm sóc nhằm phức tạp hoá cách hiểu vềsựliên kết giữa tình yêu và chủnghĩa tư bản cá nhânhoặc chủnghĩa hiện đại.Thay vào đó, tôi cho thấy rằng phụnữphê phán một cách tếnhịnhưng vẫn hướng đến những hình thức yêu thương mang tính củng cốcho sựphân tầng vềgiới, thếhệvà giai cấp xã hội, thông qua các chính sách nhà nước và lối hành xửthông thường. Họlàm điều này bằng lối kểchuyện và sống ‘theo bóng bên lề’, nghĩa là những câu chuyện kểthuộc loại ‘phải chi’đểkhơi ngợinhững khảnăng vềmột hiện thực khác, vềnhững ngờvực và mâu thuẫn. Lối tựtruyện phi mục đích này cho thấy tính bất định của đời sống đạo đức và những đan xen chằngchịtgiữa tình yêu, tình cảm với kinh tếchính trị, cảm xúc đạo đức và lý giải mang tính luân lý.I am eternally indebted to the families who generously welcomed me into their homes, lives, and sometimes hearts in Vietnam. I am also grateful to generous research support provided by Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays, Pacific-Rim Research Program, UCLA Graduate Division, and Asia Institute Wagatsuma Fellowship grants, and assistance from Thuy Anh Nguyen, Son Ca, the Danang College of Foreign Languages, the Institute of Family and Gender Studies in Hanoi, Thu-huong Nguyen-vo, Dat Nguyen, Tam Nguyen, Michel Chambon, and Nicolas Lainez. Condensed versions of this article were presented at the 2014 American Anthropological Association Meeting in Washington D.C., at the 2015 Society for Psychological Anthropology Meeting in Boston, and in the Departments of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Scarborough and at Boston University in 2016. I thank Alejandro Paz, Bianca Dahl, Donna Young, Elinor Ochs, Heather Loyd, Maggie McKinley, Maria Stalford, Mary Good, Revital Shohet, and Vivian Choi, as well as Ethos editor-in-chief Edward Lowe, and anonymous and revealed reviewers Ann Marie Leshkowich and Allen Tran for commenting on earlier drafts. They have all helped make this piece stronger. (Social Science Research Council; Fulbright-Hays; Pacific-Rim Research Program; UCLA Graduate Division; Asia Institute Wagatsuma Fellowship)First author draf
Re-Enacting Pasts, Presents, and Futures in the Middle East in Yochai Avrahami and Doron Tavori’s “Land of the Gilead”
No full textThis article focuses on a performance titled In the Land of the Gilead, performed in 2012 by Doron Tavori and Yochai Avrahami at the Centre for Digital Art in Israel. The work was performed as a part of the exhibition Le’an (Where To?). Its title is derived from a plan suggested by Laurence Oliphant (a British colonialist bureaucrat, author, and Member of Parliament) in 1881 to settle Jews in the Gilead region east of the Jordan River. The article examines the ways in which Tavori and Avrahami re-enact Oliphant’s plan, which was never realised, as well as numerous other historical moments of Oliphant’s colonialist endeavours and those of his contemporaries, tying them to the present-day situation in the Middle East and elsewhere. The article also examines the wider contexts and curatorial strategies of the exhibition Le’an, which focused on alternative Zionist histories that challenged Zionism’s exclusive focus on the land of Israel. The article suggests that by juxtaposing nuanced and complex re-enactments of numerous and conflicting histories, the work prompts audiences to reconsider their political and national understanding of such colonial and Zionist histories, allowing these complex pasts (which are often celebrated or silenced) to be articulated as integral to contemporary national narratives
