The Chinese face practices lie at the heart of Chinese culture. These practices constitute a systematic grammar of action and a unique way of life which are proving to be incapable of facing the challenges of the modern life of instrumental rationality unless they get transformed. How can such a system of cultural practices get transformed so that the living Chinese tradition and the modern Western culture get creatively and selectively merged? How can Chinese culture emerge as a new and rejuvenated, open and flexible culture both sustainable and adaptable? This dissertation is a search for the answers. This dissertation presents a social constructionist account for the Chinese face practices. It covers their various dimensions such as historical, emotional and consequential. It also offers a social constructionist critique of the generalist theories of face and ethnocultural studies of Chinese face practices. Using a social constructionist tool called Circular Questioning (CQ) together with the case study method, the study generates a tentative model of creative engagement with and grounded transformation of the Chinese face-centered social practices on the basis of the social constructionist critique of the revolutionary and individualistic models of transformation of the Chinese face practices. The study concludes that social constructionists in the Chinese contexts have a dual research agenda. On one hand, they have to curtail the excess of communalism which undermines the individual agency due to the face practices; on the other hand, they need to prevent the onslaught of unrestrained individual agency over community due to the complete abandonment of the face practices in the rush for the individual interests by means of capital, law and technology. It also examines the affordances and constraints of CQ in the Chinese contexts and identifies what the author thinks are the major similarities and differences between the Chinese version of social constructionism and the Western communication version of social construction ism. The examination, comparison and contrast reveal that the Western social constructionism, a constructive modification of the modern Western culture, is one big step closer to Chinese culture than the modern Western culture. The two cultures also have a lot to learn from each other. The study theoretically implies a promising future of intercultural relations between the East and the West which both social constructionists with a research agenda in the East and those in the West can jointly construct.

The various elements that make up the individual's sense of cultural identity require a certain amount of negotiation and management in even the most straightforward of circumstances. This is particularly true for people who have multiple and/or contrasting identity claims. Group interviews with 72 allophone and anglophone Montreal residents were used to find patterns in strategies for negotiating these claims, given that these populations must contend with competing discourses about nation, language, ethnicity/race, religion, etc. A number of strategies were located and discussed, including modification of memory and performativity, strategic blindness, constitutive contradiction, constitutive contrast, and identification through exclusion. Individuals facing greater degrees of contradiction required increasing levels of cognitive labour and more sophisticated strategies of negotiation to make sense of their cultural identities; failure to do so was marked by feeling of isolation and alienation. Issues of “difference” and “authenticity” marked participants' discussions of identity, and a passionate attachment to Montreal was revealed to transcend for many any feelings of belongingness to either Canada and/or Québec.

Approximately one million Southeast Asian refugees have resettled in the United States since 1975. Health policy and programs directed toward these refugees have evolved serendipitously; a response to crisis rather than to thoughtful planning. The purpose of this study was to apply the Andersen and Aday access to health care framework to guide the collection of information about how varied ethnic groups of Southeast Asian refugees (Cambodian, Vietnamese, Lao, and Hmong), living in a low-impact area, experience and interact with the health care system. The goal of this process was to suggest effective program strategies and health policies to better serve this population. Using a method of secondary analysis, a post hoc application of elected elements of the Andersen and Aday framework were studied in relation to data collected in a needs assessment study conducted in Western Massachusetts. In addition, patterns of health service utilization were analyzed using Refugee Medical Assistance/Medicaid expenditure data with comparison to findings from the present study and others reported in the literature. Major findings suggested the usefulness of the framework for planners and policy makers as they consider intervention strategies for culturally diverse populations like the varied Southeast Asian groups in this study. The model did point to the influence of predisposing variables as being of extreme importance in influencing care seeking and use suggesting a heavier weighting of this element in the equation. Perceived need, unmet needs, and identified problems, while identified and acknowledged by the refugee groups, did not increase use of health services and appeared to have less influence than one's health beliefs and attitudes as determined by ethnicity. Other findings suggest that access and utilization of health services by Southeast Asian refugees in a low-impact area such as Western Massachusetts is similar to patterns noted in high-density areas. However, the process of accessing a smaller array of services may be more complex. Recommendations for program planning, policy development and future research are offered.

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Extensive literature in the social and medical sciences link religiosity to positive health outcomes. Conversely it is often assumed that secularity carries negative consequences for health; however, recent research outlining different types of secular individuals complicates this assumption. Using a national sample of American adults, we compare physical and mental health outcomes for atheists, agnostics, religiously nonaffiliated theists, and theistic members of organized religious traditions. Results indicate better physical health outcomes for atheists compared to other secular individuals and members of some religious traditions. Atheists also reported significantly lower levels of psychiatric symptoms (anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and compulsion) compared to both other seculars and members of most religious traditions. In contrast, physical and mental health were significantly worse for nonaffiliated theists compared to other seculars and religious affiliates on most outcomes. These findings highlight the necessity of distinguishing among different types of secular individuals in future research on health.

We outline four connections between xenophobia and punitiveness toward criminals in a national sample of Americans. First, among self-identified whites xenophobia is more predictive of punitiveness than specific forms of racial animus. Second, xenophobia and punitiveness are strongly connected among whites, but are only moderately and weakly related among black and Hispanic Americans, respectively. Third, among whites substantial proportions of the variance between sociodemographic, political, and religious predictors of punitiveness are mediated by levels of xenophobia. Finally, xenophobia is the strongest overall predictor of punitiveness among whites. Overall, xenophobia is an essential aspect of understanding public punitiveness, particularly among whites.

Summary of book provided by publisher: "The meanings of ritualized head treatments among ancient Mesoamerican and Andean peoples is the subject of this book, the first overarching coverage of an important subject. Heads are sources of power that protect, impersonate, emulate sacred forces, distinguish, or acquire identity within the native world. The essays in this book examine these themes in a wide array of indigenous head treatments, including facial cosmetics and hair arrangements, permanent cranial vault and facial modifications, dental decorations, posthumous head processing, and head hunting. They offer new insights into native understandings of beauty, power, age, gender, and ethnicity. The contributors are experts from such diverse fields as skeletal biology, archaeology, aesthetics, forensics, taphonomy, and art history."

Since the 1980s, ethnographers have increasingly explored the ways that dead bodies and body parts may have significant and dynamic afterlives by virtue of their psychological, social, political, and economic potential [...]

Objectives: This article presents estimates of narrow-sense heritability and bivariate genetic correlation for 14 tooth crown morphological variants scored on permanent premolars, first molars, and second molars. The objective is to inform data collection and analytical practices in dental biodistance and to provide insights on the development of molar crowns as integrated structures. Materials and Methods: African American dental casts from the Menegaz-Bock collection were recorded for the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System. Estimates of narrow-sense heritability and genetic correlation were generated using SOLAR v.8.1.1, which included assessment of age, sex, and birth year as covariates. Both continuous scale and dichotomized estimates are provided. Results: Heritability estimates were nonsignificant for the majority of variables; however, for variables yielding significant estimates, values were moderate to high in magnitude and comparable to previous studies. Comparing left and right-side heritability estimates suggests directional asymmetry in the expression of environmental variance, something not seen in anterior tooth traits. Genetic correlations were moderate among antimeres and metameres and low for different traits scored on the same tooth crown. Although several negative correlations were noted, few reached statistical significance. Results affirm some of the current data cleaning and analytical practices in dental biodistance, but others are called into question. These include the pooling of males and females and combining left and right-side data into a single dataset. Conclusions: In comparison to anterior tooth crown traits, postcanine heritabilities were more often non-significant; however, those traits with significant heritability also tended to produce higher estimates. Genetic correlations were unremarkable, in part, because they were underpowered. However, M1 results may provide insight into the complex relationship between genes, environment, and development in determining ultimate crown form.

Presented in the session “Global Leadership in Dental Anthropological Research: A symposium in honor of G. Richard Scott." The Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS) or Turner-Scott System revolutionized the use of dental morphology for reconstructing evolutionary processes in past populations. By providing globally-recognized data collection standards, the system has elevated the status of dental morphology to an indispensable line of evidence in biodistance research. The efficacy of morphological data rests upon foundational assumptions about underlying tooth crown biology; namely, that the traits are highly heritable and minimally sexually dimorphic. Scott and colleagues have also outlined best practices for the application of dental morphology to biodistance studies, most aimed at curtailing genetic redundancy in multivariate datasets (see Turner et al., 1991). Quantitative genetic approaches have the potential to validate these assumptions. Here, we present the first robust estimates of heritability and genetic correlation for ASUDAS crown characters. Data were collected from a casted sample of South Carolina Gullah individuals (N=469) and analyzed using maximum likelihood variance components analysis. While several postcanine traits yielded heritability estimates of 0.0, mean estimates across statistically significant models were moderate to high (anterior=0.34; postcanine=0.75). Results of covariate screening support the long-held assumption that ASUDAS traits are sexually monomorphic, with the exception of canine marginal/cingular ridge characters and certain molar accessory cusps. Additionally, patterns of heritability and genetic correlation groundtruth most prescribed biodistance practices: dichotomizing trait expression, collapsing bi-antimeric datasets, and prioritizing traits scored on key (sensu Scott et al., 2018) teeth. Notwithstanding, our results suggest that certain assumptions require reconsideration and underscore the importance of continued validation work in additional populations.