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A great question remains unresolved: What is man? The limits of the Eurocentric techno-scientific worldview, and its theories and models of human nature are examined. An intellectual paralysis prevents progress in the examination of this issue. This paper presents a worldview committed to a specifically human biology that transcends the shortcomings of neo-Darwinian theory. We propose a theory of the essential elements that would allow us to advance in the study of what makes us human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I propose an anthropological framework for the analysis of sociocultural bounds between pleasure and whispering. To do so, I focus on the cultural practice of listening to online videos called ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) as an assisted sensibility that aimsto elicit pleasurable sensations through whispering and other light sounds. Although the pleasure in whispering refers to an individual experience, the attention to different sensory and sensual practices based on whispering reveals the implications of sonorities in contemporary culturalsensorium, their technological mediations and how they modulate identities, relationships and politics. The phenomenological, sensorial and vocal analysis of social practicesthrough this sonority gives us an account of pleasure as a sensorial disposition where intimacy and memory manifest themselves as sonorous affects and situated vibratory processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kantujira is an initiative which, once a month, convokes a substantial number of people in order to sing traditional songs in Basque in the streets of the Old Quarter of Donostia (as well as in different neighbourhoods in the city). There are similar initiatives in towns and cities throughout the Basque Country. In this paper, I analyse the multiple dimensions of the Kantujira, which is much more than a cultural event and a way of maintaining tradition, since it plays a significant role in sociability and in shaping collective identity, while at the same time it is a form of resistance and of protest; a resistance with a particular feature, that it is made up and expressed on the basis of shared pleasure, the pleasure of singing in a group in the street, so we can consider it as a playful form of resistance. My aim is to show that we cannot understand the satisfaction of group singing without alluding to all these other dimensions. In order to achieve that, I base the study on information gathered during my ethnographic participation in the Kantujira since early 2017 to present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes as a case study the disappearance of maritime heritage. Specifically, it focuses on the schooners that dominated river trade along the estuary of the Saint Lawrence River (Quebec) until the 1970s, when they were literally abandoned on the banks. Up until then, the schooners had formed part of the familiar landscape of the river, which was the main transport route in the country, and had been considered the real national fleet of the French Canadians. However, testimonies describe the river trade on schooners as a hard, badly paid, risky job. With the development of land transport, coinciding with the Quiet Revolution, schooners were abruptly abandoned. The enormous wooden ships resting on the bank became part of the landscape of forgetting in one of the leading countries in museology and heritage. As context for the study, the paper examines the concept of maritime heritage and its situation in Quebec. We try to explain the disappearance of this heritage, using as a framework of reference the anthropology of time and an idea explored by several authors in which loss can be considered a factor that gives value to heritage. Starting from the burning in February 2015 of a schooner that was in its time considered a masterpiece of small-scale shipbuilding, this paper reflects on the conservation and destruction of heritage as a way to give existence to time or, according to Castoriadis, to socially establish time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Misteri or Festa d'Elx is the main festival of a town (Elche). Although it has survived from the Middle Ages, it was patrimonialised twice in seventy years to be preserved in a historical context of profound changes. Nowadays, the Misteri still is represented, nevertheless, the attitude of the local population towards this Festival shows a polarization that ranges from the indifference of the majority to the enthusiasm of a minority, committed to its maintenance and continuity. In other words, new ways of relating to the Festa have been generated, different from the traditional ones, which implies new cultural meanings. In this paper, we intend to point out these new meanings about this patrimonialised festival. To do this, we analyse discourses and practices of local social agents, especially those involved in their maintenance and safeguarding. We relate them to the historical context that gives them meaning and that is characterized by permanent sociocultural change, and by the influence of globalizing factors at the local level, such as tourism and UNESCO distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early days of anthropology as a discipline in the nineteenth century, evolutionism and diffusionism supplied anthropologists with 'global' visions. Anthropologists have always been involved with all-encompassing cosmopolitan notions such as humankind and culture. Many have thus endeavoured to explain the world as a whole, and how humans have developed in different historical moments. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the new label 'globalization' generated a field of scholarly preoccupations, anthropologists started to contribute to this growing body of literature. Their most valuable contributions are related to the tensions between local and global forces, and between forces of heterogeneity and homogeneity, as well as to the use of ethnography as a methodological tool. Anthropologists have borrowed notions from other related disciplines such as sociology, history, and geography. This paper situates the anthropological production on 'the global' within this diverse history of borrowings, internal disciplinary debates, and wider historical junctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, our goal is to analyze trap music and its development in Spain in recent years. We try to understand its impact among young people, identifying their ethics and aesthetics and finding out how they are perceived among their consumers. Understanding youth cultures as metaphors for social and political changes, we study Spanish trap to find out what it tells us about our society and its recent transformations. Methodologically, we use the analysis of songs and videoclips, we develop interviews and focus groups with young consumers, trappers and producers, and we study representative trapper biographies. Appeared during the crisis that began in 2008 in impoverished areas as a song of the excluded and depoliticized youth, trap will become popular reflecting the concerns of a precarious youth. Trap, we conclude, is a contradictory genre that reproduces the logic of capitalism while opening up spaces for its response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an approach to the way in which the State takes shape in the margins of the Colombian nation. It also inquires about the way the law work in such spaces, in postpeace agreement contexts. It is based on the testimony of two men who were actors in the Colombian armed conflict. The information was collected under the methodological approach of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Our conclusion is that the so-called post-conflict is a stage where alternative legal orders emerge as embodiments of State institutions. This means that the margins are spaces where the State has not consolidated effective and stable forms of social regulation. This situation opens a space for the emergence of local actors who play a role as intermediaries and no formal personifications of the State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the observable consequences of the social and cultural change among the Huaorani (an Amerindian people from the Ecuadorian Amazon contacted in the late 1950s), has been the suicide, which since the beginning of the 21st century has been increasing alarmingly. This article focuses the attention on the case of Epaa, a 28-year-old woman, who unexpectedly and for no apparent reason took her own life away, leaving behind many unknowns. The ethnographic fieldwork on which this research is based lasted two months. Based on the data produced, this paper offers a brief approach to Huaorani suicide in the Toñampari area, to, after that, describe its two central objectives: 1) portray in detail the suicide of Epaa with the versions of the triggering motives; and 2) reflect, from a cultural point of view, on the deep factors that help to understand the protagonist's behavior. The conclusions highlight the practical sense of shamanism as an explanation and the possible influence of words, as an element of contagion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]