This chapter focuses on some of the principal ways in which the family has been viewed, or theorized, in political-economic thought, but focuses in particular on the legacy of Edmund Burke’s conservative defense of that institution against radical challenge on the grounds that inheritance materially underpins moral and cultural continuity. Tracing the the complex evolution of this essentially elitist argument in relation to Malthusianism, as well as through both the discourse of eugenics and literary responses to the emergence of a “mass society,” the chapter also highlights the role of Burkean traditions in affirming an orthodox heteronormativity against sexual liberationist movements, theorists, and writers. Ultimately, though, the conclusion demonstrates that the commodification of queer sexuality has contributed to new forms of sociocultural tension at the heart of our contemporary politics.

This chapter reviews the theoretical and research literature on self-, public, and structural stigma and stigma’s impact on mental health for the largest ethnic minority groups in the United States: African Americans, Latinx, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. None of these ethnic minority groups receives mental health treatment commensurate with treatment need. Research documents that stigma deters minority mental health help seeking, especially for Asian and African Americans. Limited research suggests that pubic and structural stigma may interfere more with access to high-quality care and success in community functioning, although suitably formulated hypotheses remain to be tested. As researchers move beyond ethnic categorization for studying stigma disparity’s role, they must better specify cultural differences explaining minority-White disparities in stigma. They must also further explain stigma disparities in comprehensive models that explain how stigma disparities explain disparities in minority help seeking. Findings can inform culturally attuned anti-stigma interventions and public health messages to reach ethnic minority communities and guide outreach by trusted actors and institutions seeking to break down stigma’s barriers, recruit more minority persons into care, and provide a welcoming environment for successful community living.

Responding to imagined threats about chemical weapons delivered aerially, the British government intensified its efforts to create gas masks for everyone, testing fit and designs for those who might be unable to wear standard equipment. It did so in an atmosphere where popular culture continued to offer dire imaginings about poison gas’s potential for widespread destruction and where questions about anti-gas protection in the empire continued to emerge. By the start of 1938, the government’s air raid precautions department had developed extensive plans for how to distribute gas masks in case of an emergency across the United Kingdom. However, as it began to unveil such plans further, it encountered resistance from pacifists and antimilitarists as well as some grudging acceptance. The first significant test of these schemes came amid the Czechoslovakian or Munich Crisis in September 1938. On what became known as “Gas Mask Sunday,” the government asked its civilian inhabitants to line up across the nation to be fitted for gas masks. Although the outbreak of war was avoided, the limitations of anti-gas protection and the lack of suitable gas masks for all would propel this aspect of civil defense to the forefront as Britain’s entry into war seemed more likely than ever.

Digital media are integrated into the lives of adolescents in almost every corner of the globe, yet the extent of integration, how media are used, and the effects of media in development are anything but universal. In this chapter, we summarize studies that illustrate how cultural context matters for understanding digital media and adolescent psychological development. In keeping with our transactional view of culture and human development, we explore how cultural values, structures of community, and notions of selfhood shape, and are shaped by, digital media use. To balance the disproportionate representation of survey research with samples in North America and Western Europe, we draw from anthropological and ethnographic research, including our own fieldwork in northern Thailand and a Maya community in Mexico. We conclude by proposing future directions in the study of culture and digital media.

This chapter is centered on the scientific conceptualization of the term “photography” and its relationship with the photographer, the photographed, and the viewer, including that which is existent between the photographer and the camera, especially the chemistry between both lenses — biological and technological — the synergy and the differences. Photographs, according to the chapter, are representations of the reality of a particular timeframe. By answering certain expedient questions, the author engages his collections (with pictorial evidence) to illustrate the nature of photography vis-à-vis other factors that contribute to the shot, such as the camera and how it is received by the people. Moreover, the chapter views photography as a “social contract” between the photographer and the photographed, and “construction” as the process of taking the shot and reproducing the image. As for the interpretation of the picture by the viewer, it is believed that the pictures themselves dictate how they are to be interpreted or engaged, although this is also highly dependent on the viewer’s understanding. In addition, the chapter explores the effect of photography at its dawn and what its exclusion of African peculiarity, color-wise, meant.

This chapter also appreciates the aesthetics and cultural significance of African arts – celebrating the outstanding creativity inherent in Yoruba history, social life, and artistry; however, with a focus on painting, which, as other Yoruba arts, transforms their cultural ideas into materialization. Yoruba painting in this chapter is portrayed to provide “visual gratification” and “creative inspiration” as well as a means of engaging viewers in “critical commentaries” that promote culture. Also, it is seen as capable of engendering cultural unity with portrayals of “mythological and historical” aspects common to the Yoruba people, for instance. Beyond the above, Yoruba paintings are also used to illustrate the sociocultural principles of the Yoruba via “naturalistic postures and framings” in which individuals are shown to display some of these collective values. With pictorial evidence, the chapter references many of these cultural values, such as “reverence” depicted in the painting of an individual stooping. Like other materials in Yorubaland, paintings have meanings to them and are expressive, albeit in non-verbal communication mode, revealing who the owner is or their “intimacy with the idea, person, motifs, belief” being espoused in the painting.

This chapter attempts to “study some of the many intersections between narratives and politics.” The human life or experience is seen as a story, a compilation of narratives that explain our realities. Similarly, politics, the apogee of any society, designed to establish and maintain it, is a “human narrative,” independent, and can be comprehended in relation to other aspects of the society. To expound on the theme of “collective action,” the chapter answers three questions: how people come together for a common goal; why enforcers of collective actions turn to stories; and the significance of storytelling in triggering a collective action. The chapter finds answers in “affinity” (feeling of oneness, proximity, and brotherhood) and “solidarity” (feeling of a common goal). The chapter broaches the issue of the inhibition to narrative politics — the “perceived reliance on imperial system of knowledge,” as well as its emancipation — “the elevation of repressed narratives.” In addition, through the author’s personal experiences, encounters, and references to scholarship, he mirrors some African narratives, especially the Yoruba and their importance in spurring positive change.

This chapter furthers the discourse on “narrative” with specificity on “magic, memory, myth, and metaphor.” Herein, the chapter shows that the knowledge of the past is preserved in oral vehicles as “songs, images, poems, rituals and religions, stories and myths,” as memories not only preserve but sustain them by transporting them to succeeding generations, using narrative when evoked. It also examines memory’s limitations, especially when compared to history. They include “bias (of the narrator), misinformation, infallibility and the impossibility of rightly (in)validating (individual) memories”–the lack of corroborator. It is also prone to manipulation and subject to the narrator’s interest, while the information processed and stored as memory can also fade over time owing to the collection of new memories. In the Yoruba context, the chapter highlights the relationship between “Itan” and “Aroba,” with the major distinguishing factor being their timeframe from the period of happening. The chapter also dwells on collective memory, which relies on individuals’ narration to become one because no one person was present everywhere to witness everything at once. Lastly, there is the clarification of the different problems in African epistemology, such as magic and the likes.

This chapter highlights how colonial institutions, especially Western education through academic knowledge, have helped to sustain the “colonial matrix of power.” Its corrupted nature is reflected in the extrapolation of data from Africa (subaltern culture) and rebranding them as Western, which is to the detriment and exclusion of Africans and a support structure for Western hegemony. The solution to this imbroglio as proffered by the author is “decoloniality,” a process that combats the root of the problem seeking to “dismantle the colonial matrix of power,” and enhancing the practice of “subaltern epistemology,” which is the means to achieve what he referred to as “epistemic liberation.” The systematic process to achieving this is what the chapter sets out to do here: show how the academic sustains the colonial matrix of power, examine the biases associated with ethnography, “deconstructs the researcher’s role in it,” bridge the gap between quality research and subaltern epistemology, and lastly, how to achieve epistemic liberation using autoethnography. Using autoethnography as the methodology, the researcher explains and justifies why the researcher, for a proper interpretation of African cultural ethos, has to be the researched.

This chapter beams the light on the artistry achievements of Africans and signifies their “flourishing culture.” The major aspect of artistry being celebrated is sculptures. From this chapter, one is able to deduce that the carvings are such that “Yoruba history and culture can be perceived, interpreted and understood” through them. They manifest in many forms (materially), such as bronze, clay, stone, and wood, all of whom were discussed to fully understand and appreciate the creativity inherent in the African culture before and after colonialism. With several references to specific sculptural works and pictorial evidence, mostly from his personal collection, the author describes how Yoruba sculptors (Gbenagbena or Gbegilere) translate and manipulate natural elements and past-but-relevant happenings into artistic objects. Also discussed is the measure of a sculptor’s worth, which cannot be defined by Western currency but by the level of creativity and beauty apparent in his artwork, some of which depict African cultural ideas, principles, and attributes, such as Omoluabi, Iwapele, Didan, and Idogba. The chapter extensively discusses the importance sculptors place on the head, and also defends African sculptures against Western criticism.

This is an exploration to understand and appreciate another aspect of Yoruba art – the textile – through an interrogation of textiles “as an intelligence” with corroborative references to other scholars. Given that Yoruba textiles are adorned till date, most importantly in their rich varieties, the chapter is filled with enough material evidence to sustain a debate aimed at establishing the beauty and creativity inherent in African culture through the textiles. In this chapter, the “readability” and “intelligibility” of Yoruba textiles is established, with its peculiarity seen as an ambassador of the Yoruba culture. In addition, the importance of textile as a craft, which, by virtue of the peculiarity of its making, portrays the Yoruba art and provides a history of textiles in Africa, is drawn on. Historically too, the chapter shows that Yoruba textiles also contribute to premises that counter the Western assumption that Africa is backward.

This chapter explores cultural themes in Africa with “narrative politics” and its cultural values central to the discourse. In expounding “narrative,” the chapter brings to the fore its two most potent modes (literature and history), which reflect reality but are different in their modus operandi – through imagination (creativity) and verifiable facts. Written beautifully and with references, this chapter blurs the contrast between the two “narrative devices” and focuses instead on espousing their working togetherness. This is because a co-adoption of both in the narrative adds creativity to facts presentation, which thus makes it interesting to read and sustain readers’ interest just as their Yoruba derivative, Alo and Itan, is often a mixture of both.

The chapter also asserts the importance of autoethnography and how through personal experience and identity, the society’s “collective consciousness” is exhibited and manifested. Also, there are references made to the cultural relevance and implication of “time and season,” “taboos and superstitions,” “greetings and reverence,” as well as “namings and places” in Yorubaland.

“My Archive,” as depicted in this chapter, documents the author’s wealth of experience as a “scholar and researcher, teacher and mentor” in the form of a dialogue with his past to interrogate African studies and, in particular, Yoruba history. With a natural life experience, the author having lived in both colonial and postcolonial Africa, the chapter investigates and interrogates the cultural history of Africa (with focus on the Yoruba) vis-à-vis its evolution into modernity. Autoethnography is noteworthy a narrative of (parts of) self. It is composed of primary sources of two facets – the author’s life works and cultural collections. The archive also, via the latter, interrogates the two colonially imposed eco-political systems of capitalism and socialism as with other cultural impositions and their far-reaching consequences. Each chapter’s categorization is summarized at the latter part of the chapter.

The development of a research culture in higher education institutions is a significant issue, but with little empirical evidence in the Mexican context, especially at the undergraduate level. The objective of this chapter nonetheless is to analyze the theoretical and practical dimensions of undergraduate research undertaken by different Mexican institutions. The chapter is structured in four parts, beginning with a description of the Mexican educational system and the objectives that higher education has in order to develop professional research, continuing with a description of the role that the National Council of Science and Technology has developed in the development and infrastructure of research in the country. Subsequently, best practice and results are addressed where undergraduate research and development has been enhanced, and the chapter ends with the future developments that are envisioned in higher education institutions in Mexico.

Opinion polls indicate that many people in the UK are concerned about wildlife declines and about overpopulation. These feelings are widely shared by naturalists, scientists, artists and many religious groups, as well as by the general public. Unfortunately, such views are uncommon among economists and rarely feature at all in politics. Discussion of population pressure has remained largely taboo, even in wildlife circles, presumably because of fear of causing offence. However, there are adverse consequences for society from a high human population that go far beyond problems for wildlife and countryside. Traffic jams are health hazards, both physically and mentally,and infrastructure expansions generate stress for those affected by them, while public services including healthcare and education are increasingly overwhelmed by people needing to use them.

In this session, the patient is queried about issues of anger management, and is taught emotion regulation skills. This session presents the anger toolbox: a set of tools to use when angry.

The session introduces a Trauma-Recall Protocol, which consists of a set of “tools” (for example, emotion regulation techniques) to be used when unwanted trauma recall occurs, and that help the patient to tolerate exposure. During the teaching of the protocols, be sure that the patient does the stretching and other motions, and, if the patient does not, encourage the patient to do so. The therapist should maintain a playful demeanor. At times, to ensure that a sense of relaxation is being conveyed, the therapist should purposefully slow and deepen the voice. (This creates a sense of shift in the session.)

In this session, applied stretching is taught, and the patient is led once more through the whole body muscle relaxation (with contract-release and stretch-release relaxation) with visualization. As in almost all lessons, there is a section on mindfulness and stretching. As indicated in the last session, the therapist should be sure that the patient does the stretching and other motions, and, if the patient does not, the therapist should encourage the patient to do so, all the while with a playful mien, a playful demeanor. This models a positive way of interacting and it also creates new positive associations to the topics being discussed. At times, to promote relaxation, the therapist should purposefully slow and deepen the voice. This also creates a sense of shift in the session: a shift in voice and emotional register.