Masculinity, femininity, and leadership: Taking a closer look at the alpha female.

An extensive review and textual analysis of the academic and popular literature of the human alpha female was conducted to examine the social construction and expression of the alpha female identity in a small non-random sample of North American women (N = 398). This review revealed 2 predominant alpha female representations in the literature-one more masculine versus one more feminine-and 21 alpha female variables. In this sample of women, the "alpha female" was found to be a recognized socially constructed female identity. Univariate analysis revealed positive and highly significant differences in self-reported mean scores between alpha (N = 94) and non-alpha (N = 304) females for 10 variables including, masculine traits, leadership, strength, low introversion, self-esteem, life satisfaction, sexual experience, initiates sex, enjoys sex and playing a dominant role in sexual encounters, with alpha females scoring higher than non-alphas. The measure of masculine traits was identified as the only predictor of alpha female status as per the multiple regression model. Interestingly, both alpha and non-alpha women scored the same for the measure of feminine traits. Further, both groups scored higher for feminine traits than masculine traits. The results also revealed that neither social dominance nor sexual dominance were predictors of alpha female status which challenge academic and popularized representations of this identity. The results suggest that although the alpha female is often regarded as an exceptional and, at times, an exoticized form of femininity, like other femininities, her identity is marked by contradictions and tensions.

Stature signals status: The association of stature, status and perceived dominance - a thought experiment.

SUMMARY: Background: There is a common perception that tall stature results in social dominance. Evidence in meerkats suggests that social dominance itself may be a strong stimulus for growth. Relative size serves as the signal for individuals to induce strategic growth adjustments. Aim: We construct a thought experiment to explore the potential consequences of the question: is stature a social signal also in humans? We hypothesize that (1) upward trends in height in the lower social strata are perceived as social challenges yielding similar though attenuated upward trends in the dominant strata, and that (2) democratization, but also periods of political turmoil that facilitate upward mobility of the lower strata, are accompanied by upward trends in height. Material and methods: We reanalyzed large sets of height data of European conscripts born between 1856-1860 and 1976-1980; and annual data of German military conscripts, born between 1965 and 1985, with information on height and school education. Results: Taller stature is associated with higher socioeconomic status. Historic populations show larger height differences between social strata that tend to diminish in the more recent populations. German height data suggest that both democratization, and periods of political turmoil facilitating upward mobility of the lower social strata are accompanied by a general upward height spiral that captures the whole population. Discussion: We consider stature as a signal. Nutrition, health, general living conditions and care giving are essential prerequisites for growth, yet not to maximize stature, but to allow for its function as a lifelong social signal. Considering stature as a social signal provides an elegant explanation of the rapid height adjustments observed in migrants, of the hitherto unexplained clustering of body height in modern and historic cohorts of military conscripts, and of the parallelism between changes in political conditions, and secular trends in adult human height since the 19th century.

Low Mitochondrial DNA Diversity in an Ancient Population from China: Insight into Social Organization at the Fujia Site.

To gain insight into the social organization of a population associated with the Dawenkou period, we performed ancient DNA analysis of 18 individuals from human remains from the Fujia site in Shandong Province, China. Directly radiocarbon dated to 4800-4500 cal BP, the Fujia site is assumed to be associated with a transitional phase from matrilineal clans to patrilineal monogamous families. Our results reveal a low mitochondrial DNA diversity from the site and population. Combined with Y chromosome data, the pattern observed at the Fujia site is most consistent with a matrilineal community. The patterns also suggest that the bond of marriage was de-emphasized compared with the bonds of descent at Fujia.

Understanding Societies from Inside the Organisms. Leo Pardi's Work on Social Dominance in Polistes Wasps (1937-1952).

Leo Pardi (1915-1990) was the initiator of ethological research in Italy. During more than 50 years of active scientific career, he gave groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of social life in insects, especially in Polistes wasps, an important model organism in sociobiology. In the 1940s, Pardi showed that Polistes societies are organized in a linear social hierarchy that relies on reproductive dominance and on the physiological and developmental mechanisms that regulate it, i.e. on the status of ovarian development of single wasps. Pardi's work set the stage for further research on the regulatory mechanisms governing social life in primitively eusocial organisms both in wasps and in other insect species. This article reconstructs Pardi's investigative pathway between 1937 and 1952 in the context of European ethology and American animal sociology. This reconstruction focuses on the development of Pardi's physiological approach and presents a new perspective on the interacting development of these two fields at the origins of our current understanding of animal social behavior.

White slavery, whorehouse riots, venereal disease, and saving women: historical context of prostitution interventions and harm reduction in New York City during the Progressive Era.

Harm reduction and structural approaches to reduce HIV risk among sex workers face several barriers. One such barrier is based on moral arguments, and it has a rich historical context. This article examines the historical context of interventions with sex workers in New York City during the Progressive Era (1890-1920). Present at the time, though under a different name, the harm reduction approach was largely dismissed. These same moral underpinnings may be active today in driving interventions and policy toward those that are morally focused and away from those that focus on harm reduction and structural change.

(Des)legitimando jerarquías sociales, profesionales y cognitivas. Conocimiento y prácticas científicas en los procesos de inclusión-exclusión / (De)legitimizing social, professional and cognitive hierarchies. Scientific knowledge and practice in inclusion-exclusion processes

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Ciencia y exclusión: el desplazamiento de los albéitares de la veterinaria a través de la prensa especializada en el cuidado animal (1853-1855) / Science and social exclusion: the displacement of albéitares from veterinary medicine as seen through the specialized press on animal care (1853-1855)

Las intenciones monopolistas de los veterinarios españoles a mediados del siglo XIX tuvieron un importante escollo en la existencia de los albéitares. Los veterinarios justificaron sus aspiraciones por ejercer una función preferente sobre el cuidado animal por la posesión de amplios conocimientos teóricos y de unas capacidades intelectuales abstractas que debían repercutir en una mejora de la praxis veterinaria. La retórica científica era acorde con el clima intelectual de la época, pero no se correspondió con un cambio de hábitos de los clientes ni con el apoyo de los poderes públicos, lo que forzó la búsqueda de otras vías de legitimación social. El presente artículo analiza las dinámicas de inclusión-exclusión que se produjeron en torno al proceso de monopolización de los saberes y de las prácticas veterinarias a mediados del siglo XIX en España. Las estrategias desplegadas por ambos grupos ocupacionales a través de la prensa veterinaria nos ofrecen una perspectiva original: la que se deriva del enfrentamiento entre dos figuras reconocidas legalmente para ejercer la misma función. Sobre la base de esta dicotomía, se estableció una pugna por definir el modelo de relación entre aquellos que pretendían desempeñar un papel rector en la medicina animal y los que, por su mejor encaje en la sociedad de esa época, defendían el mantenimiento de sus formas de vida tradicionales. Los primeros cambios efectivos en la organización de la actividad asistencial no vinieron refrendados por la aceptación social ni por las preferencias de los clientes, sino que estuvieron determinados por postulados estrictamente reglamentarios (AU)

The monopolist intentions of the Spanish veterinarians in the mid-19th century confronted a major obstacle in the existence of albéitares. Veterinarians based their claim to be responsible for animal care on their possession of a broad theoretical knowledge and abstract intellectual capacities, which would supposedly lead to an improvement in veterinarian practice. The scientific rhetoric matched the intellectual climate of the time, but there were no corresponding changes in the habits of clients or in the position of public authorities, forcing veterinarians to seek other routes of social legitimization. This paper analyzes the inclusion-exclusion dynamics around the process of monopolization of veterinarian knowledge and practice in the mid-19th century in Spain. The strategies adopted by the two occupational groups in veterinarian publications offer an original perspective on the confrontation between two entities legally recognized to exert the same function. Based on this dichotomy, a struggle arose to define the model of the relationship between those who intended to play a guiding role in animal medicine and those who, due to their greater integration in the society of the time, defended the preservation of their conventional lifestyle. The first effective changes in the organization of care activity were not supported by social acceptance or by client preferences but were rather determined by strictly regulatory postulates

Political humiliation, object use, and psychological changes in the life of Malcolm X.

This article examines and describes the traumatic effects of political humiliation in the life of Malcolm X, and the psychosocial changes exhibited in his moving from being snared by the talons of racism to a greater sense of freedom and flexibility in working with a wide variety of people. Malcolm X's suffering and psychosocial changes are framed in terms of object relating and use, as well as by his search for a transformational object that would restore and secure his self-worth and efficacy.

The representation of the female body in the multimedia works of Regina José Galindo.

The female body is central to the performance art, poetry and blog site interventions of Guatemalan Regina José Galindo. While Galindo is best known for her performance work, this article compares the hereto overlooked, distinctive and often shocking representations of the female body across her multimedia outputs. We first consider the ways in which, in all three media, Galindo presents an 'excessive', carnivalised, grotesque and abject female body. Second, we analyse representations of the female body that has been subjected to violence at a private and public level. In so doing, we show how Galindo not only contests hegemonic visions of gender and (national) identity but also challenges the viewer/reader to engage with, rather than look away from, the violence to which women are subjected in patriarchal society.

The evolution of human warfare.

Here we propose a new theory for the origins and evolution of human warfare as a complex social phenomenon involving several behavioral traits, including aggression, risk taking, male bonding, ingroup altruism, outgroup xenophobia, dominance and subordination, and territoriality, all of which are encoded in the human genome. Among the family of great apes only chimpanzees and humans engage in war; consequently, warfare emerged in their immediate common ancestor that lived in patrilocal groups who fought one another for females. The reasons for warfare changed when the common ancestor females began to immigrate into the groups of their choice, and again, during the agricultural revolution.

The neoliberal state and the penalization of misery.

The strategy adopted by the neoliberal state to maintain social order and safeguard private property in a context of economic deregulation and social precariousness has destroyed the welfare state and aggravated poverty, depriving the masses of any form of social protection while subjecting them to repression. The reinforcement of the repressive state apparatus is associated with the social instability provoked by the lack of social policies, the degradation of living conditions for the great majority of the population, and the amplification of income and property inequalities both in the so-called capitalist periphery and in the richest industrialized countries. The penalization of misery is revealed as a new expression of class domination.

Advertising Phuket's nightlife on the Internet: a case study of double binds and hegemonic masculinity in sex tourism.

One significant human rights violation in Southeast Asia is the exploitation of women through sex tourism. Such sexual exploitation occurs in Thailand because institutions are complacent and society accepts the practice. This case study, guided by the concepts of double binds and hegemonic masculinity, sought to understand if Thai culture is symbolically constructed in ways to portray Thailand as a desirable "sex tourist" destination. Websites portray Phuket as a patriarchal world where men can live their fantasies of being perfect hegemonic males because Thai bar girls are young nymphomaniacs that have no need to be talked to or understood.

Between affiliation and autonomy: navigating pathways of women's empowerment and gender justice in rural Bangladesh.

Inasmuch as women's subordinate status is a product of the patriarchal structures of constraint that prevail in specific contexts, pathways of women's empowerment are likely to be "path dependent." They will be shaped by women's struggles to act on the constraints that prevail in their societies, as much by what they seek to defend as by what they seek to change. The universal value that many feminists claim for individual autonomy may not therefore have the same purchase in all contexts. This article examines processes of empowerment as they play out in the lives of women associated with social mobilization organizations in the specific context of rural Bangladesh. It draws on their narratives to explore the collective strategies through which these organizations sought to empower the women and how they in turn drew on their newly established "communities of practice" to navigate their own pathways to wider social change. It concludes that while the value attached to social affiliations by the women in the study is clearly a product of the societies in which they have grown up, it may be no more context-specific than the apparently universal value attached to individual autonomy by many feminists.

English midwives' responses to the medicalisation of childbirth (1671-1795).

This paper principally concerns the examination of four English midwifery treatises written by midwives between 1671 and 1795. It focuses on their responses to the medicalisation of childbirth and, in particular, their concerns about medical negligence and their views on the value of anatomical knowledge to the development and defence of their practice. They wrote during a period of mounting tension between midwives and men midwives, when even the most inexperienced men automatically assumed authority over traditional midwives. The texts reveal the authors' concerns about the harm being caused to women and infants by the indiscriminate use of birth instruments. Examples in the primary sources suggest that the practice of both types of midwife ranged from excellent to lethal. However, the midwife-authors perceived men midwives as a threat: unjustly denigrating traditional practice and rapidly carving niches for themselves in midwifery by attending wealthy and influential families, using their birth instruments to intervene and deliver women, sometimes on dubious grounds, and by publishing substantive texts which further promoted their usefulness to society. Foreseeing a medical takeover, the midwife-authors aimed to encourage midwives to be more effective in managing minor difficulties themselves, to avoid families calling in medical aid unnecessarily. They also highlighted the need for more formal education for midwives including basic anatomical knowledge, so they might better defend their practice against a medical attack in a laudable manner. Although the context of practice is quite different today, it will be briefly argued that some of the concerns of the midwife-authors practising in the 18th Century resonate with contemporary concerns about aspects of medicalisation and their insidious effects on women and infants, such as the rising caesarean section rate (Churchill et al., 2006).

Writing Indigenous women's lives in the Bay of Bengal: cultures of empire in the Andaman Islands, 1789-1906.

This article explores the lives of two Andamanese women, both of whom the British called "Tospy." The first part of the article takes an indigenous and gendered perspective on early British colonization of the Andamans in the 1860s, and through the experiences of a woman called Topsy stresses the sexual violence that underpinned colonial settlement as well as the British reliance on women as cultural interlocutors. Second, the article discusses colonial naming practices, and the employment of Andamanese women and men as nursemaids and household servants during the 1890s­1910s. Using an extraordinary murder case in which a woman known as Topsy-ayah was a central witness, it argues that both reveal something of the enduring associations and legacies of slavery, as well as the cultural influence of the Atlantic in the Bay of Bengal. In sum, these women's lives present a kaleidoscope view of colonization, gender, networks of Empire, labor, and domesticity in the Bay of Bengal.

The Faustian "Gretchen": overlooked aspects of a famous male fantasy.

This essay takes issue, on the one hand, with the traditional interpretation of Goethe's Margarete as representing the Natural, the Naïve, and the selflessly loving feminine as well as, on the other hand, the feminist interpretation of Margarete as a male fantasy figure who props up the masculine self-perception of the male as a dominant and titanic "striver." Both interpretative tendencies overlook the close analogy with which Margarete's aspirations and behaviour mirror Faust's own regarding a shared readiness to rebel, break all the rules, and dare the ultimate, which gives Margarete her own independent agenda, makes her an individual in her own right. In this light the three key paradigms of femininity ­ Madonna, whore/witch, and nature ­ which shape the presentation of this character are investigated, as well as the relation of the "Gretchentragödie" to notions of the classical, the role of sexual fulfilment in Margarete's decision-making, and the significance of this character's two names. The essay concludes that, excepting the area of intellectualised self-consciousness, Margarete must be regarded as a striving individual who engages in autonomous activity, which much previous criticism has made the domain of the self-determined modern male subject.

Domestic violence and social responsibility in contemporary Spanish cinema: a portfolio view of behavioral dynamics.

Domestic abuse continues to claim many lives in Spain despite a series of new laws to protect women and to punish abusers. This essay explores the cultural influences of contemporary Spanish cinema on domestic violence. Four films are assessed against a Portfolio Model of social responsibility that uses two basic dimensions: realism and human rights. Realism in each film is determined by the behavioral components of the internationally recognized Duluth Model and the Wheel of Power and Control. The human rights dimension addresses equality, power and agency for women. This study focuses on Icíar Bollaín's "Te doy mis ojos" (2003), Javier Balaguer's "Sólo mía" (2001), Benito Zambrano's "Solas" (1999), and Pedro Almodóvar's "Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón" (1980). The results demonstrate significant variations in the measure of social responsibility indicating that contemporary Spanish cinema may play a role in perpetuating gender-based violence.