Data from 44 societies are used to explore sex segregation by field of study. Contrary to accounts linking socioeconomic modernization to a "degendering" of public-sphere institutions, sex typing of curricular fields is stronger in more economically developed contexts. The authors argue that two cultural forces combine in advanced industrial societies to create a new sort of sex segregation reg...

Legacy system modernization has gained increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners, mainly due to the need of maintaining legacy systems towards business needs and technology advances. In this way, a set of techniques, tools and terms related to software modernization have been proposed— although they have not been consolidated yet. This hinders the characterization of real mod...

Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) is mainly remembered as the "father" of cellular pathology; however, he was not just a pathologist. His contributions to anthropology, archeology, ethnography, and history, as well as his involvement in epidemiology, public health, and politics, portray a man with multiple interests, deeply engaged in the controversies of his time. In his Report on the Typhus Epidemic...

While numerous Western countries first experienced cultural rationalization, next economic modernization, and then faced the challenges of population aging and pension policy reform, both Latin America and China, in contrast, are dealing with these challenges in the context of much less developed economies and stronger traditional cultures. In this article we analyze old-age pension reform effo...

This paper compares and contrasts two similar sets of data about AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) and AIDS awareness from the island of New Guinea. The goal of this comparison is to show that state policies and values can dramatically affect personal knowledge about safer sexual practices. One set was collected in 2001 in the Indonesian province of Papua, which is home to indigenous P...

Historical collapse of ancient states or civilizations has raised new awareness about its possible relevance to current issues of sustainability, in the context of global change. This Special Feature examines 12 case studies of societies under stress, of which seven suffered severe transformation. Outcomes were complex and unpredictable. Five others overcame breakdown through environmental, pol...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This case describes challenges in the adoption and implementation of IT in two public sector enterprises in the postal and distribution businesses respectively, in India. In spite of similarities in the scale of operations and the general cultural contexts, the IT adoption processes and outcomes of the two organizations were significantly different. While one failed to impleme...

Before the invention of photography, the written and spoken word and artistic representation passed on the traditions of Japanese culture. The opening of Japan to international trade in 1854 and the Meiji Restoration in 1868 resulted in rapid modernization and profound cultural changes in Japanese life. At this time, the West brought with it the technology of photography ironically to record th...

fertility and childbearing, in addition to the biological aspects, has always been regarded as a social phenomenon and, therefore, to understand the incident, values and beliefs, norms, and in short, the culture of any society should be scrutinized. since the concept, condition, and value of childbearing is associated with cultural, social, political and economic dimensions, it has undergone va...

Using documentary sources, this work analyzes the creation and initial functioning of the Instituto de Investigaciones Hematológicas (Institute of Hematological Research) of the National Academy of Medicine (Buenos Aires, Argentina) in the context of the scientific modernization initiated within the country during the mid-1950s. Particular attention is paid to the generation of material bases a...