Introduction: neo-environmentalism in Andean archaeology In early anthropology, environmental determin-ism was used to explain race, human demography , material culture, cultural variation and cultural change. As anthropological interpretation evolved, simplistic reductionist thinking was replaced with more complex socio-cultural explanations. Despite these theoretical advances, environmental d...

Understanding and managing for change is a central concern of design, commerce and societies. Well‐intended interventions often lead to unexpected outcomes with significant implications for health, safety, security and prosperity. While considerable intellectual investment has been directed at quantitative and statistical approaches to understanding causality of socio‐cultural system change, th...

The development of cultural psychiatry is reviewed at different stages historically in contemporary China during the past two and a half decades. Comments are made about the social, political, and professional reasons why the development of cultural psychiatry has been delayed, and what needs to be done to improve the situation in the near future, particularly to expand the concern from the min...

This paper investigates the influence of culture on product design in Botswana, a topic on which there little previous research. It is argued that product innovation should be assimilated within the context of Botswana’s own culture but it has been observed that designers have not yet been able to encode cultural phenomena to the same extent as physical ones. The basis of this paper is that the...

The priority areas in the leprosy elimination programme are early case detection, case holding and consequently, the prevention of disabilities. In some countries, a significant number of cases do not seek treatment or seek treatment late, partly due to socio-cultural beliefs and stigma about leprosy. We review the literature on socio-cultural beliefs and stigma about leprosy and the interventi...

Time is a concept that highly depends on the socio-cultural context. Its perception by humans is primarily based on the cultures, nations and social environment they belong to. Hence, different socio-cultural contexts imply different understandings of time. This leads to communication problems when their members start interacting with each other. In a dynamic and multi-cultural environment like...

climate change and its possible impacts on the environment and socio-economic systems now constitute the most important environmental problem facing mankind in the 21st century. climate change will increase poverty and hardship, endanger food security, destabilize economies, decrease food and water and create social insecurity in many countries and undermine our goals for achieving sustainable ...