Close, but not close enough? Audience’s reactions to domesticated distant suffering in international news coverage

The interest in audience responses to mediated distant suffering has been growing in the last decade. Earlier research about the mediation of distant suffering was often morally or theoretically based, or textually informed and recent empirical research has often focused on how the theories and text–based studies resonate with empirical research of the audience. Earlier text–based research has found that journalists domesticate news about distant events to bring such events closer by and thus make them more relevant and appealing. Four types to domesticate news about distant suffering were found; emotional domestication, aid–driven domestication, familiarizing the unfamiliar, and “what are the stakes”. These domestication strategies aim to establish a link between the distant event and the national or local context of the viewer to bring distant events closer to home and to invite the audience to care. Knowledge about the actual audience’s reactions towards domesticated news is lacking. Therefore, central to this study is whether, and how domestication strategies on the production side of the news, are recognized and if these, or other domesticating strategies are employed by the audience to be caring and morally engaged towards the distant victims. In order to study this we conducted ten focus groups (N=51) in January and February 2016, where we showed a news item about the earthquake in Nepal which happened nine months before. The empirical analysis is informed by concepts from the fields of moral and social psychology. For one, according to social psychological traditions, differentiation is made between people’s cognitive (rational) and affective (emotional) reactions towards their social environment. In addition, and more specifically, we used the concepts empathy and sympathy, defined in the field of moral– and social psychology to structurally analyze people’s reaction towards the mediated distant suffering. We also used the social psychologically informed concept of ‘denial’ to study people’s less caring reactions towards the mediated suffering. Based on the empirical results, we propose a two–flow model of domestication, consisting of first–level domestication on the production side by journalists, and second–level domestication where the audience themselves uses strategies of domestication to make sense of distant suffering. In addition, not all domestication strategies were equally, or equally successfully employed by the audience for a better understanding of– or moral engagement towards, the suffering

The practices of yam domestication in Benin and Nigeria

Guinea yams (Dioscorea cayenensis Lam. D. rotundata Poir) have been described several times as resulting from a process of domestication of wild yams of the Enantiophyllum section, initially by Burkill (1939) and by Miege (1952) and later, on a more elaborated way, by Hamon (1987) and Terauchi et ai. (1992). It is only recently that research institutions realized that the domestication of wild yam is still an active process. The first attempt to clarify the techniques of domestication used by the African farmers in West Africa was conducted in 1995 in northern Benin within the Bariba ethnic group (Dumont and Vernier, 2000). In order to obtain more global vision of yam domestication the same study was extended to other yam grower ethnic groups in Benin and Nigeria. (Résumé d'auteur

Animal interface: the generosity of domestication

The chapter engages with historical processes and contemporary conditions of animal domestication, arguing that domestication might best be seen as at least as much an emotive or affective process as an instrumental one. It draws on the notion of `corporeal generosity’ to suggest that there are ongoing, generative and unpredictable flows between human and animal bodies that live in close proximity, and that animal domestication has resulted in unforeseen transformations in the bodies of both human and animal participants. It is also argued that pathogen exchange between different species is one of the most important unforeseen outcomes of domestication- and should be viewed both as a destructive and a generative process

Genetic analysis of safflower domestication.

BackgroundSafflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is an oilseed crop in the Compositae (a.k.a. Asteraceae) that is valued for its oils rich in unsaturated fatty acids. Here, we present an analysis of the genetic architecture of safflower domestication and compare our findings to those from sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.), an independently domesticated oilseed crop within the same family.We mapped quantitative trait loci (QTL) underlying 24 domestication-related traits in progeny from a cross between safflower and its wild progenitor, Carthamus palaestinus Eig. Also, we compared QTL positions in safflower against those that have been previously identified in cultivated x wild sunflower crosses to identify instances of colocalization.ResultsWe mapped 61 QTL, the vast majority of which (59) exhibited minor or moderate phenotypic effects. The two large-effect QTL corresponded to one each for flower color and leaf spininess. A total of 14 safflower QTL colocalized with previously reported sunflower QTL for the same traits. Of these, QTL for three traits (days to flower, achene length, and number of selfed seed) had cultivar alleles that conferred effects in the same direction in both species.ConclusionsAs has been observed in sunflower, and unlike many other crops, our results suggest that the genetics of safflower domestication is quite complex. Moreover, our comparative mapping results indicate that safflower and sunflower exhibit numerous instances of QTL colocalization, suggesting that parallel trait transitions during domestication may have been driven, at least in part, by parallel genotypic evolution at some of the same underlying genes

Soil domestication by rice cultivation results in plant-soil feedback through shifts in soil microbiota.

BackgroundSoils are a key component of agricultural productivity, and soil microbiota determine the availability of many essential plant nutrients. Agricultural domestication of soils, that is, the conversion of previously uncultivated soils to a cultivated state, is frequently accompanied by intensive monoculture, especially in the developing world. However, there is limited understanding of how continuous cultivation alters the structure of prokaryotic soil microbiota after soil domestication, including to what extent crop plants impact soil microbiota composition, and how changes in microbiota composition arising from cultivation affect crop performance.ResultsWe show here that continuous monoculture (> 8 growing seasons) of the major food crop rice under flooded conditions is associated with a pronounced shift in soil bacterial and archaeal microbiota structure towards a more consistent composition, thereby domesticating microbiota of previously uncultivated sites. Aside from the potential effects of agricultural cultivation practices, we provide evidence that rice plants themselves are important drivers of the domestication process, acting through selective enrichment of specific taxa, including methanogenic archaea, in their rhizosphere that differ from those of native plants growing in the same environment. Furthermore, we find that microbiota from soils domesticated by rice cultivation contribute to plant-soil feedback, by imparting a negative effect on rice seedling vigor.ConclusionsSoil domestication through continuous monoculture cultivation of rice results in compositional changes in the soil microbiota, which are in part driven by the rice plants. The consequences include a negative impact on plant performance and increases in greenhouse gas emitting microbes

Anthropogenic seed dispersal: rethinking the origins of plant domestication

It is well documented that ancient sickle harvesting led to tough rachises, but the other seed dispersal properties in crop progenitors are rarely discussed. The first steps toward domestication are evolutionary responses for the recruitment of humans as dispersers. Seed dispersal–based mutualism evolved from heavy human herbivory or seed predation. Plants that evolved traits to support human-mediated seed dispersal express greater fitness in increasingly anthropogenic ecosystems. The loss of dormancy, reduction in seed coat thickness, increased seed size, pericarp density, and sugar concentration all led to more-focused seed dispersal through seed saving and sowing. Some of the earliest plants to evolve domestication traits had weak seed dispersal processes in the wild, often due to the extinction of animal dispersers or short-distance mechanical dispersal

Etyma for 'chicken', 'duck', and 'goose' among language phyla in China and Southeast Asia

This paper considers the history of words for domesticated poultry, including ‘chicken’, ‘goose’, and ‘duck’, in China and mainland Southeast Asia to try to relate associated domestication events with specific language groups. Linguistic, archaeological and historical evidence supports Sinitic as one linguistic source, but in other cases, Tai and Austroasiatic form additional centers of lexical forms which were borrowed by neighboring phyla. It is hypothesized that these geographic regions of etyma for domesticated birds may represent instances of bird domestication, or possibly advances in bird husbandry, by speech communities in the region in the Neolithic Era, followed by spread of both words and cultural practices

Animals domestication and agriculture as outcomes of collusion

Although it is known that there are circumstances where the competitive situation does not promote social welfare maximization, collusion is usually associated with firms’ strategies that decrease welfare. In this paper, using the theoretical framework of the industrial organization, I demonstrate in a model with two sectors that the economic revolution induced by the animal domestication and the agriculture is an outcome from the strengthen in collusion between human beings in the course of historical time and not vice-versa.Collusion, welfare progress, domestication, agriculture emergence

Genome mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTL) controlling domestication traits of intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium).

Allohexaploid (2n = 6x = 42) intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium), abbreviated IWG, is an outcrossing perennial grass belonging to the tertiary gene pool of wheat. Perenniality would be valuable option for grain production, but attempts to introgress this complex trait from wheat-Thinopyrum hybrids have not been commercially successful. Efforts to breed IWG itself as a dual-purpose forage and grain crop have demonstrated useful progress and applications, but grain yields are significantly less than wheat. Therefore, genetic and physical maps have been developed to accelerate domestication of IWG. Herein, these maps were used to identify quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and candidate genes associated with IWG grain production traits in a family of 266 full-sib progenies derived from two heterozygous parents, M26 and M35. Transgressive segregation was observed for 17 traits related to seed size, shattering, threshing, inflorescence capacity, fertility, stem size, and flowering time. A total of 111 QTLs were detected in 36 different regions using 3826 genotype-by-sequence markers in 21 linkage groups. The most prominent QTL had a LOD score of 15 with synergistic effects of 29% and 22% over the family means for seed retention and percentage of naked seeds, respectively. Many QTLs aligned with one or more IWG gene models corresponding to 42 possible domestication orthogenes including the wheat Q and RHT genes. A cluster of seed-size and fertility QTLs showed possible alignment to a putative Z self-incompatibility gene, which could have detrimental grain-yield effects when genetic variability is low. These findings elucidate pathways and possible hurdles in the domestication of IWG