Dominant group/Humanities

This is a dance group from Argentina that performs the Tango and various folk dances on tour in Greece. Credit: Sergio grazioli.

It is arguable that a dominant group may exist in the humanities when there is an emphasis on humanism and what is humane.

Humanities

"The term 'humanities' includes, but is not limited to, the study and interpretation of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life." --National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, 1965, as amended.

The Division of Research Programs for the National Endowment for the Humanities encourages research and writing in all areas of the humanities, including the study of history, literature, philosophy, religion, and foreign cultures. Through grants to individual scholars and institutions, the division fosters work that enables Americans to understand the world.

Dominant group

Main resource: Dominant group

Is dominant group an aspect of societal organization or the human condition?

Def. "[b]eing in a position of power, authority or ascendancy over others" is called dominance, or "[t]he state of being dominant; of prime importance".

Is there a patrician class that controls the humanities so as to dictate what the humanities are?

Examples from primary sources are to be used to prove or disprove each hypothesis. These can be collected per subject or in general.

1. Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.
2. Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
3. Association hypothesis: dominant group is associated in some way with the original research.
4. Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.
5. Control group hypothesis: there is a control group that can be used to study dominant group.
6. Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
7. Evolution hypothesis: dominant group is a product of evolutionary processes, such groups are the evolutionary process, produce evolutionary processes, or are independent of evolutionary processes.
8. Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
9. Importance hypothesis: dominant group signifies original research results that usually need to be explained by theory and interpretation of experiments.
10. Indicator hypothesis: dominant group may be an indicator of something as yet not understood by the primary author of original research.
11. Influence hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article containing original research to indicate influence or an influential phenomenon.
12. Interest hypothesis: dominant group is a theoretical entity used by scholarly authors of primary sources for phenomena of interest.
13. Metadefinition hypothesis: all uses of dominant group by all primary source authors of original research are included in the metadefinition for dominant group.
14. Null hypothesis: there is no significant or special meaning of dominant group in any sentence or figure caption in any refereed journal article.
15. Object hypothesis: dominant group is an object within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
16. Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby's Medical Dictionary.
17. Original research hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article by the author to indicate that the article contains original research.
18. Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a synonym for dominant group.
19. Purpose hypothesis: dominant group is written into articles by authors for a purpose.
20. Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.
21. Source hypothesis: dominant group is a source within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
22. Term hypothesis: dominant group is a significant term that may require a 'rigorous definition' or application and verification of an empirical definition.

Humanistic methods

Any grouping of humans on some basis seems to be contrary to the emphasis on individualization and individual differences of humanistic methods. A dominant group, or the application of the term to some group, may actually reduce the sense of humanity toward the individuals to the point of denying them individual rights and freedoms just as such a dominant group may be said to do to a dominated group.

The concept of dominance may be contrary to humanism and humanistic methods.

Personality and social psychology

"We anticipated that targeting these core components would allow us to capture dominant group members' interpersonal behaviors that were apt to have the greatest impact on their interaction partner. ... This research was facilitated by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to Jacquie D. Vorauer."

Individualization

Main resource: Individualization

"Critical multiculturalism aims to move beyond a recognition and legitimizing of cultures—or what some think of as a celebration of difference. Instead advocates of critical multiculturalism seek to understand first how assumptions about such characteristics as race, class, and gender lead to oppression. In addition, critical multiculturalism examines both how power structures provide a dominant group’s control of social institutions and how cultural practices naturalize the dominant group’s advantage by attributing it to individual achievement."

Communication

Main resource: Communication

"Discourses are intimately related to the distribution of social power and hierarchical structure in society, which is why they are always and everywhere ideological. Control over certain Discourses can lead to the acquisition of social goods (money, power, status) in a society. These Discourses empower those groups that have the least conflicts with their other Discourses when they use them. Let us call Discourses that lead to social goods in a society dominant Discourses, and let us refer to those groups that have the fewest conflicts when using them as dominant groups."

Medicine

File:Paradigms of medicine.png

The table lists the 12 tenets for each of the three paradigms of medicine: the technocratic, humanistic, and holistic models. Credit: R Davis-Floyd.

"The word ‘hegemony’ refers to an ideology espoused by the dominant group in a given society."

There "are ideologies that are obviously dominant: in economics, the hegemonic ideology is capitalism, and in health care, it is the technomedical model. When an ideology is hegemonic, all other competing ideologies become ‘alternative’ to it. Thus healing modalities such as midwifery, chiropractic, homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, and so forth have been viewed as alternative to allopathy. While these modalities command increasing respect and usage, allopathic technomedicine still sets the standards for care. Its hegemonic status works to ensure its profitability: pharmaceutical and medical technology companies constitute by far one of the most profitable industries in the United States. The median after-research profit rate in 1993 for the makers of the top-selling prescription drugs was more than five times higher than the median profit rate for all Fortune 500 companies in the same year [15]. Any system -- medical, economic, religious, or otherwise -- that gains sociocultural ascendancy and then rigidifies, shutting out new information and refusing to incorporate contradictory evidence, is in mortal danger both to itself and to the public it serves. Such hegemonic systems can benefit from frontal attacks, which can serve to keep them flexible and responsive to the changing realities of changing times."

Hypotheses

Main resource: Hypotheses

1. An emphasis on humanism and what is humane may not include egalitarianism.
2. An emphasis on humanism and what is humane may include a dominant group.

External links

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