Humanities desk
< July 21	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 23 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 22

Family businesses

Is it common in family businesses for family members to be given special treatment such as automatic entry, higher pay and being given more responsibility quicker? If so, is this a good idea?

I don't know how common, or if that's even empirically measurable, but our article on Nepotism is a good place to start, particularly the business [1] section and its references. El duderino ^(abides) 08:58, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Have you read family business yet? InedibleHulk (talk) 09:02, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It must depend very much upon which country, as laws and cultures differ. Also on the size of the business and how long it has been established. In the case of a small shop it is often more the case that the children are pressurised to work in the business, rather than being given any privileges. A larger business might have equal opportunities policies relating to recruitment and family members would be treated the same as any other employees. As for whether it is a good idea, you would have to look at some how-to-run-your-business guides. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:05, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. In a small business, all the employees may be family members, so that simplifies things. Once they start to hire outside workers, though, then they need to consider how lack of advancement, etc., for non-family members may lower morale, increase turnover, etc. StuRat (talk) 12:57, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone loves Lepidus

Having done my best recently to improve the article on Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (triumvir), the forgotten one of the Second Triumvirate, I had a look at the article traffic statistics. Normally Marcus gets a solid by unexciting 150-200 views a day. Suddenly, on the 11th-12th of this month he leaped up to rock star-like levels, getting 25000 hits [2]. Anyone know why? Was some politician somewhere compared to him? Was there news that some big actor will be playing him? I can't find an answer and the mystery is disturbing me. Paul B (talk) 15:13, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it might have to do with the current production of Julius Caesar, in which Lepidus is a significant character, by Shakespeare & Company and coincidentally by several other Shakespeare production companies across the United States this summer. Marco polo (talk) 15:46, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a likely answer: Info about Augustus was posted [3] to a popular subReddit on July 10, linking to Vedius_Pollio (note his even more dramatic spike [4]). Somewhere in the thread, Lepidus was mentioned, and redditors went nuts on their Roman history over the next few days. We have an article on the Slashdot_effect, and the Reddit "Hug of death" is the analogous term. If you doubt the numbers, that subreddit currently has 6,100,724 subscribers, and when I checked the page there were ~10k viewing at that moment -- Reddit is massively popular, and whenever something gets and odd surge of traffic, they are likely an impetus, if not the sole cause. (Post EC with Marco Polo, I don't think the world of live theater fans has anywhere near the acute impact on internet traffic that reddit does these days.) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:55, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect you are right, SemanticMantis. My thinking was skewed by the fact that I am a live theater fan and had never navigated to Reddit before I clicked your link. But I know that I am far from typical. Marco polo (talk) 18:06, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. To anyone who is reading who is unfamiliar with Reddit and been online for a while, it's a bit like a modern version of the old Usenet, with a far larger userbase, and all the great and horrible things that implies ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 20:04, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

American Curl meme

I'm trying to figure out another internet feline meme. I've seen it on YouTube. That cat is an American Curl. It's also a munchkin, like Grumpy Cat and Lil Bub. Does that American Curl have a name and her own webpage? Anyone know?158.222.166.199 (talk) 20:12, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is the concept of race really a social construct?

Most scientists agree that the concept of race is a social construct with little to no biological and genetic basis. So, is it a contradiction to say that race is a social construct, but use DNA testing to determine where one’s ancestors came from hundreds to thousands of years ago, what race or races they were, what kinds of illnesses and diseases would I be susceptible to, etc? How can one reconcile this apparent contradiction? Willminator (talk) 21:53, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just call them gene pools instead of races. StuRat (talk) 02:06, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's a contradiction. As long as you look at races as having fuzzy dividers. There's no distinct line between races the way we often view it socially, but there are biological differences between races in the same way that there are biological differences between individuals. It's just that certain types of genes are more likely to be located in certain geographic areas than others leaving people in one area to be more similar genetically than people separated for thousands of years. Bali88 (talk) 04:04, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Coming out of self-imposed retirement to deal with this question again. Your premise is flawed. I don't know who you've been listening to, but race is most definitely not a social construct. There are extensive genetic differences between different populations, which have significant effect on things like drug metabolism and disease susceptibility. Now, these populations may not always overlap with the 'traditional' boundaries of races, but to say race has no biological meaning is a large pile of bovine excrement. Basically, as the above says! Fgf10 (talk) 06:48, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The differences are real, the social constructs are the divisions according to the differences. We're all pretty different, in different ways. We (general we) could have chosen to focus more on tall vs short, but we picked skin colour as the "big one". InedibleHulk (talk) 07:24, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not just skin color or other physical features, it's the social construct "us" vs. "them". Note how often someone who puts down the Irish, for example, would be accused of "racism", despite the fact there's no such thing as an Irish "race". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:58, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The accuser would be wrong. Like you say, there's no race there. Sectarianism, elitism or xenophobia would be better accusations. Racism's a sort of "us vs them", but a specific kind. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:32, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is obviously a contradiction between saying that race is a social construct and using DNA to determine what race your ancestors were. But there is no necessary conflict between saying that race is a social construct and using DNA to determine what part of the world your ancestors come from. It is 100% possible to study the genetics of human geographic variation without ever using the word "race". Looie496 (talk) 15:18, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Looie on the specific question. For the other comments: at risk of supplying the obvious references, we have an article on Race_(human_classification). A key quote:

“

... there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable

”

(emphasis mine) See also the section Race_(human_classification)#Social_constructions, which says

“

As anthropologists and other evolutionary scientists have shifted away from the language of race to the term population to talk about genetic differences, historians, cultural anthropologists and other social scientists re-conceptualized the term "race" as a cultural category or social construct—a particular way that some people talk about themselves and others.

”

(emphasis still mine). So, the WP perspective (supported by many WP:RS citations) is that race is indeed largely a cultural construct, but there are indeed differences between different human populations. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:43, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Most importantly, the things we call "races" do not bear direct connection to genetics in the way that most cultures have defined races. For example, in America, most people would consider the three people below to be of the same race, after all they have similar skin tone, facial features, hair type, etc.:

1
2
3

However, the first is an Australian Aborigine, the second is native Filipino, and the third is South African. Yet, if you polled 100 people in the U.S., all 100 would say they were all the same race; despite the fact that these three people come from isolated populations that have no more genetic relationship to each other than they would to any other randomly selected people groups. THAT is why race is not a biological concept. Almost every culture in the world defines race differently, and they all define race in superficial ways where the definitions do not match genetics. We can group people based on genetic relationships. However, the connection between those groupings and "race" doesn't bear out in any meaningful way. --Jayron32 16:40, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there have been cases of twins who come out from interracial couples appear of different races, one looks black while the other looks white for example, like this example. The narrator of the video gives a genetic explanation of why it happens from 1:00-1:30 and he says that skin color is determined by several genes working together. I was confused because I thought most scientists believe that race has more social, cultural basis than a biological, genetic one. I thought race did not bear any connections with genetics as you said, so how is a genetic explanation even possible in cases like this? Willminator (talk) 18:41, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, skin color is genetic. And it is genetic in complicated ways; the genes that give someone from Africa dark skin are different than the genes that give someone from Australia dark skin. Furthermore, race is a STILL a social construct. And here is why. It appears that your culture bases its definition of race upon skin color. But as shown above, two people with similar physical appearances can be as genetically unrelated as anyone else. The issue is not "African-American people cannot be genetically identified as different than White Americans". They absolutely can. The issue is that the American (and broader Eurocentric or Western) definitions of race, based on a few cherry-picked physical characteristics such as skin tone, hair, and facial features are NOT universal. If an American met the lady in the picture above, assuming she was either African or had recent African ancestors, they'd be VERY VERY wrong. And yet, most Americans would do just that. Because the American concept of human variation is VERY LIMITED, to those people groups which populated the U.S. historically. The U.S. paradigm is that people fit into four main groups (if I may be so crude): Black, White, Red, and Yellow. That's because, by and large, America was initially settled primarily by four people groups: Northeastern Europeans (Britain, Ireland, Germany, and to a lesser extend Scandinavia and France), Coastal West Africans, East Asians (Primarily Han Chinese and Japanese), and Native Americans. People who came to America later got shoehorned into those four categories, because American culture sees the term in those four races, for example Italians and Russians and Spaniards get thought of as "White people" even though they look markedly different than the Irish or Germans, because they look somewhat more like Irish and Germans than they do look like the Japanese or West Africans. But when you look at the world, variation between people groups is far more subtle and continuous. There are not sharp divides among people groups into a small set of distinct races, and any physical characteristic you use changes subtly as you move across the globe. That's why race is a social category and not a scientific one. There are not a smallish subset of groups which have a clear genetic makeup you can cram people in. There ARE meaningful genetic groups you can put people in, but there are not 4 or 5. It's probably closer to 4000 or 5000. --Jayron32 21:12, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are overestimating how different Italians and Irish look. In fact, there are people from North Africa, the Levant, Central Asia and Pakistan who look like Germans and Irish. It's exactly like the Philipino, South African and Aborigine pictured above looking similar.--95.83.253.85 (talk) 22:06, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, race refers only to skin color, not to language, culture, genetics, or anything else that it normally associates with. Obviously skin color is not social or cultural--you can't change your skin color just by changing your beliefs. --Bowlhover (talk) 19:17, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And it's a really poor definer of race. HiLo48 (talk) 20:58, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're still confused. My links and quotes above describe that most scientists now understand that most concepts of "races" are just social constructs, and do not match up with more scientific ways of grouping people. Jayron points out that defining "race" in terms of skin color does not match up with our understanding of how closely related people are via their genetics. However, skin color absolutely does have a genetic component (there is also an environmental component, e.g. sun tan.) The example you give is very interesting and perhaps even counterintuitive. But it is also rather uncommon for two very light-skinned people to have a very dark-skinned child. If you want to read up on how skin tone is influenced by genetics, see Skin_tone#Genetics_of_skin_color_variation. The key here is that skin tones are not a valid way of dividing up people in a way that aligns with genetic groupings. But that doesn't mean that skin tone can't be genetically controlled. Make sense now? SemanticMantis (talk) 21:16, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would say I have a better understanding now than before I asked the question. I used to think that race was mostly about skin shades and that was it, but I guess there's a bit more to that than I thought. There are cases where a black couple have a Caucasian-looking child and a white couple have a black-looking child, but as you said, they are very, very rare. Willminator (talk) 02:12, 24 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Skin color is a quick reference, but there are other facial features that figure into the traditional racial divisions. The three pics Jayron posted are good stereotypes of those features. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:19, 24 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]