Introduction

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Genevieve Fisher ◽  
Diana DiPaolo Loren
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Presentation Of Self ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
The Social

This article provides a brief overview of recent archaeological literature about bodily constructions of identity. We introduce themes of embodiment, landscape, appearance, representation, and symbolism and discuss how presentations of the body are used to construct identities in social contexts. By focusing on the ways in which individuals create and experience themselves through their bodies, archaeologists are better able to comprehend them as culturally-specific, multiply-constituted social beings. The presentation of self can then be used to interpret the social and physical aspects (gender, race, religion, sexuality, age, etc.) that are key to the construction of identities in everyday life.

Material Culture and Embodiment in American Religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
American Religion ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Will

In recent years, the study of religion has undergone a useful materialization in the work of many scholars, who are not inclined to define it in terms of ideas, creeds, or doctrines alone, but want to understand what role sensation, emotion, objects, spaces, clothing, and food have played in religious practice. If the intellect and the will dominated the study of religion dedicated to theology and ethics, the materialization of religious studies has taken up the role of the body, expanding our understanding of it and dismantling our preconceptions, which were often notions inherited from religious traditions. As a result, the body has become a broad register or framework for gauging the social, aesthetic, and practical character of religion in everyday life. The interest in material culture as a primary feature of religion has unfolded in tandem with the new significance of the body and the broad materialization of religious studies.

Metaphors of Inscription: Discipline, Plasticity and the Rhetoric of Choice

1998 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pippa Brush
Keyword(s):  
Cosmetic Surgery ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Economic Constraints

The metaphor of inscription on the body and the constitution of the body through those inscriptions have been widely used in recent attempts to theorize the body. Michel Foucault calls the body the ‘inscribed surface of events’ (Foucault, 1984: 83) and Elizabeth Grosz argues that the ‘female (or male) body can no longer be regarded as a fixed, concrete substance, a pre-cultural given. It has a determinate form only by being socially inscribed’ (Grosz, 1987: 2). The body becomes plastic, inscribed with gender and cultural standards. While Foucault assumes the existence of a pre-inscriptive body, many theorists reject that idea and argue that ‘there is no recourse to a body that has not always already been interpreted by cultural meanings’ (Butler, 1990: 8). The constitution of the body rests in its inscription; the body becomes the text which is written upon it and from which it is indistinguishable. Starting from Catherine Belsey's suggestion that to ‘give the metaphor literal significance … is to … isolate it for contemplation’ (Belsey, 1988: 100), I discuss this metaphor of inscription, using cosmetic surgery as one literal example. While some theorists reject the pre-inscriptive body, the popular discourses advocating changing one's body assume unproblematically the existence of a body prior to these ‘elective’ procedures and reinforce the mind/body dualism which recent theory has sought so insistently to reject. I examine how popular discourses of body modification enforce a disciplinary regime (in Foucault's sense) and impose degrees of both literal and figurative inscription. Juxtaposing these two perspectives, I explore how both discourses efface the materiality of the body and the social contexts within which bodies are experienced and constructed. While the rhetoric surrounding cosmetic surgery denies the physical process and the economic constraints, so theories of the body which stress the body's plasticity also deny the materiality of that process and the cultural and social contexts within which the body is always placed.

Headbob displays signal sex, social context and species identity in a Liolaemus lizard

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalin S. Vicente
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Animal Communication ◽  
Anterior Part ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Visual Signals ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Species Identity ◽  
The Social

Abstract Animal communication has a key role in animals and identifying the signals’ function is crucial. Most lizards communicate with each other through visual signals with headbob displays, which are up-and-down movements of the head or the anterior part of the body. In the present work, I described and analysed the headbob displays of Liolaemus pacha lizards in their natural habitat. Specifically, the objectives were to describe the form of headbobs, to analyse their structure and to compare between sexes and social contexts. Adult lizards were video-recorded, registering the sex and the social context, classified as broadcast, same-sex and female-male interactions. The form and structure of sequences and headbobs were obtained. To evaluate the effect of sex and social context on the structure of headbob sequences and on headbob bouts, generalized linear mixed models were made. Intersexual differences were found in headbob display frequency and in the structure of headbob sequences. Lizards in same-sex context made sequences with more bouts, shorter intervals, headbob bouts of longer duration and higher amplitude than broadcast and female-male context. Presence of concurring behaviour such as lateral compression, gular expansion, and back arching occurred simultaneously with headbobs in same-sex context. Liolaemus pacha made four different headbob bout forms, and males were characterised by using bouts A and B, whereas females used bouts D more frequent. Sex and social context influenced only the structure of bouts A and B. The results showed that bouts A and B might be multi-component signals and non-redundant.

scholarly journals Peningkatan Public Speaking Skill Melalui Pendekatan POBC dan Mind Mapping Bagi Mahasiswa Universitas Teuku Umar

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Yuhdi Fahrimal ◽  
Asmaul Husna ◽  
Johan Johan ◽  
Farina Islami
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Student Motivation ◽  
Public Speaking ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mind Mapping ◽  
The Social ◽  
Speaking Skill ◽  
Training Research ◽  
Three Stages

Pubic speaking is an individual skill that is a necessity in the current era of disruption. Public speaking skills are needed to support the best results in education, the social environment, and the workplace. But not everyone is able to do public speaking well. Previous research states that the condition is caused by excessive fear of individuals to speak in front of the crowd (glossophobia). The objectives of this training are (1) to open students' horizons about public speaking; (2) arousing student motivation so as not to worry about public speaking; and (3) train students practically to be able to practice public speaking in everyday life. This training uses three stages, namely, pre-training research, lectures and discussions, and the practice of public speaking. The results of the training provide practical public speaking techniques to students with a simple concept known as POBC namelyPlanning, Opening, the Body of Speech, and Conclusion and mind mapping. This method is considered to make it easier for students to do public speaking systematically from planning to closing interesting speeches.

scholarly journals Attachment to Mobile Phones across Social Contexts

2015 ◽  
pp. 222-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burçe Çelik ◽  
Fırat Erdoğmuş
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Literature

This article presents a critical literature review of the major works on mobile phone culture, which examine the whys and wherefores of this technology's popularity in different socio-economic and cultural landscapes. Thus, it focuses particularly on how these multiplicities and varieties have been discussed, analyzed and researched in the existing mobile phone literature. There are different lines of research which can be categorized as following: the major works (mostly empirical studies whose findings are based on fieldwork) that demonstrate the mobile phone's use and instrumental value for people who are physically mobile and need instantaneous and spontaneous connections with others; the works that focus on the social promise of the mobile phone such as providing a means of social acceptance, through implying social status and particular lifestyles to polish one's face and gain recognition in social relations; and finally the studies that emphasize the sensing, affecting and affected, and fantasies of the body and the collective in contemplating the bond between body and mobile phone.

scholarly journals Task instructions: a part of the social context of participants? A N300 and N400 event-related brain potential study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujata Sinha ◽  
Sheila Bouten ◽  
Amanda Tardif ◽  
Tarlan Daryoush ◽  
Natalie Frye ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Cognitive Behaviors ◽  
Task Instructions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
Motor Representations

The early and preconscious processing of stimuli that are meaningful in everyday life includes systematical activations of many semantic, emotional and motor representations. Inhibitions should then occur in order to select, among these primed representations, those that are consistent with the context. Even in a lab this context is social, as it typically consists of the experimenter and of the instructions and stimuli (s)he provides. Three recent N400 studies confirm this social view of experimental settings by showing that socially driven processes affect what was primed by prior stimuli. The small amplitudes of the N400 event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by stimuli preceded by semantical primes were found to be enhanced by the mere presence of a person next to participants when they know this person did not have the semantic primes. It thus seems that N400 processes inhibit what these primes have activated so that participants can also have the perspective of the uninformed person. This inhibition interpretation implies that N400s should be notably reduced when nothing allows to determine what should be inhibited, that is, when the social context is not defined and when task’s instructions require minimal inhibition. We tested this prediction by having a stranger next to participants (n=29) and by presenting meaningful unpredictable images in a simple memorization task. As foreseen, N400s were small. They were enhanced by definable social contexts, that is, in participants alone with the experimenter (n=30) and in those with a friend (n = 36). The amplitudes of the N300s were also enhanced. A second experiment revealed that these N300 and N400 enhancements were larger for friends who felt in the presence of their partner during most of the experiment. As to the late posterior positivities (LPPs) immediately succeeding the N400s, they were found to be larger in the unknown social context of the first experiment, suggesting that more information ended up being placed into the working memory when inhibitions could not occur. These results are compatible with a serial 3-stages framework of the processing of stimuli meaningful in everyday life. Early and broad systematic activations (priming) would be followed by automatic late selections done according to the social-context and then, by the participant’s consciousness of the meanings of the stimulus in this context. As inadequate late selections would cause impairments of social and cognitive behaviors, the present results could have implications for psychiatric disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia.

scholarly journals Sovietmečio atmintis šiuolaikinėje Lietuvoje: ambivalentiškumas ar nostalgija?

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irena Šutinienė
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Great Degree ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Positive Memories

Santrauka. Straipsnyje, remiantis kiekybinio sociologinio tyrimo duomenimis, analizuojamos sovietinio laikotarpio interpretacijos Lietuvos gyventojų kolektyvinėje atmintyje. Analizuojant gyventojų atmintyje vyraujančių požiūrių į sovietmetį spektrą, siekiama parodyti šių požiūrių ambivalentiškumą: atskirdami ir neigiamai vertindami politinius buvusios sovietinės sistemos aspektus, žmonės tuo pat metu teigiamai prisimena ir vertina kai kuriuos sovietmečio kasdienybės reiškinius, traktuodami juos kaip „nepolitinius“. Požiūrių į sovietmetį ryšiai su dabarties kontekstais – demokratizacijos rezultatų vertinimais ir socialiniais-demografiniais kontekstais – atskleidžia, kad požiūrius į sovietmetį dideliu laipsniu lemia žmonių amžius, taip pat teigiami (tarp jų ir nostalgiški) požiūriai į sovietmetį iš dalies susiję su socialiniais-ekonominiais ir subjektyviais marginalizacijos kontekstais. Ryšių su socialiniais dabarties kontekstais ir požiūriais į dabartį silpnumas rodo, kad sovietmečio atmintis yra tik dalinai nostalgiška ir galimai yra susijusi su daugeliu konkrečių, tarp jų individualių kontekstų.Pagrindinės sąvokos: sovietmetis, kolektyvinė atmintis, nostalgija.Key words: Soviet era, collective memory, nostalgia.ABSTRACT THE MEMORIES OF SOVIET ERA IN CONTEMPORARY LITHUANIA: AMBIVALENCE OR NOSTALGIA?The collective memories of Soviet era of Lithuanian adult population are analysed in the article. The analysis is based on the data of representative sociological survey, conducted by company „Baltijos tyrimai“ in 2012. The analysis reveals the ambivalence of the memories of Soviet era prevailing in popular memory: people express positive attitudes towards many aspects the Soviet era everyday life and simultaneously evaluate negatively political aspects of the Soviet regime. The Soviet era everyday is presented in people‘s memories as „apolitical“ and separated from political domain. The connections between attitudes towards Soviet past and contemporary contexts (attitudes towards the outcomes of democratization and indicators of social and economical position) reveal, that the memories of Soviet era are structured by generations in a great degree; there are also slight relations between positive (and nostalgic) memories of Soviet past and the social contexts of marginalization as well as feelings of marginalization. The slight relations of the memories of Soviet era to the contemporary social contexts and attitudes towards outcomes of democratization indicate, that positive memories of Soviet past are only partly nostalgic and are influenced by many other, among them individual, factors.Pastaba. Straipsnis parengtas vykdant Lietuvos mokslo tarybos finansuojamą projektą „Demokratizacijos procesų Lietuvoje reprezentacijos individualioje sąmonėje“, sutartis Nr. SIN-03/2012

Toward an Affective Political Ecology of Obesity

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-366
Author(s):  
Emma-Jayne Abbots ◽  
Karin Eli ◽  
Stanley Ulijaszek
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Political Economic

This article argues for an affective approach to obesity that destabilizes the conceptual boundaries between the biological and the social aspects of food, eating, and fatness. Its approach foregrounds visceral experience, attends to food both inside and outside the body, and explores how bodies labeled “obese” consume their political, economic, and material environments. This approach is termed affective political ecology. The authors’ aim is to draw attention to how the entanglements between the physiological and social aspects of eating tend to be absented from antiobesity public health rhetoric. By exploring a range of ethnographic examples in high-income countries, they illuminate how such interventions often fail to account for the complex interplays between subjective corporeal experience and political economic relations and contend that overlooking an individual’s visceral relationship with food counterproductively augments social stigma, stresses, and painful emotions. They demonstrate, then, how an approach that draws together political economic and biomedical perspectives better reflects the lived experience of eating. In so doing, the authors aim to indicate how attending to affective political ecologies can further our understanding of the consumption practices of those in precarious and stressful social contexts, and they offer additional insight into how the entanglement of the biological and the social is experienced in everyday life.

scholarly journals Social Media-Innovation: The Case of Indigenous Tweets

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niamh Ní Bhroin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Innovation Studies ◽  
Capacity To Act ◽  
The Social

Twitter presents new opportunities for individual communication.  Consequently, it may be a relevant arena in which to address the social need of minority language maintenance.  The Indigenous Tweets website presents a directory of minority language users on Twitter (www.indigenoustweets.com).  It aims to create new opportunities to use these languages, thus to address a social need through media innovation.  In this article, I draw on a theoretical framework from Media Innovation- and Social Innovation Studies, to delineate the concept of Social Media-Innovation.  I propose three distinguishing attributes.  Firstly, users of these innovations must consider them relevant to address identified social needs. Secondly, the communication capabilities they present must support addressing these needs.  Thirdly, they should facilitate mediated interaction that enhances society’s capacity to act.  Having delineated the concept I explore how its attributes are manifest in practice with reference to the case of Indigenous Tweets.  I find that the relevance of Indigenous Tweets is negotiated with regard to culturally specific needs in different social contexts.  The development and use of its communication capabilities are supported by incremental experimentation and learning.  Furthermore, while it facilitates mediated interactions that are designed to enhance society’s capacity to act, these occur in a hybrid media context and are influenced by the range of agents involved.  This article makes two important contributions to the field of Media Innovations Studies.  It delineates the concept of Social Media-Innovation according to three central attributes.  It also analyses how these are manifest in practice with reference to the case of Indigenous Tweets.

The experience of colour

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
David MacDougall
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
The Body ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Aesthetics ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
Important Marker

Colour plays an important part in the aesthetics of everyday life. It has significant psychological effects as well as carrying symbolic meanings, both religious and secular, and it is an important marker of cultural identity. This chapter explores the role and uses of colour at the Doon School, an elite boys’ boarding school in India where the author made a number of films. In this highly controlled community, the social aesthetics of the institution becomes imprinted on the consciousness of its inhabitants. It is intimately associated with the students’ activities, social relationships, and sensory experiences. It defines their status and shapes their lives. The uses of colour at the school are also consistent with a wider social aesthetic emphasising restraint, logical thought, and the training and presentation of the body. Many of these values can be seen to have their origins in the school’s colonial history and postcolonial aspirations. The author argues that we can only understand the full implications of such sensory patterning in society through more extensive research in social aesthetics.

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