scholarly journals Halls of Mirrors: Reflections on the Social Meanings of Early Medieval Rulers’ Residences

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Gabor Thomas ◽  
Christopher Scull ◽  
Patrick Gleeson
Keyword(s):  
Early Medieval ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings

Jamie Kreiner, The Social Life of Hagiography in the Merovingian Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. xii, 329.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 370-372
Author(s):  
Bernard S. Bachrach
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Plain Text ◽  
The Social

In 1988 Walter Goffart demonstrated conclusively that the authors of early medieval narrative texts had to be taken seriously as people of intellectual substance capable of sustaining sophisticated arguments. Their works, Goffart warns us, were not to be treated, as previously had been the case, as mere naive receptecals of fact and fantasy to be plundered by historians in search of accurate information. In the wake of Goffart’s work, it has become a cliché that text must be treated as text before it is treated as evidence if, in fact, it ever is to be used for the latter purpose. In the generation that has passed since Goffart’s paradigm has taken hold it is rare to find anyone who will read early medieval narrative works, such as those of Gregory of Tours (d. 594), as plain text.

Rescuing Migrants in the Central Mediterranean: The Emergence of a New Civil Humanitarianism at the Maritime Border

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 436-455
Author(s):  
Marta Esperti
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Search And Rescue ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Central Mediterranean ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Humanitarian Space ◽  
First Arrival

The Central Mediterranean is the most deadly body of water in the Mediterranean Sea with at least 15,062 fatalities recorded by International Organization of Migration between 2014 and 2018. This article aims at highlighting the rise of a variety of new civil society actors engaged in the rescue of people undertaking dangerous journeys across the sea in the attempt of reaching the southern European shores. The peculiarity of the humanitarian space at sea and its political relevance are pointed out to illustrate the unfolding of the maritime border management on the Central Mediterranean route and its relation with the activity of the civil society rescue vessels. The theoretical aspiration of the article is to question the role of a proactive civil humanitarianism at sea, discussing the emergence of different political and social meanings around humanitarianism at the EU’s southern maritime border. In recent years, the increasing presence of new citizens-based organizations at sea challenges the nexus between humanitarian and emergency approaches adopted to implement security-oriented policies. This essay draws on the findings of a broader comparative work on a variety of civil society actors engaged in the search and rescue operations on the maritime route between Libya and Europe, focusing in particular on Italy as country of first arrival. The fieldwork covers a period of time going between 2016 and 2018. The research methodology is built on a multisited ethnography, the conduct of semidirective and informal interviews with both state and nonstate actors, and the analysis of various reports unraveling the social and political tensions around rescue at sea on the Central Mediterranean route.

Ethnic Stereotypes in the Central Highlands of Vietnam: Minority Students’ Perspectives

2021 ◽  
pp. 136078042110158
Author(s):  
Trang Thi Thuy Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Minority Students ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Ethnic Stereotypes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Central Highlands ◽  
Perceived Social Status ◽  
Minority People

This study examines ethnic stereotypes toward majority and minority people in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It contributes a more multidimensional perspective on ethnic stereotypes by exploring minority students’ perspectives on how their ethnic group stereotypes Kinh majority people and how they are being stereotyped by the Kinh. Status and solidarity are used as the theoretical lens to gain insights into different stereotype traits and the social meanings underlying the stereotypes. Interviews with eight students in a college in the Central Highlands, which were carried out in 2013, are the main data source. Findings reveal that the students highly appreciated Kinh people’s status-related traits and minority people’s solidarity-related traits. The stereotypes functioned as maintaining the social status quo – where the Kinh justified their position and advantages, while the minorities tended to accept the perceived social status hierarchies. Implications for diminishing negative stereotypes, improving minorities’ existing status, fostering trust-based cross-ethnic contact, and inspiring mutual respect among people of all ethnicities, are hence suggested.

scholarly journals Boundaries of solidarity: a meta-ethnography of mask use during past epidemics to inform SARS-CoV-2 suppression

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. e004068
Author(s):  
Po Man Tsang ◽  
Audrey Prost
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Risk Perception ◽  
Healthcare Access ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Trust In Government ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Collective Levels ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
The Usa

BackgroundMany countries aiming to suppress SARS-CoV-2 recommend the use of face masks by the general public. The social meanings attached to masks may influence their use, but remain underinvestigated.MethodsWe systematically searched eight databases for studies containing qualitative data on public mask use during past epidemics, and used meta-ethnography to explore their social meanings. We compared key concepts within and across studies, then jointly wrote a critical synthesis.ResultsWe found nine studies from China (n=5), Japan (n=1), Mexico (n=1), South Africa (n=1) and the USA (n=1). All studies describing routine mask use during epidemics were from East Asia. Participants identified masks as symbols of solidarity, civic responsibility and an allegiance to science. This effect was amplified by heightened risk perception (eg, during SARS in 2003), and by seeing masks on political leaders and in outdoor public spaces. Masks also acted as containment devices to manage threats to identity at personal and collective levels. In China and Japan, public and corporate campaigns framed routine mask use as individual responsibility for disease prevention in return for state- or corporate-sponsored healthcare access. In most studies, mask use waned as risk perception fell. In contexts where masks were mostly worn by patients with specific diseases (eg, for patients with tuberculosis in South Africa), or when trust in government was low (eg, during H1N1 in Mexico), participants described masks as stigmatising, uncomfortable or oppressive.ConclusionFace masks can take on positive social meanings linked to solidarity and altruism during epidemics. Unfortunately, these positive meanings can fail to take hold when risk perception falls, rules are seen as complex or unfair, and trust in government is low. At such times, ensuring continued use is likely to require additional efforts to promote locally appropriate positive social meanings, simplifying rules for use and ensuring fair enforcement.

The Social Psychology of Drinking and Human Sexuality

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan R. Lang
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Experimental Social Psychology ◽  
Human Sexuality ◽  
Normal Adult ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Differential Effects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Psychology Literature

This article reviews the experimental social psychology literature addressing the relation between drinking and sexuality in normal adult populations. In particular, it examines the role that psychosocial, as opposed to pharmacological, factors may play in alcohol's reputation as an aphrodisiac. The action of learned cognitive expectancies and social meanings surrounding drinking are illustrated in the differential effects that drinking has on the sexual reactions of men and women and of persons with differing personality dispositions. It is concluded that to the extent alcohol serves as an aphrodisiac, it is largely through psychosocially-determined interpretations of physical states and the ease with which attributions to drinking can be used to explain violations of sexual propriety that otherwise would have ego threatening implications.

The Social Characterizations of Price: The Fool, the Faithful, the Frivolous, and the Frugal

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick F. Wherry
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Meaning Systems ◽  
Pricing System ◽  
Meaning Of Money

This article extends both Viviana Zelizer's discussion of the social meaning of money and Charles Smith's proposal that pricing is a definitional practice to the under-theorized realm of the social meanings generated in the pricing system. Individuals are attributed with calculating or not calculating whether an object or service is “worth” its price, but these attributions differ according to the individual's social location as being near to or far from a societal reference point rather than by the inherent qualities of the object or service purchased. Prices offer seemingly objective (quantitative) proof of the individual's “logic of appropriateness”—in other words, people like that pay prices such as those. This article sketches a preliminary but nonexhaustive typology of the social characterizations of individuals within the pricing system; these ideal types—the fool, the faithful, the frugal, and the frivolous—and their components offer a systematic approach to understanding prices as embedded in and constituents of social meaning systems.

Urban Change in Early Medieval Italy: The Example of Pavia

1966 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 82-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Bullough
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Social History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Warm Hospitality ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Prefatory Note.—My interest in Pavia goes back at least to 1951 when I was elected Rome Scholar in Medieval Studies. I began seriously to collect material for the history of the city in the early Middle Ages in the winter and spring of 1953 when I enjoyed the warm hospitality of the Collegio Ghislieri, thanks to the efforts made on my behalf by the late Hugh Last, to whose memory this article is dedicated. The published proceedings of the Reichenau and Spoleto congresses on ‘The early medieval town’ in the 1950s clearly underlined the need for detailed studies of particular towns; but the lack of adequate archaeological evidence discouraged me from attempting such a study of early medieval Pavia. In 1964, however, Dr. A. Peroni, Director of the Museo Civico invited me to read a supplementary paper on this topic to the Convegno di Studio sul Centro Storico di Pavia held in the Università degli Studi at Pavia on July 4th and 5th of that year. The present article is an amplified and corrected version of that paper: I have made no substantial alterations to my account of the ‘urbanistica’ of early medieval Pavia—written for an audience of architects and art-historians as well as of historians—but have dealt more fully with the social history of the city in this period. Professor Richard Krautheimer read a draft of the revised version and made some pointed and helpful comments. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Peroni, not merely for the invitation to present the original paper but also for supplying illustrations and answering queries at a time when he and his staff were engaged in helping to repair the ravages of the Florence floods.

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