Ethics of Reading

Author(s):  
Matthew Garrett

The ethics of reading connects with but is not identical to the field of ethical criticism. Often pursued as a normative inquiry into morality, ethics may be better understood in historical terms. From this point of view, the inquiry into ethics is not a matter of good and evil (or universal moral correctness) but rather of understanding historically variable and socially conditioned regimes of subjective self-construction (ethics). Thus, moral thought may be taken to be one specific modality of the ethical, not its essential feature. A social and historical inquiry into the ethics of reading must then examine the ethical impulse itself, the recurring attraction of ethical questions, normative moral claims, and the search for moral models in literary and cultural texts. Various strands of ethical criticism have treated literary characters as approximations of persons or have considered the way reading itself may be a morally healthful act. Understanding these approaches and their limitations helps one recognize an alternative ethics of reading, focused on the social and historical reconstruction of the category of the ethical, as well as a more specifically literary-critical style of reading, focused on a single ethical injunction: fidelity to the object of critical attention.

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 57-80
Author(s):  
Adam Mazurkiewicz

The influence of market mechanisms on cultural texts and their function in society is more and more often stressed, especially by supporters of cultural studies and representatives of various stud-ies from outside the humanities. This shifting of attention from text onto possible contexts results from seeking the possibility of looking at the text through the prism of one’s own domain.A completely different aspect is to what extent the economy (or more widely — social science) can really be a starting point for consideration over cultural texts, instead of being a mechanism regulating their function in society. These mechanisms can undoubtedly — especially in popular circulation — be considered through the prism of market conditions. Undeniably, considering thework aesthetically from the social perspective (therefore indirectly and economically), should sig-nificantly enrich the reading of the cultural text, which would be impossible to achieve only by means of aesthetic instrumentation. What is more, researching entertainment super systems (but also more widely: popular culture) from the non-philological perspective shows how complex a phenom-enon it is and that it demands a multidisciplinary approach. What is important is that this specific character of studies results not from the choice of methodology which stresses the socially-ideo-logical and market-driven implication of the cultural text, but more from the very character of the phenomenon itself. However, to make such research possible, giving consideration to the following issues is vital:— instance of the perspective from which the entertainment super system will be analysed;— extent of the researcher’s jurisdiction, which is essential to a correct, from the scientific point of view, interpretation of the observed phenomena;— possibilities and extent of adjusting the terminology of different scientific fields to the cul-tural phenomenon.


2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Besin Gaspar

This research deals with the development of  self concept of Hiroko as the main character in Namaku Hiroko by Nh. Dini and tries to identify how Hiroko is portrayed in the story, how she interacts with other characters and whether she is portrayed as a character dominated by ”I” element or  ”Me”  element seen  from sociological and cultural point of view. As a qualitative research in nature, the source of data in this research is the novel Namaku Hiroko (1967) and the data ara analyzed and presented deductively. The result of this analysis shows that in the novel, Hiroko as a fictional character is  portrayed as a girl whose personality  develops and changes drastically from ”Me”  to ”I”. When she was still in the village  l iving with her parents, she was portrayed as a obedient girl who was loyal to the parents, polite and acted in accordance with the social customs. In short, her personality was dominated by ”Me”  self concept. On the other hand, when she moved to the city (Kyoto), she was portrayed as a wild girl  no longer controlled by the social customs. She was  firm and determined totake decisions of  her won  for her future without considering what other people would say about her. She did not want to be treated as object. To put it in another way, her personality is more dominated by the ”I” self concept.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Sina Saeedy ◽  
Mojtaba Amiri ◽  
Mohammad Mahdi Zolfagharzadeh ◽  
Mohammad Rahim Eyvazi

Quality of life and satisfaction with life as tightly interconnected concepts have become of much importance in the urbanism era. No doubt, it is one of the most important goals of every human society to enhance a citizen’s quality of life and to increase their satisfaction with life. However, there are many signs which demonstrate the low level of life satisfaction of Iranian citizens especially among the youth. Thus, considering the temporal concept of life satisfaction, this research aims to make a futures study in this field. Therefore, using a mixed model and employing research methods from futures studies, life satisfaction among the students of the University of Tehran were measured and their views on this subject investigated. Both quantitative and qualitative data were analysed together in order to test the hypotheses and to address the research questions on the youth discontentment with quality of life. Findings showed that the level of life satisfaction among students is relatively low and their image of the future is not positive and not optimistic. These views were elicited and discussed in the social, economic, political, environmental and technological perspectives. Keywords:  futures studies, quality of life, satisfaction with life, youth


Author(s):  
Oksana Galchuk

The theme of illegitimacy Guy de Maupassant evolved in his works this article perceives as one of the factors of the author’s concept of a person and the plane of intersection of the most typical motifs of his short stories. The study of the author’s concept of a person through the prism of polivariability of the motif of a bastard is relevant in today’s revision of traditional values, transformation of the usual social institutions and search for identities, etc. The purpose of the study is to give a definition to the existence specifics of the bastard motif in the Maupassant’s short stories by using historical and literary, comparative, structural methods of analysis as dominant. To do this, I analyze the content, variability and the role of this motive in the formation of the Maupassant’s concept of a person, the author’s innovations in its interpretation from the point of view of literary diachrony. Maupassant interprets the bastard motif in the social, psychological and metaphorical-symbolic sense. For the short stories with the presentation of this motif, I suggest the typology based on the role of it in the structure of the work and the ideological and thematic content: the short stories with a motif-fragment, the ones with the bastard’s leitmotif and the group where the bastard motif becomes a central theme. The Maupassant’s interpretation of the bastard motif combines the general tendencies of its existence in the world’s literary tradition and individual reading. The latter is the result of the author’s understanding of the relevant for the era issues: the transformation of the family model, the interest in the theory of heredity, the strengthening of atheistic sentiments, the growth of frustration in the system of traditional social and moral values etc. This study sets the ground for a prospective analysis of the evolution the bastard motif in the short-story collections of different years or a comparative study of the motif in short stories and novels by Maupassant.


2019 ◽  
pp. 87-95

The article is devoted to the role of Tourism terminology in linguistics and the issue of general classification, peculiarities in the expression and translation of terms related to tourism in English into Uzbek and Russian, as well as the choice of the most optimal methods for translating terms in accordance with the requirements of this professional sphere. The terminology of the English language tourism is distinguished by its brightness, versatility. Tourism terms are formed under the influence of a generalized lexical layer of language and perform a specific functional function.Tourism terms are formed through the affixation method (prefixation, suffixation, circumphixation) and get rich through the process.The terminology of English Tourism is distinguished by its content and structural features, forming a part of the language vocabulary from the linguistic point of view. Texts in the field of Tourism take into their composition concepts of Tourism and interpret them in their content. They will be mainly in the form of advertising, as well as enlighten information about a particular region or place, create informational precedents and ensure their manifestation in the social cultural presence. The relevance of the study of the problems of translation of terms in the field of tourism has been investigated, mainly due to the development of international relations, expansion of cooperation between local and foreign companies, as well as the increase in this area of communication.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Redacción CEIICH

<p class="p1">The third number of <span class="s1"><strong>INTER</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong>disciplina </strong></span>underscores this generic reference of <em>Bodies </em>as an approach to a key issue in the understanding of social reality from a humanistic perspective, and to understand, from the social point of view, the contributions of the research in philosophy of the body, cultural history of the anatomy, as well as the approximations queer, feminist theories and the psychoanalytical, and literary studies.</p>


Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.


Author(s):  
Mireia López-Bertran

This chapter explores the funerary rites in the Phoenician-Punic world from a comprehensive point of view, and it focuses on the common points arising from a large amount of data. The concern for burying their deceased and the belief in the soul’s afterlife show that the Phoenicians considered death as a transformation rather than as the end of a person’s life. Through our access to archaeological remains and written sources, we can reconstruct the existence of a meaningful burial program that was destined to provide a “good death” and afterlife. Funerary rituals, thus, are the actions or gestures to achieve this goal. The aim of this chapter is to explain the rites that family members undertook once someone died, in order to transform correctly the deceased person into an otherworldly being, the ancestor. The social implications of the data arising from burials are also briefly considered.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1534
Author(s):  
Remigiusz Rajewski

The banyan-type switching networks, well known in switching theory and called the logdN switching fabrics, are composed of symmetrical switching elements of size d×d. In turn, the modified baseline architecture, called the MBA(N,e,g), is only partially built from symmetrical optical switching elements, and it is constructed mostly from asymmetrical optical switching elements. Recently, it was shown that the MBA(N,e,g) structure requires a lower number of passive as well as active optical elements than the banyan-type switching fabric of the same capacity and functionality, which makes it an attractive solution. However, the optical signal-to-crosstalk ratio for the MBA(N,e,g) was not investigated before. Therefore, in this paper, the optical signal-to-crosstalk ratio in the MBA(N,e,g) was determined. Such crosstalk influences the output signal’s quality. Thus, if such crosstalk is lower, the signal quality is better. The switching fabric proposed in the author’s previous work has lower optical signal losses than a typical Beneš and banyan-type switching networks of this same capacity and functionality, which gives better quality of transmitted optical signals at the switching node’s output. The investigated MBA(N,e,g) architecture also contains one stage fewer than banyan-type network of the same capacity, which is an essential feature from the optical switching point of view.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 327-327
Author(s):  
Stefan Hopf

Abstract Modern societies can be regarded as service economies, consequently accessing services is an essential part of social and economic participation. Direct and indirect indiscrimination act as barriers to accessing and using services and one way to address these barriers is to implement anti-discrimination legislation and policy. From a sociological point of view, such policies and legal frameworks can be described as elements of the social discourse in these areas. These texts, along with their implicit and explicit interpretations of the problem, represent the official and legitimised stake of the socially available stock of knowledge of what constitutes age discrimination. Hence the shape and contribute to the general understanding of age discrimination. The study aims to investigate the interpretation patterns offered by the “supply” side, that is by those actors who in their work refer to but also (re-) shape and disseminate the problem interpretation contained in the official texts. To address this aim, focus groups with stakeholders and semi-structured interviews with legal and policy experts were conducted in Austria and Ireland. The findings highlight that experts and stakeholders’ definitions of age discrimination usually extend past legal and policy concepts. The expert and stakeholder approaches differ in their starting points for describing the problem, ranging from vulnerability considerations to human rights-based concepts and more structurally orientated needs-based criteria. Finally, the analysis also reveals a central distinguishing feature of age discrimination, namely the “de-temporalization” and “de-historicization” of the person, which is of equal importance as the de-individualization as a consequence of stereotyping


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