3. Given or constructed? Identity in cultural anthropology

2019 ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
Florian Coulmas
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Constructed Identity ◽  
Multiple Groups

‘Who are we?’ is just as tricky a question as ‘Who am I?’ Humanity is one, but at the same time divided into multiple groups. Humans exhibit many variations, notably race, language, and religion. These features constitute ‘ethnicity’, marking what seem to be clear distinctions; yet their usefulness for a coherent classification is limited. They are contingent, and hence subject to perpetual change, and they are vague, allowing for partial and shifting attachment. What is more, how we see ourselves often does not match how others see us. ‘Given or constructed? Identity in cultural anthropology’ considers the issues of ethnographic imagination, administrative classifications, ascription and assertion, voluntary attachment, stereotypes, and ethnocentrism.

Multisensory Modalities and Modernist Translation

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-306
Author(s):  
Tamara Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Sensory Integration ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
High Modernism ◽  
The Arts

Multisensory and cross-modal perception have been recognised as crucial for shaping modernist epistemology, aesthetics, and art. Illustrative examples of how it might be possible to test equivalences (or mutual translatability) between different sensual modalities can be found in theoretical pronouncements on the arts and in artistic production of both the avant-garde and high modernism. While encouraging multisensory, cross-modal, and multimodal artistic experiments, twentieth-century artists set forth a new language of sensory integration. This article addresses the problem of the literary representation of multisensory and cross-modal experience as a particular challenge for translation, which is not only a linguistic and cross-cultural operation but also cross-sensual, involving the gap between different culture-specific perceptual realities. The problem of sensory perception remains a vast underexplored terrain of modernist translation history and theory, and yet it is one with potentially far-reaching ramifications for both a cultural anthropology of translation and modernism's sensory anthropology. The framework of this study is informed by Douglas Robinson's somatics of translation and Clive Scott's perceptive phenomenology of translation, which help to put forth the notion of sensory equivalence as a pragmatic correspondence between the source and target texts, appealing to a range of somato-sensory (audial, visual, haptic, gestural, articulatory kinaesthetic, proprioceptive) modalities of reader response.

Addicted to Christ

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Transformation Techniques ◽  
Industrial Culture ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Alternative Masculinities ◽  
Street Corner ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The U.S

How are spiritual power and self-transformation cultivated in street ministries? This book provides an in-depth analysis of Pentecostal ministries in Puerto Rico that were founded and run by self-identified “ex-addicts,” ministries that are also widespread in poor Black and Latino neighborhoods in the U.S. mainland. The book melds cultural anthropology and psychiatry. Through the stories of ministry converts, the book examines key elements of Pentecostalism: mysticism, ascetic practice, and the idea of other-worldliness. It then reconstructs the ministries' strategies of spiritual victory over addiction: transformation techniques to build spiritual strength and authority through pain and discipline; cultivation of alternative masculinities based on male converts' reclamation of domestic space; and radical rupture from a post-industrial “culture of disposability.” By contrasting the ministries' logic of addiction with that of biomedicine, the book rethinks roads to recovery, discovering unexpected convergences with biomedicine while revealing the allure of street corner ministries.

Relasi Agama dan Demokrasi; Telaah Kritis Eksistensi Partai Islam Di Indonesia

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-404
Author(s):  
Nur Khasanah ◽  
Achmad Irwan Hamzani
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Actual Reality ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Islamic Parties ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Islamic Political Parties ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Religion And Democracy

AbstractThis study discusses the relation between religion and democracy; critical examination of the existence of Islamic parties in Indonesia. This study is a qualitative study based on library (library research). The approach used is descriptive qualitative which aims to illustrate or describe the reality that exists or what is happening or the actual reality of the object under study. Then interpreted in the form of a report. The approach used is the cultural anthropology approach. The results of this study indicate that Muslims interpret the relationship of religion and democracy to occur in three models, namely the negative, neutral and positive models. In the context of Islamic political parties in Indonesia, the basic problem is the inability of parties to package democratic issues, starting from the emergence of religious sentiment, politicization of religion, political pragmatism in PKS parties. Furthermore, the PPP party has problems with party regeneration, leadership dualism, and political attitudes. Whereas the UN party is seen in the absence of a leader figure and political culture.Keywords: Religion, Democracy, Islamic Party AbstrakStudi ini membahas tentang relasi agama dan demokrasi; telaah kritis eksistensi Partai-Partai Islam di Indonesia. Kajian ini merupakan studi kualitatif berbasis kepustakaan (library research). Pendekatan yang digunakan adalah deskriptif kualitatif yang bertujuan untuk memberi gambaran atau mendeskripsikan kenyataan yang ada atau apa yang terjadi atau kenyataan sebenarnya pada obyek yang diteliti. Kemudian diinterprestasikan dalam bentuk laporan. Pendekatan yang digunakan adalah pendekatan antropologi budaya. Hasil penelitian ini memperlihatkan bahwa kaum muslim memaknai bahwa relasi agama dan demokrasi terjadi dalam tiga model, yakni model negatif, netral, dan positif. Dalam konteks partai-partai politik Islam di Indonesia, problem mendasar adalah ketidakmampuan partai dalam mengemas isu-isu demokrasi, mulai dari muncul sentimen keagamaan, politisasi agama, pragmatisme politik pada partai PKS. Selanjutnya pada partai PPP terdapat masalah pada kaderisasi partai, dualisme kepemimpinan, dan sikap politik. Sedangkan pada partai PBB terlihat pada ketiadaan figur pemimpin  dan kultur politik.Kata Kunci: Agama, Demokrasi, Partai Islam

THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF EMOTIONS AND AXIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS IN SLAVONIC PROVERBS AND IDIOMS: FROM CONSCIENCE TO ENVY

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (29) ◽  
pp. 248-271
Author(s):  
Oleh Tyshchenko
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Legal Aspect ◽  
English Text ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Cultural Concepts ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Psychic Disorders ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Better Than

The presented research reveals imagery-metaphoric and phraseological objectivities of the conceptual spheres Soul, Consciousness, Envy, Jealousy and Greed in Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech and Slovak languages and conceptual picture of the world (first of all in proverbs and sayings, idioms, imagery means of secondary nomination both in standard language and its regional or dialectal variants) according to the indication of holistic characteristic and semantic intersection of these concepts. It describes the spheres of their typological coincidence and differences from the point of imagery motivation. It defines the symbolic functions of these ethno cultural concepts (object sphere) with respect to the specificity of manifestation of Envy in archaic texts, believes, in the language of traditional folk culture and archaic expressions with religious sense that reach Christian ideology, ideas of moral purity and dirt, Body and Soul. It has been defined the collocations with the components envy and jealousy in some thesauri and dictionaries in terms of the specificity of interlingual equivalence and expressions of envy and similar negative emotions and their functioning in the Ukrainian and English text corpora. The analysis demonstrated that practically in all compared languages and linguistic cultures Envy is associated with greed and jealousy, psychic disorders with a corresponding complex of feelings, expressed by metaphoric predicates of destruction and remorse that encode the moral and legal aspect of conscience (conscience is a judge, witness and executioner). Metaphor of Envy containing nominations of colours differ in the Slavonic and Germanic languages whereas those denoting spatial, gustatory, odour, acoustic and parametrical meaning are similar. Many imagery contexts of Envy correlate with such conceptual oppositions as richness and poverty, light and darkness; success is associated with the frames “foreign is better than domestic” where Envy encodes the meaning of encroachment upon another's property, “envy is better than sympathy”, “envy dominates where there are richness, success, welfare, happiness” which confirms the ideas of representatives in the field of psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology and sociology. In some languages the motives of black magic, evil eye (in Polish, Ukrainian and Russian) are rooted in the sphere of folk believes and invocations, as well as cultural anthroponyms.

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