Fukushima

2021 ◽  
pp. 334-346
Author(s):  
Sophie Houdart
Keyword(s):  
Geiger Counter ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Single Item ◽  
Nuclear Disaster ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Looking Back

In places such as Fukushima that have been contaminated after a nuclear disaster, attesting to the presence of radioactivity is a challenge for the people there, who all know that one cannot touch, nor see, nor smell it. Nevertheless, since 2011, they have had to learn how to cohabit with radionuclides by—among other means—measuring their environment and every single item that populates it. Although when talking about a nuclear disaster, one often imagines the kind of ‘crackle’ sound produced by Geiger counters, life in the Fukushima region is strangely soundless. Most of the time, Geiger counters are calibrated to visualize an amount of rays via numbers, but by choice they are set to mute mode. This silence is echoed by the peculiar sound of deserted areas. Looking back over the history of the Geiger counter and ethnographical depictions, it will try to grasp and render the texture of sites such as these that force us as human beings to confront this deficiency in our senses.

scholarly journals Amazonian worlds of other-than-human beings and the Apurinã through the materiality of oral stories

Multilingua ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen ◽  
Francisco Apurinã ◽  
Sidney Facundes
Keyword(s):  
Language Documentation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
The People ◽  
Communicative Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Community Meeting ◽  
Southwestern Amazonia

Abstract This article looks at what origin stories teach about the world and what kind of material presence they have in Southwestern Amazonia. We examine the ways the Apurinã relate to certain nonhuman entities through their origin story, and our theoretical approach is language materiality, as we are interested in material means of mediating traditional stories. Analogous to the ways that speakers of many other languages who distinguish the entities that they talk to or about, the Apurinã make use of linguistic resources to establish the ways they interact with different entities. Besides these resources, the material means of mediating stories is a crucial tool to narrate the worlds of humans and nonhumans. Storytelling requires material mediation, and a specific context of plant substances. It also involves community meeting as a space of trust in order to become a communicative practice and effectively introduce the history of the people. Our sources are ethnography, language documentation, and autoethnography.

Education as Arikara Spiritual Renewal and Cultural Evolution

2014 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
KuuNUx TeeRIt Kroupa
Keyword(s):  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Old People ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Universe

In May 2009, the Arikara returned to the land of their ancestors along the Missouri River in South Dakota. For the first time in more than a half century, a Medicine Lodge was built for ceremony. The lodge has returned from its dormant state to regain its permanent place in Arikara culture. This event will be remembered as a significant moment in the history of the Arikara because it symbolizes a new beginning and hope for the people. Following this historic event, Arikara spiritual leader Jasper Young Bear offered to share his experience and deep insight into Arikara thought: You have to know that the universe is the Creator's dream, the Creator's mind, everything from the stars all the way to the deepest part of the ocean, to the most microscopic particle of the creation, to the creation itself, on a macro level, on a micro level. You have to understand all of those aspects to understand what the lodge represents. The lodge is a fractal, a symbolic representation of the universe itself. How do we as human beings try to make sense of that? That understanding, of how the power in the universe flows, was gifted to us through millennia of prayer and cultural development… It is important for us to internalize our stories, internalize the star knowledge, internalize those things and make that your way, make that your belief, because we're going to play it out inside the lodge. It only lives by us guys interacting with it and praying with it and bringing it to life… We're going to play out the wise sayings of the old people… So you see that it's an Arikara worldview. A learning process of how the universe functions is what you're actually experiencing [inside the Medicine Lodge]. What the old people were describing was the functioning of how we believed the universe behaves. And we had a deep, deep understanding of what that meant and how it was for us. So that's what you're actually seeing in the Medicine Lodge.

scholarly journals Features of a Booming Reproductive Practice: The Medical Process, the Market, the Antecedents, and the Risks

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-37
Author(s):  
Daniela Bandelli
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
The People ◽  
Commercial Transaction ◽  
Assisted Procreation ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Legal Frameworks

AbstractSurrogacy is a social practice aimed at the procreation of human beings through the use of biomedical technologies. It includes the willingness of a woman to carry out a pregnancy and give birth to a child, with whom she has no genetic link, which will be immediately entrusted at birth to the people who wanted and commissioned it, known as the intended parents. A multi-million transnational market has flourished around this kind of arrangement, with the national legal frameworks being very different from each other and constantly changing. The surrogate’s revenue varies considerably from country to country, as does the price that the aspiring parents pay. This chapter aims to introduce readers to the topic by providing the main coordinates of the phenomenon: how the medical-procreative procedure takes place, what the commercial transaction consists of; the history of this market, the similarity of surrogacy with other procreative practices, and the difference with other assisted procreation practices; the variety of regulatory frameworks, the flexibility of the market according to the logic of globalization; the health risks and the inevitability for the child of the fracture with the “environment” in which he began his psychophysical development.

scholarly journals CHINESE LITERATURE IN BULGARIA AND BULGARIAN LITERATURE IN CHINA – TRANSLATIONS AND PUBLISHING

2020 ◽  
pp. 110-113
Author(s):  
Ying CHEN
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Literature ◽  
70Th Anniversary ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Book Market ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Publishing Houses ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Looking Back ◽  
Translated Literature

In the history of mankind, translation has played an important role in popularizing the individual achievements of different civilizations among other nations. This rings true about the Chinese translated literature in Bulgaria and the Bulgarian translated literature in China. The article focuses on individual books as it is extremely challenging to include in this collection the translations published in magazines and newspapers. The translation of Chinese and Bulgarian literature had prolific periods marked by significant accomplishments. It is worth looking back at those works on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between China and Bulgaria. Both the translation of Chinese literature in Bulgaria and the translation of Bulgarian literature in China are taken into consideration, paying specific attention to the main titles, authors and their publication. The publishing houses specializing in culture and art in the two countries occupy the larger part of the book market. It may be concluded that all these translations tend to give spiritual food to the Chinese and Bulgarian readers. Although they introduce the people to a different tradition, culture and civilization, the choice of the main themes can be interpreted as a sign of a common taste for values and beauty.

scholarly journals Partition of Bengal: a Posthumanist Study of Select Literary Works

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Indra Sankar Ghatak ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human History ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The People ◽  
National Human ◽  
History Of

The Indian Partition ushered in one of the most historical migrations in human history where millions had to change their native affiliations. This event led to the formation of two nation-states (India and East Pakistan) out of a single cultural geography and the drawing of boundaries (Radcliffe line) disrupted the emotional, cultural and spatial link of the people with the native countries. Selected short stories from Bashabi Fraser’s Bengal Partition Stories and the memoirs in Adhir Biswas’ Border: Bangla Bhager Dewal encapsulate the variegated experiences of the dislocated during 1946-1955, who were sabotaged by fellow Bengalis in the name of gender, community (bangal-ghoti), and religion. This paper looks at select samples from the collections mentioned above and correlates them with the history of the period. It raises the question “of which ‘human’ is the posthuman a ‘post’?” (Ferrando, 2019, p. 9) The narratives from the Bengal partition capture the phenomenon of border crossing which had led to fluid identities (refugees/migrants/infiltrators) as individuals had been deterritorialized and reterritorialized. The migrant bodies symbolize an anthropogeographic entity that had been exploited severely, and the refugees present themselves as the cultural metaphor in order to capture the traumatized and ambivalent condition of post-national human beings.

scholarly journals Supervivientes del Apocalipsis: un relato de ciencia ficción ‘gitano’

2020 ◽  
pp. 210-227
Author(s):  
María Sierra
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Main Role ◽  
Nuclear Disaster ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roma People ◽  
Post War ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors

En 1977 Monde Gitan, una revista francesa dedicada a la llamada “cuestión gitana”, publicó un artículo titulado Les survivants de l’Apocalypse, de Jean Ortica, integrante de una conocida familia ‘gitana’ del país. Se trata de un breve relato de ciencia ficción centrado en una catástrofe nuclear. En la historia, una familia de supervivientes debe aprender a vivir desde cero, sin poder apoyarse en la herencia de siglos de civilización. Son los romaníes quienes se sienten, en consecuencia, protagonistas de la historia de la humanidad y responsables del nacimiento de un nuevo mundo. Este relato puede ser leído de varias maneras, desde una historia de ciencia ficción distópica hasta una utopía gitana; incluso, podría ser entendido como un intento de adoctrinamiento asimilacionista por parte de la sociedad mayoritaria, desde una visión “civilizatoria”. El artículo explora estos múltiples sentidos como vía de entrada para el estudio de la situación del pueblo romaní en la Francia (y la Europa) de posguerra, teniendo en cuenta los factores sociales y culturales del contexto histórico -señaladamente, el miedo atómico propio de la Guerra Fría- pero también la situación del pueblo romaní tras el Holocausto nazi. Se trata de una forma de representar y combatir el anti-gitanismo desde la imaginación de la capacidad de agencia en un contexto de ficción extremo. In 1977 Monde Gitan, a French journal devoted to the so-called “Gypsy Question” published an article entitled “Les survivants de l’Apocalypse”. Its author was Jean Ortica, a member of a well-known “gypsy” family in France. It was a Science Fiction short story portraying a nuclear disaster. The narration stresses on how a surviving Roma family have to adapt and live starting from scratch, incapable of relying on the inherited history of centuries of civilization. The Roma are the people who thus play the main role in the new history of the humankind, feeling responsible for the birth of a new world. This story can be read in several ways, from a dystopian science fiction story to a gypsy utopia narration; It could even be understood as an attempt at assimilationist indoctrination by the majority society, from a "civilizatory” vision. The article explores these multiple meanings in connection with the study of the situation of the Roma people in post-war France (and Europe), taking into account the social and cultural factors of the historical context - remarkably, the rise of nuclear fear in the Cold War- but also the situation of the Roma people after the Nazi Holocaust. This story represents and faces anti-gypsyism from the self-imagination of the Roma capacity for agency within a fictionalized extreme context.

scholarly journals A Critique of Freud’s Theory Regarding Man’s Personality Structure from the Quran Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Rasoul Muhammad-Jafari ◽  
Mohsen Azimi ◽  
Sadegh Zamani
Keyword(s):  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Personality Structure ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Personality ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Body And Soul

Throughout the history of man, the Almighty assigned prophets to lead human beings. Along the same lines, the Almighty assigned the last prophet and provided him with the last divine book to offer to the people and lead them through the most complete religion. Hence this religion and its book would be a criterion for evaluating man’s thoughts. Freud was among one of the theoreticians who had an influential effect in human societies. He had a numerous theories regarding man, one of which was the description of human personality with the three concepts of id, ego, and super-ego. which opposes and is in contradiction with the teachings of the Quran. Hence, this study is after critically analyzing the structure of man’s personality from the Quran perspective. The findings of the study showed: (1) Freud seems to exclusively believe in one sole physical dimension for a man and no other dimensions while based on the Quran perspective and teachings, man is composed of the two dimensions of body and soul; (2) based on the Quran perspective, man is continually under the exposure of the two pulling and pushing forces of Havaye Nafs [Fads or wishes] and wisdom; (3) from the Quran standpoint, the personality of an individual is composed of three levels or layers: Nafs Ammarah; Nafs Lavvamah; and Nafs Motmaennah; and (4) there is reference to and confirmation of the hidden angles of human psych or mind in the holy Koran; yet, there is no reference to any hidden file for the repressed wishes.

Heavenly Numbers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Cullen
Keyword(s):  
Direct Access ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Original Material ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Technical Practice ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Narrative Thread

This book is a history of the development of mathematical astronomy in China, from the late third century BCE, to the early third century CE—a period often referred to as ‘early imperial China’. It narrates the changes in ways of understanding the movements of the heavens and the heavenly bodies that took place during those four and a half centuries, and tells the stories of the institutions and individuals involved in those changes. It gives clear explanations of technical practice in observation, instrumentation and calculation, and the steady accumulation of data over many years—but it centres on the activity of the individual human beings who observed the heavens, recorded what they saw, and made calculations to analyse and eventually make predictions about the motions of the celestial bodies. It is these individuals, their observations, their calculations and the words they left to us that provide the narrative thread that runs through this work. Throughout the book, the author gives clear translations of original material that allow the reader direct access to what the people in this book said about themselves and what they tried to do. This book is designed to be accessible to a broad readership interested in the history of science, the history of China and the comparative history of ancient cultures, while still being useful to specialists in the history of astronomy.

The uses of useful knowledge and the languages of vernacular science: Perspectives from southwest India

2020 ◽  
pp. 007327532093197
Author(s):  
Eric Moses Gurevitch
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Global History ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
The People ◽  
Southwest India ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Looking Back

In the first half of the eleventh century, a group of scholars in southwest India did something new. They began composing systematic texts about everyday life in a register of language sometimes called New Kannada. While looking back toward earlier texts composed in Sanskrit – and even translating portions of them – these scholars centered their poetic ability and their personal experiences as opposed to prior authoritative texts. They described themselves as authoring “worldly sciences” that were “useful to the people of the world,” and they provided extensive reflections on the systematics of knowledge. Epistemic, linguistic, and political concerns were significantly renegotiated in this moment as local context was turned into a virtue for the production of technical treatises. This article uses this moment to interrogate recent discussions of useful knowledge and vernacular science. Usefulness can mean different things at different times and vernacular sciences change according to their language. This article argues for a usage of both terms that is more attuned to historical particulars. A history of useful knowledge from a place that now appears under the double effacement of the non-modern and non-West offers an opportunity to think through central concepts of the history of science without relying on economic or utilitarian discourses. This paper presents one possible example of what a more global history of useful knowledge might look like.

His own Chernobyl: The embodiment of radiation and the resistance to nuclear extractivism in Nadine Gordimer’s Get a Life

2020 ◽  
pp. 002198942093398
Author(s):  
Vivek Santayana
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
The People ◽  
Human Ecosystem ◽  
History Of ◽  
Slow Violence ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Human Landscape

According to Gabrielle Hecht, nuclear energy in South Africa is mired in a wider history of colonial extractivism and racial oppression. Nadine Gordimer’s 2005 novel Get a Life critiques this politics of nuclear power and the way in which it extends the logic of colonialism to the exploitation of the non-human ecosystem in the interest of capital. However, the spatial and temporal scale of nuclear colonialism defy representation in discursive knowledge. This is because the threat posed by nuclear contamination, on both the non-human ecosystem and the people who have been exposed to radiation, is what Rob Nixon describes as a form of “slow violence”, dispersed across vast temporal and geographical scales that are unrepresentable within human understanding. In response, Get a Life marks a phenomenological shift in Gordimer’s strategies of engagement: through the ambiguities and contradictions of form, the novel demonstrates the reconfiguration in the human subject’s encounter with the non-human ecosystem following the impact of nuclear technology in neo-imperial contexts. Through the protagonist Paul Bannerman’s emerging radioactivity, the novel tentatively imagines a shared vulnerability of both human and non-human beings to nuclear catastrophe in a way that rejects the binary logic of human exploitation of the non-human landscape and characterizes what Donna Haraway terms “response-ability” towards the non-human. Through this embodied response-ability, Gordimer presents a new idiom that offers an alternative way of engaging with the unrepresentable scale of nuclear colonialism.

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