Remembering Allan Sekula (1951–2013)

October ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
pp. 133-142
Author(s):  
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Allan Sekula ◽  
Hourly Basis

Having just recently returned from a rare visit to Los Angeles, and wondering about the city's loss of Michael Asher and Allan Sekula in the past year and a half, I was suddenly struck by the idea that these artists must have made gargantuan efforts in that environment on a daily—if not hourly—basis to sustain their conviction in the viability of their practices. After all, the near-total erasure of any remnant of conventional structures of subjectivity and the dissolution of even the last residual spatial forms of the public sphere could hardly reach a more decisive state.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

scholarly journals UNDERSTANDING LAW AND RELIGION AS CULTURE: MAKING ROOM FOR MEANING IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between law and religion in contemporary civil society has been a topic of increasing social interest and importance in Canada in the past many years. We have seen the practices and commitments of religious groups and individuals become highly salient on many issues of public policy, including the nature of the institution of marriage, the content of public education, and the uses of public space, to name just a few. As the vehicle for this discussion, I want to ask a straightforward question: When we listen to our public discourse, what is the story that we hear about the relationship between law and religion? How does this topic tend to be spoken about in law and politics – what is our idiom around this issue – and does this story serve us well? Though straightforward, this question has gone all but unanswered in our political and academic discussions. We take for granted our approach to speaking about – and, therefore, our way of thinking about – the relationship between law and religion. In my view, this is most unfortunate because this taken-for-grantedness is the source of our failure to properly understand the critically important relationship between law and religion.

scholarly journals HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFORDS POPULIST POLITICS: REMARKS ON LIMINALITY BASED ON THE BRAZILIAN CASE

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 404-427
Author(s):  
Leticia Cesarino
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Online Ethnography ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
And Linguistics

ABSTRACT In the past decade or so, populism and social media have been outstanding issues both in academia and the public sphere. At this point, evidence from multiple countries suggest that perceived parallels between the dynamics of social media and the mechanics of populist discourse may be more than just incidental, relating to a shared structural field. This article suggests one possible path towards making sense of how the dynamics of social media and the mechanics of populist mobilization have co-produced each other in the last decade or so. Navigating the interface between anthropology and linguistics, it takes key aspects of Victor Turner’s notion of liminality to suggest some of the ways in which social media’s anti-structural affordances may help lay a foundation for the contemporary flourishing of populist discourse: markers of social structure are suspended; communitas is formed; the culture core is addressed; mimesis and anti-structural inversions are performed; subjects become influenceable. I elaborate on this claim based on Brazilian materials, drawn from online ethnography on pro-Bolsonaro WhatsApp groups and other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook since 2018.

scholarly journals Public History in Movement – Present Pasts: the Memory of Slavery in Brazil

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juniele Rabêlo de Almeida ◽  
Larissa Moreira Viana
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public History ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Research Network ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractPresent Pasts: The Memory of Slavery in Brazil is a sound testament to the Brazilian public history movemen.This problematization of the “present pasts of slavery” finds fertile ground in Brazilian public history because of the urgent need to record and analyze representations of this traumatic past, going beyond professional and academic contexts to the public sphere. Public history offers reinvigorating possibilities for mediation between, and intervention in, the past and its publics.The Present Pasts Research Network provides a thought-provoking example of public history’s ability to be sensitive to broad public debate and how the needs, interests, and representations of communities can be addressed through historical representation, interpretation, and active history-making.

The Lost Lullaby and Other Stories about Being an Armenian in Turkey

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 67-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Bilal
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Armenian Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Different Cultures

Nınçir mangig im sirasun, Oror yem asum, Baydzar lusinn e meğm hayum, Ko ororotsum.By analyzing the transmission of Armenian lullabies within the changing contexts of identity and cultural politics in Turkey, this paper addresses displacement and loss as two interrelated experiences shaping the sense of being an Armenian in Turkey. I criticize the liberal multiculturalist perspective that represents cultures in a way that cuts the link between the past and the present, by dissociating different cultures from the history of their presence in Anatolia and the destruction of that presence. I argue that in such a context where cultures are detached from lived experiences and memory, it becomes impossible to share the stories of violence and pain in the public sphere; hence, the loss itself becomes the experience of being Armenian. Finally, I try to explain how today young generations of Armenians in İstanbul, in their search for an Armenian identity, have developed a certain way of belonging to the space and culture, a way of belonging that is very much shaped by the experience of loss.

Urban Heritage in Troubled Times

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Gadsby
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Historical Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Incomplete Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Urban Heritage ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
The Public Sphere

The terrain of heritage—where the past and present intersect—is one of a few places where anthropological archaeology can become an applied, even activist practice. This is because heritage has a kind of "slippery temporality" about it. On its surface, heritage is about history, or at least the information that we possess about the past. However, heritage happens in the present; it is really the continually evolving result of a set of contemporary ideological practices that help us to order the often confusing and incomplete knowledge we have about the past. Heritage is a story, written or spoken in the present. That story transforms the raw material of historical information into a valueladen narrative about the present. Those narratives make their way into the public consciousness, where they are operationalized in the realm of public discourse. There, in the public sphere, heritage discourses have material consequences for all parties involved.

‘A Church in a Cinema Hall?’ Pentecostal Appropriation of Public Space in Nigeria

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olufunke Adeboye
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Church

AbstractOver the past two decades Nigeria has become a hotbed of Pentecostal activity. It is the view of this study that Pentecostal visibility in Nigeria has been enhanced not just by Pentecostals’ aggressive utilization of media technology for proselytization as claimed by previous scholars, but also by their appropriation of public spaces for worship. This study not only focuses on the church in the cinema hall, but also on churches in nightclubs, hotels, and other such places previously demonized as ‘abode[s] of sin’ by classical Pentecostals. This paper argues that users’ perception of public spaces having rigid meanings and unchanging usage was responsible for much of the tensions experienced. It would be more useful for academic analysts and various ‘publics’ to construe such spaces as dynamic sites, at once reflecting mutations in the public sphere, responsive to local and global socio-economic processes, and amenable to periodic reinventions and negotiations.

scholarly journals McDonaldization in Households

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Paul Woolridge ◽  
Leslie Stanley-Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Video Survey ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Using Data ◽  
And Control

<p>Using data collected over three years and mimicking the methodology of Arnold et al. (2012) in Los Angeles, a study in Texas was conducted in which 66 families opened their homes and allowed video, survey data, and pictorial evidence to be collected. These data are used to determine if McDonaldization has spread from the public sphere into the private sphere by determining if the four factors of McDonaldization: predictability, calculability, efficiency, and control are present, and if so, in what ways they are represented. Ultimately, every single household studied showed instances of all four factors of McDonaldization, thus heavily supporting the hypothesis that McDonaldization has encroached into the private sphere. This phenomenon will be explained by using McDonaldization either as a rational means to pursue individualistic self-actualization as described through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or as a means by corporations to extend their own factor of control into the private sphere and thus influence consumers. Finally, the fifth factor of McDonaldization, irrationality emerging from rationality, was examined with examples provided. </p>

scholarly journals Retro-Innovation and Corporate Social Responsibility

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Loucanova ◽  
Jan Parobek ◽  
Martina Kalamarova
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
New Products ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Corporate Social

Abstract The paper deals with the retro-innovation and their importance to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Corporate social responsibility is a process with the aim to encourage a positive impact through activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, and all other stakeholders of the public sphere. The accelerated rate of technological and social change influences on the society. The main social problems are symptoms of future shock. Retro-innovation trend is emerging against an accelerating backdrop of “datafication”. New products are designed to connect customers with the past in ways that are nostalgic, interactive and environmental. CSR thanks to the retroinnovation encourages has a positive impact on the all stakeholders and eliminates the future shock.

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