Contingent Efficacies in Buryat Tibetan Medicine

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 249-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Chudakova
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Medical Pluralism ◽  
Therapeutic Action ◽  
Eastern Siberia ◽  
Clinical Protocols ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Multiple Regimes

Focusing on sites of encounter between post-socialist biomedicine and Tibetan medicine in Eastern Siberia, this article explores overlapping ideologies of efficacy at work. In the absence of a single framework for determining its potencies, Tibetan medicine is caught between multiple regimes of legitimacy necessitated by scientific research, clinical protocols, and state regulatory frameworks. Through an exploration of three ethnographic case studies, this article tracks how those working with Tibetan medicine highlight instead the conditional nature of its therapeutic action. By adopting the frame ofcontingent efficacies, the article explores how practitioners of Tibetan medicine in Russia conceive of the medicines and techniques they deploy as always already situated extensions of specific social relations, political formations, forms of practice, and epistemological commitments. By pointing to the failures at commensuration with different regimes of abstraction these accounts offer a lens into the cultural politics of medical pluralism in Inner Asia.

How a Lingua Franca Spreads

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Mc Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Atlantic Coast ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Speakers Of Other Languages ◽  
Realistic View ◽  
Atlantic Language ◽  
The City

This chapter considers how Wolof, an Atlantic language spoken in Senegal, has become an important lingua franca, and how French has contributed to the ascent of Wolof. The nature of social relations between Africans and French in cities along the Atlantic coast in the 18th and 19th centuries were such that a prestigious urban way of speaking Wolof that made liberal use of French borrowings became the language of the city. As an index of urban belonging, opportunity, and modernity, Wolof was viewed as a useful language, a trend that has continued up to the present. Four case studies illustrate how the use of Wolof facilitates mobility for speakers of other languages in Senegal. By drawing a distinction between the formal and informal language sectors, this chapter offers a more realistic view of everyday language practices in Senegal, where Wolof is the dominant language.

On Others’ Emotions, and Ours: a Reflection on Narratives, Categories, and Heuristic Devices

Relations ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Sabrina Tonutti
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Collective Phenomena ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Heuristic Devices

This article reflects on some epistemological and methodological tenets of cultural anthropology such as the informants’ role in ethnographical research, the relation between collective phenomena and individuals, and that between case studies (individual level) and abstraction (generalization). These tenets will be addressed focusing on the lack of recognition of animals’ individuality and agency in social relations, and on the related humans/animals opposition. With the topic of the emotional lives of animals as a starting point, the essay sets out to reflect on how the narratives we use to interpret and describe them inform our enquiry within an anthropocentric and essentialist view, consequently biasing our understanding of diversity.

scholarly journals Empresas recuperadas por trabalhadores no Brasil e na Argentina

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Flávio Chedid Henriques ◽  
Michel Jean-Marie Thiollent
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Work Organization ◽  
Self Management ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mode Of Production

Este artigo é resultado de uma tese de doutorado que teve como objetivo identificar inovações no campo da organização do trabalho produzidas pelas experiências de empresas recuperadas por trabalhadores no Brasil e na Argentina. A tese central defendida é a de que as limitações impostas pela hegemonia do modo de produção capitalista não encerram a possibilidade de construção de novas relações sociais de produção. Os cinco estudos de caso realizados e a experiência de levantamentos da totalidade das experiências de empresas recuperadas nos dois países forneceram elementos que permitiram problematizar em vários aspectos a organização capitalista do trabalho e, por meio de uma crítica prática, como sugere Rebón (2007), propiciaram a reflexão sobre a possibilidade de superação do modelo hegemônico, que não passa apenas pela inovação no interior das organizações, mas também da relação dessas empresas com seus territórios.Palavras-chave: empresas recuperadas por trabalhadores; organização do trabalho; autogestão; estudos organizacionais críticos. Abstract: This article is the result of a doctoral thesis which aims to identify innovations in the field of labour organization produced by the experiences of companies recovered by workers in Brazil and Argentina. The central thesis defended is that the limitations imposed by the hegemony of the capitalist mode of production do not dismiss the possibility of building new social relations of production. The five case studies and the experience with surveys of all experiences recuperated enterprises in the two countries provided information that allowed questioning in several respects the capitalist organization of work and, through a critical practice, as suggested Rebón (2007), propitiated reflection on the possibility of overcoming the hegemonic model, it is not only about innovation within organizations, but also the relationship of these companies with their territories. Keywords: companies recovered by workers; work organization; workers self-management; critical management studies.

Archives, Documents, and Legal Practices in the Greek Polis

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Faraguna
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Judicial Procedures ◽  
Land Transactions ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the importance of writing in the legal practices of the Greek poleis. After discussing writing materials and kinds of documents, illustrating the different functions documents on the same media could have and the problems in tracing ancient archives and reconstructing the role they played in the mechanisms of public administration, it concentrates on two case studies: written records concerning land transactions (in particular registers of sales) and the role of written documents in Athenian judicial procedures. It argues that the impact of written documents on the legal sphere and in establishing fair social relations within the polis was much more significant than is generally recognized.

scholarly journals Regarding Artists Regarding Labor

Media-N ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-44
Author(s):  
Ana Torok
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Class A ◽  
Human Labor ◽  
Artistic Labor

In the wake of the Occupy movement and broader discussions concerning the state of the global working class, a number of contemporary artists have demonstrated a renewed interest in exploring the politics of labor through the form, content, and distribution of their work. The case studies taken up here reveal and interrogate forms of human labor embedded within or affected by digital technology. By featuring the artists engaged in transactional relationships or performing the role of capitalist, these predominantly video-based artworks act as concrete reflections of a capitalist economic system. Foregrounding the system’s problematics through reenactment, these artworks tacitly implicate their creator as well as their viewer within a complex web of social relations. This article examines the shape and significance of artistic labor across these case studies and asks whether the very allowance for this form of recent cultural production might itself hold emancipatory potential. 

scholarly journals In search of trust and efficacy

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Fjeld ◽  
Nianggajia
Keyword(s):  
Medical Anthropology ◽  
Public Health System ◽  
Ethnic Relations ◽  
Tibetan Medicine ◽  
Medical Pluralism ◽  
Qinghai Province ◽  
Patient Role ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
Shared Understandings

This article describes how Tibetan medicine, traditionally an ethnomedicine indigenous to Tibetan areas, travels across cultural boundaries in a multiethnic region, presenting empirical findings from Rebgong (Ch. Tongren) in Qinghai province, People’s Republic of China. Focusing on Muslim Hui and Han Chinese citizens, we describe how these patients smoothly engage with Tibetan medicine. This, we argue, is enabled by a strong sense of trust in distinguished Tibetan doctors, or ‘lineage doctors’, and their privately produced Tibetan medicines, and by shared understandings of the patient role. Contemporary medical pluralism in Rebgong invites us to revisit classic themes in medical anthropology as it brings the study of ethnomedicine into the context of a reconfigured instrumentalized public health system and ethnic relations, in which trust is a rare and treasured quality.

scholarly journals Post-socialist animism: personhood, necro-personas and public past in Inner Asia

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Szmyt
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
The Past ◽  
Key Features ◽  
The Relationship

This paper investigates the relationship between animism and public past in post-socialist Inner Asia. The analysis was based on three case studies highlighting key features of the relationship between local conceptions of personhood, non-human agency, and their role in structuring native visions of the past: (1) negotiations between families and the spirits  of their ancestors – victims of communist purges in Mongolia, (2) a powerful necro-persona that allows local communities to gain political subjectivity and undermine conventional post-Soviet historical narratives, and (3) the return of the undead lama Itigilov that caused Buddhist revival in Buryatia. Posthuman agents have been involved in mythopraxis,  through which native regimes of historicity are established.

Taylors Agenten

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Falkenberg
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Order Picking ◽  
Work Process ◽  
Alternative Control ◽  
Qualitative Case Studies ◽  
Assistance Systems

Mobile assistance systems are associated with promises of relief and greater independence at work. At the same time, they are suspected of conducting seamless surveillance of employees. Using the example of order picking, the qualitative case studies in this book show that the aforementioned systems contribute to the intensification and standardisation of work, but are hardly used to monitor workers. The reasons for this are manifold and lie in regulated working conditions and co-determination, work process requirements, technical limitations, alternative control practices or the maintenance of social relations. The findings of this book show that one-sided forecasts fall short of assessing the true impact of mobile assistance systems.

scholarly journals Animal Release and the Sacrificial Ethos in Inner Asia

Inner Asia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-216
Author(s):  
Katherine Swancutt
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Southwest China ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
Human Animal

Abstract Animal release is often understood as the practice of freeing an animal from human consumption or the burden of labour. Typically associated with various Buddhist or Daoist cosmologies in which liberating an animal is a merit-making act, animal release tends to be conceptualised in altruistic terms. Yet the diverse forms that sacrifice and animal release take across Inner Asia suggest that the focus of analysis sometimes shifts from a concern with freeing animals to protecting the human imperative to live. Introducing new ethnography on the ethical underpinnings of sacrifice among Buryats in northeast Mongolia and the Nuosu of southwest China, I propose that animal release can be an act of restrained violence that evokes the mythopoetic contours of human–animal relations, animal sentience and human self-preservation. Offering case studies on scapegoats, deferred sacrifice, and contingent forms of slaughter, I show how Buryats and Nuosu manage the ethical tensions posed by sacrifice.

scholarly journals Don't Fence Me In: Barricade Sociality and Political Struggles in Mexico and Latvia

2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 644-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dace Dzenovska ◽  
Iván Arenas
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The State ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Military Units

AbstractIn 1991, barricades in the streets of Rīga, Latvia, shielded important landmarks from Soviet military units looking to prevent the dissolution of the USSR; in 2006, barricades in the streets of Oaxaca, Mexico, defended members of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca from paramilitary incursions. We employ these two cases to compare the historically specific public socialities and politics formed through spatial and material practices in moments of crisis and in their aftermath. We show how the barricades continue to animate social and political formations and imaginaries, providing a sense of both past solidarity and future possibilities against which the present, including the state of the polity and the life of the people, are assessed. We trace the convergences and differences of political imaginaries of barricade sociality that formed in the barricades’ aftermath and consider what their transformative potential might be. Attentive to the specificity of particular practices and social relations that produce a collective subject, we consider how our case studies might inform broader questions about social collectives like the nation and publics. Though they point in different directions, we argue that the barricades provide an enabling position from which to imagine and organize collective life otherwise. In a moment when much mainstream political activism remains spellbound by the allure of discourses of democracy that promise power to the people, the Mexico and Latvia cases provide examples of social life that exceeded both state-based notions of collectives and what Michael Warner has called “state-based thinking,” even as they were also entangled with state-based frames.

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