Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World: An Experiment in Real Exploration, Actual Travel, Constructed Worlds, and Emancipation (in/from Japan)

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 104-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Goto-Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Politics Of Knowledge ◽  
Political Function ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Places ◽  
Architectural Spaces ◽  
Ethics And Politics

AbstractThis paper experiments with the idea that travel writing could be a valid and useful mode through which to study certain videogames. By embracing the notions that space is a social construction and that the virtual worlds of some videogames constitute architectural spaces in a manner that is more than analogous to an urban space, it maintains that these constructed worlds are real places to visit, and hence that exploration within them is also real. Furthermore, the paper considers the ways in which travel in general, and travel in(to) videogames in particular, contributes to the experience of emancipation in technology-rich societies. Using the example of Japan (as one of the global powerhouses of videogame creation and consumption), the paper considers the interaction and intersection of the virtual and the actual, in mutually enriching and liberating ways, which are viewed in terms of their social and political function. It also cautions about the ethics and politics of knowledge involved in the deployment of travel writing as a method in the interrogation of videogames, concluding with a methodological sketch for a way ahead. It illustrates and demonstrates its argument with three original travelogues.

War and the Politics of Ethics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maja Zehfuss
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Ethics Training ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The World ◽  
Ethics And Politics

Contemporary Western war is represented as enacting the West’s ability and responsibility to help make the world a better place for others, in particular to protect them from oppression and serious human rights abuses. That is, war has become permissible again, indeed even required, as ethical war. At the same time, however, Western war kills and destroys. This creates a paradox: Western war risks killing those it proposes to protect. This book examines how we have responded to this dilemma and challenges the vision of ethical war itself. That is, it explores how the commitment to ethics shapes the practice of war and indeed how practices come, in turn, to shape what is considered ethical in war. The book closely examines particular practices of warfare, such as targeting, the use of cultural knowledge, and ethics training for soldiers. What emerges is that instead of constraining violence, the commitment to ethics enables and enhances it. The book argues that the production of ethical war relies on an impossible but obscured separation between ethics and politics, that is, a problematic politics of ethics, and reflects on the need to make decisions at the limit of ethics.

scholarly journals Humans created God in their image? An anthropomorphic projectionism in the Old Testament

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ndikho Mtshiselwa ◽  
Lerato Mokoena
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The World ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
History Of ◽  
Old Testament Studies

The Old Testament projects not only a Deity that created the world and human beings but also one that is violent and male. The debate on the depiction of the God of Israel that is violent and male is far from being exhausted in Old Testament studies. Thus, the main question posed in this article is: If re-read as ‘Humans created God in their image’, would Genesis 1:27 account for the portrayal of a Deity that is male and violent? Feuerbach’s idea of anthropomorphic projectionism and Guthrie’s view of religion as anthropomorphism come to mind here. This article therefore examines, firstly, human conceptualisation of a divine being within the framework of the theory of anthropomorphic projectionism. Because many a theologian and philosopher would deny that God is a being at all, we further investigate whether the God of Israel was a theological and social construction during the history of ancient Israel. In the end, we conclude, based on the theory of anthropomorphic projectionism, that the idea that the God of Israel was a theological and social construct accounts for the depiction of a Deity that is male and violent in the Old Testament.

Does God Manifest Himself in the World in Trickles of Music?

2006 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-65
Author(s):  
Calvin Stapert
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The World

The reception of Mozart's music is rife with extravagant claims that connect it to the divine and see it as a source of hope and comfort. Although that aspect of Mozart reception is still alive and well, recent demystification projects have tried to reduce his music to “social construction.” Christian theology goes some distance with those projects, but it also gives reason to believe that human artifacts can give glimpses of transcendence and reason for hope. Further, it guides our response to them between the dangers of idolatry and ingratitude.

scholarly journals The social construction of HIV/AIDS

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Goldstein ◽  
H G Pretorius ◽  
A D Stuart
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Hiv Aids

An in-depth look is taken at the specific discourses surrounding the debilitating HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping South Africa and the world. Opsomming Hierdie artikel poog om ‘n indiepte ondersoek te loods na die spesifieke diskoerse rondom die MIV/VIGS epidemie in Suid-Afrika en die wêreld. *Please note: This is a reduced version of the abstract. Please refer to PDF for full text.

scholarly journals Membaca Fenomena Shalat Sebagai Sebuah Tanda

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aris Fauzan
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
The World

This paper attempts to read the phenomenon of prayer as a sign by placing prayer as a result of social construction. This is triggered by the emergence of the assumption that some people who try to simplify prayers by replacing them with other activities such as recall (in any condition) and do good. Furthermore the author asks the question as follows: What is the meaning of prayer in the religious tradition? How to understand prayer in the reading of dialectics-normative and social sign? To answer the question, the writer uses normative dialectic reading pattern and semiotic approach (signology). The results of the study of the authors do is: first, physically lahiriyah, prayer directs the perpetrators into a knot (an important point) on the universal website that unites between Muslims wherever they are and from whatever madhhab he embraces. Second, spiritually spiritual, prayer builds personal reinforcement that is in the primordial realiatation with the continuous reality of sharia. This continuity not only connects to the spiritual experience of fellow Muslims around the world, but also connects the experience of a Muslim with the spirituality of Abraham and Muhammad. Third, that shalat and shahadah are two things inseparable spiritually and physically, both in essence and shari'a

scholarly journals New Century – ‘New Essays’?

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Dobrawa Lisak-Gębala
Keyword(s):  
Travel Writing ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Second World ◽  
Cognitive Attitude ◽  
Animal World ◽  
Form Of Expression

This article constitutes an attempt at organising the non-conservative tendencies in Polish essays published in the 21st century, which apply to themes, the lowering of the tone, and forms of writing. One major stream is travel writing, which focuses not on the Mediterranean legacy, but on the ‘second world’: long-disadvantaged provincial areas. Many essayists abandon the traditional topic of books and works of art, and turn to ‘reading’ the animal world, the plant world, and the world of ordinary objects. The essay has also become a tool for introducing polarisation between that which is mainstream and that which is marginal and concerns minorities. The fact of choosing a non-traditional topic often entails a non-canonical cognitive attitude, which translates into experiments within the area of the form of expression. The author of this article argues that all those innovations can be accommodated by the flexible convention of the essay as a genre which, in principle, is supposed to constitute an artistic cognitive experiment.

scholarly journals WORLD GEOGRAPHY OF JOKES

Mercator ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2020) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Herve Thery
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
World Geography ◽  
The World ◽  
Bottom To Top

Jokes between countries are useful to reveal the ethnotypes existing in each of them, to represent them in cartographic form allows to perceive their distribution and the spatial projection of mockery: who are we laughing at, who are the scapegoats for the inhabitants of each country? Based on the analysis of an ad hoc database covering more than 60% of the countries and territories of the world and 90% of its population, the text shows that these jokes are social constructions, have a temporality and are divided basically in two categories, from top to bottom and from bottom to top. Keywords: jokes, ethnotypes, social construction, stupidity, arrogance

Guns, Slums, and “Yellow Devils”: A Genealogy of Urban Conflicts in Karachi, Pakistan

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURENT GAYER
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Ethnic Enclaves ◽  
Urban Crisis ◽  
Ethnic Parties ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Plans ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Conflicts

Karachi is a city of migrants and an important commercial hub, which provides Pakistan with a window on the world. But Karachi is also a deeply fragmented city, plagued by an acute urban crisis that takes roots in the failure of the development plans that successive Pakistani governments have delegated to foreign experts. The transnationalisation of the Afghan jihad, in the 1980s, also fuelled social and ethnic antagonisms in the city and contributed to the proliferation of violent entrepreneurs and ethnic parties. Both criminal elements and ethnic activists contributed to the ever-increasing fragmentation of urban space in the city, and to the multiplication of ethnic enclaves controlled by private militias. This extreme fragmentation of the city has benefited local jihadis and foreign terrorists who have taken shelter here since the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. However, Karachi will never be a “sanctuary” for jihadi militants, due to the hostility of local ethnic parties, whose activists see themselves as enlightened secularists at war with the most retrograde elements of their society and their foreign allies.

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