Music and Gift-Exchange: Steps to the Inculturation of the Gospel

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-429
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Gittins
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
Local Congregations ◽  
Cultural Components

Music is a mirror reflecting a community's life and a medium of exchange; not just entertainment but a vital component of culture, a locus of social meanings and values. Cultures are never static. Music is a vehicle for modification and variation of cultural meanings. Strangers, too, are a means whereby cultures may be infiltrated and enriched. This article considers the various cultural components—music, gift-exchange, strangers, and social change—as the social fabric out of which the inculturation of the gospel must be woven. And it is a cross-cultural parable containing lessons for local congregations and communities.

scholarly journals EMBEDDED CREATIVITY: STRUCTURAL INTERCONNECTIONS BETWEEN MATERIALITY, VISUALITY, AND AGENCY IN EVERYDAY PERCEPTUAL SETTINGS

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilya INISHEV
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Theoretical Inquiry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Meaningful Material

Abstract The goal of the article is to examine how some material surfaces contribute to the social consequentiality of the everyday visual experience, generating, transmitting and disseminating nonverbal social meanings, making up bulk of contemporary world’s communicative practices, even its very social fabric. Unlike most of the current – otherwise enormously productive – theoretical initiatives making the social functions of material objects and surfaces the main focus of their social-theoretical inquiry, an approach proposed in this article lays emphasis on some formal structural correlations between the modes of materiality of visually perceived phenomena and the behavioural and emotional opportunities for perceiving subjects. I propose the notion of “generative surface” as the most semantically dense and socially consequential type of visual materiality – a sort of perceivable surfaces that, in contrast to mere physical ones, constitute meaningful material settings substantially influencing our creative capacities within everyday experiences.

Exchange Relations and Social Change in Rural Pakistan

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad A.Z. Mughal
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Socioeconomic Change ◽  
Rural Pakistan ◽  
Gradual Shift ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Exchange Relations

In recent decades, the nature of exchange relations in rural Pakistan appears to have undergone significant transformations due to the gradual shift from seasonal agriculture to a market-based economy, rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Change and continuity in exchange relations are particularly manifested in rituals and ceremonies associated with childbirth, marriage and death, with socioeconomic transformations in the rural economy triggering shifts in ways of conducting such rituals and ceremonies. This article seeks to highlight such change but argues that the continuing centrality of religion, kinship and economic inter-dependencies, marked by rural social organisation, remains evident in how these rituals and ceremonies are conducted. After discussing the social meanings of such rituals and ceremonies in rural Pakistan, the article demonstrates through detailed ethnographic study certain modifications in exchange relations as a consequence of recent socioeconomic change.

Prophètes, Missionnaires et Mariages au Kenya

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-192
Author(s):  
Barbara Morovich
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Important Change ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Structure Sociale ◽  
Husband And Wife

AbstractHow can one be Christian whilst remaining Kikuyu and reproduce in a socially legitimate manner? Focusing on akurinu Prophetic Churches in Kenya, this article analyses the diff erent stages of akurinu marriage in order to understand its individual, moral and social meanings. Akurinu marriage is seen as a new set of rules, organised and managed by the religious community. One of its most striking features is that the wedding is not paid for by the families of the husband and wife. is is an important change in the social structure of the Kikuyu and it shows that Prophetic Churches can be seen as groups which adapt to social change within Kenyan urban society. Moreover, the hope of finding a spouse is one of the reasons for changing to this type of religious community. Comment être chrétien, demeurer Kikuyu et se reproduire légitimement ? En se penchant sur le cas des Eglises prophétiques akurinu au Kenya, cet article retrace les étapes du mariage akurinu afi n d'en comprendre les enjeux individuels, moraux et sociaux. Le mariage akurinu est analysé comme un nouvel ensemble de règles, organisé et géré par la communauté religieuse. Un des points les plus remarquables est que les frais des cérémonies de mariage n'incombent plus aux familles des époux, ce qui introduit un bouleversement fondamental dans la structure sociale kikuyu, et permet de considérer les Eglises prophétiques comme des groupes qui répondent aux changements sociaux de la société urbaine en cours au Kenya. De plus, l'espoir de trouver un conjoint demeure une des raisons de la conversion à ce type de communauté.

The Mäsqal-Pole: Religious Conflict and Social Change in Gurageland

Africa ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Shack
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Made In

Opening ParagraphIn An Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand, Professor Gluckman argued that in situations of conflict, pre-existing groups do not divide neatly into opposing halves, but that groups realign themselves according to the values, motives, and interests governing them at a given time; and that groups who are opposed when facing one situation may find themselves aligned when the nature of the situation differs. Similar studies of social change in Africa and elsewhere have further advanced Gluckman's contention. In all these studies the analytical procedure adopted was to interpret the situational behaviour of the actors in terms of the influence of the wider social system of which they were a part. However, a great deal of the ethnographic data anthropologists gather in the course of field research are derived from chance observations of social phenomena occurring in relatively unstructured situations within which the individuals involved have a wide range of choice in determining the way they interact with others. This paper is based upon just these sorts of ‘imponderable’ facts of Gurage life which, when first recorded in the field, appeared less clearly a part of what Malinowski once called ‘the real substance of the social fabric’ of a changing tribal society than they do now in retrospect. I attempt here to interpret the spontaneous and contradictory behaviour of individual Gurage and groups in the setting of an Ethiopian Christian religious ceremony known as Mäsqal. This analysis of situational behaviour is made in terms of selected aspects of historical or ‘processive’ social change in Gurageland, a tribal district in south-west Ethiopia.

Cross-cultural Translatability: Challenges and Prospects

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang Longxi
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Cultural Understanding ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
Different Cultures

In our quest of a new paradigm for cultural or cross-cultural understanding, we must first take a look at the very concept of a paradigm, as Thomas Kuhn expounded in his celebrated book,The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the related concepts of incommensurability and untranslatability. Kuhn’s concepts have a significant influence on social sciences and the humanities, and they put an overemphasis on the difference and the impossibility of communication among different groups and cultures. Such a tendency has led to the fragmentization of the social fabric and the resurgence of a most tenacious tribalism. This essay launches a critique of such concepts and argues for the possibility and validity of cross-cultural understanding, and proposes world literature as an opportunity to embrace cross-cultural translatability as the first step towards a new paradigm in the study of different cultures in our globalized world today.

scholarly journals Cultural Meanings of Orthodoxy in the University Environment (the Case of Transbaikal State University)

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
L. V. Kamedina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
State University ◽  
Educational Training ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
University Environment ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Cultural Worldview ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University ◽  
Cultural Components

The article actualizes cultural meanings of Orthodoxy that are important for the revival of spiritual Russian culture of young students. Russian Orthodox culture preserves and conveys cultural meanings to an individual with the help of arts and spiritual activity. The paper presents methodology for anthropological cultural interaction of teachers, students, church, and government in the development of cultural meanings of Orthodoxy in the university environment. An attempt was made to arrange a research project and carry out a culturological analysis of the correlation of theoretical developments in the field of studying cultural meanings with the practice of their application in the modern sociocultural space in conditions of a spiritual crisis and taking into account actualization of the spiritual cultural meaning in the aspect of spiritual security of an individual, the possibilities of an interfaith dialogue between the peoples and religions of the Transbaikal region, as well as attempts to unite students according to their religious interests, for example, in the social and moral sphere through cultural meanings and cultural activities. The purpose of the study is to reveal the interconnection of cultural meanings of spiritual Russian culture with educational, training, sociocultural practices in the university environment. The results of the study show that students form their cultural worldview not only with the help of informational and educational or socio-cultural components, but also through their spiritual experience, which is accumulated while mastering the cultural meanings of Russian spiritual life.

Trust phenomenon and the crisis if trust in monocultural and cross-cultural communications

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-23
Author(s):  
A. Bol'shunov
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
The Absolute

The article attempts to integrate existential, cultural, sociological and psychological approaches to the problem of trust based on the category "meaning". The phenomenon of trust is relevant because of the following fact: people are beings who are voluntarily at each other's disposal and, accordingly, are vulnerable to each other. A trust is an attitude in which this fundamental vulnerability is exchanged for humanity. That is why humanity is attributed to persons. At the same time, trust and mistrust are an integral aspect of the processes of meaning formation and embodiment. That processes are related to intersubjective meaning formations (intensional structures and contexts) of lifeworlds. Lifeworlds are spheres of human existence. First embodiment of the trust intensive structure is socio-cultural patterns and institutions. They are embodied in social meanings and people relations. The social sphere which trust embodies is the circulation of gifts (potlatch). Finally, relevant existential, socio-cultural and social meanings find embody in various subjective manifestations of trust. That occurs because people are participants in existential, socio-cultural and social relations mediated by their psychology. But a person can also obtain agency and enter the sphere of "absolute relations with the absolute" as in being, in which faith/trust becomes the very way of being.

Colony of the Sertão: Amazonian Expeditions and the Indian Slave Trade

2005 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Sommer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Native Population ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Main River ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Intermediaries ◽  
Fierce Competition ◽  
And Control

After expelling their European rivals from the Amazon in the early–seventeenth century, the Portuguese set about exploiting the principal assets of the vast basin—the indigenous inhabitants. As allies, converts, and slaves the native population provided the labor and much of the social fabric of the developing colony. While a variety of canoe-borne expeditions ventured ever farther up the main river and its tributaries seeking elusive gold, harvesting forest products, and expanding the crown's domain, prosperity and power for the leaders and sponsors of those forays derived mainly from the human cargo brought downstream to missions, forts, and other settlements. As a result, crown and colonial authorities attempted to regulate and control the expeditions, and fierce competition developed among institutions and individuals involved in the process. Documents in Portuguese and Brazilian archives reveal the key role played by the Indians themselves in collaboration with the little-studied cross-cultural intermediaries, known as cunhamenas.

The Social Fabric: A Guide to Being Late for a Date, Getting Help, and So Much More…

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-18
Author(s):  
Kathryn C. Oleson ◽  
Robert M. Arkin
Keyword(s):  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document