Words and Worlds

2021 ◽  

Born in a time of anxiety, Words and Worlds examines some of the disquieting challenges that societies now face. Through an inquiry into a political lexicon of commonsense words, ranging from democracy and revolution to knowledge and authority, from inequality and toleration to war and power, the authors of this book trouble the self-evidence of these terms, bringing into view the hidden transcripts and unexpected trajectories of many settled ideas, such as the human sense of belonging or the call for openness and transparency in research and public life. The case studies conducted over five continents with the tools of eight different disciplines challenge the ethnocentric assumptions, false moralism, and cultural prejudices that underlie much discussion on corruption, or even the virtue invested in resilience. The critique of the ubiquitous use of crisis to characterize our times shows how this framing obscures the unjust conditions of existence and violence of everyday life. Together the essays in this book offer a fresh look at the deeply connected worlds we inhabit in solidarity and discord. Contributors. Banu Bargu, Veena Das, Alex de Waal, Didier Fassin, Peter Geschiere, Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Caroline Humphrey, Ravi Kanbur, Julieta Lemaitre, Uday S. Mehta, Jan-Werner Müller, Jonathan Pugh, Elizabeth F. Sanders, Todd Sanders

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Moore ◽  
Kim Barbour

In this preamble to the newest collection of contributions to Persona Studies, we draw on the growing terminology from its initial offerings to consider the co-infiltration of the public and the domestic in the presentation of the online self. We provide two case studies that explore the overlapping of regions of public life that interface with social media and provide individuals with the means to curate persona micro-publics. These very different examples of persona performance are both organised around accounting for the ‘intercommunication’ of self-identification and presentational media (Marshall ‘Persona Studies’). Further, we suggest that the public spaces of social media and the web have been domesticated; that is, they have been made to ‘fit’ into the interpersonal demands of an individual’s many micro-publics of attention. This domestication has occurred via the individualised presentational media strategies of persona formation, such as memes and selfies, involved in the intercommunication of the self across multiple platforms and services to perform different roles.


Author(s):  
Arpita Kumar

The crisis of values is pervasive resulting in adverse development in all walks of life. Misra, Srivastava and Gupta (1995) have found that present emphasis on personal growth as opposed to societal development, non-commital attitude, inconsistency in behaviour across situations, increase in violence, corruption, indiscipline and social tension have become parts of the contemporary reality experienced in everyday life of people. There is a progressive erosion of values resulting in public life. Educational institutions are no exception. A proper value system must be inculcated by educational institutions through educational process based on rationality, scientific and moral approach to life. It would be possible to serve the need of the hour through proper value orientation among teacher education programmes.


This article advocates a new agenda for (media) tourism research that links questions of tourist experiences to the role and meaning of imagination in everyday life. Based on a small-scale, qualitative study among a group of seventeen respondents of diverse ages and backgrounds currently residing in the Netherlands, we offer an empirical exploration of the places that are of importance for people’s individual state of mind and investigate how these places relate to (potential) tourist experiences. The combination of in-depth interviews and random-cue self-reporting resulted in the following findings: 1) all our respondents regularly reside in an elaborate imaginary world, consisting of both fictional and non-fictional places; 2) this imaginary world is dominated by places which make the respondents feel nostalgic; 3) in this regard, the private home and houses from childhood are pivotal; 4) the ‘home’ is seen as topos of the self and contrasted with ‘away’; 5) the imagination of ‘away’ emerges from memories of previous tourist experiences, personal fantasies and, last but not least, influences from popular culture. We conclude that imagining and visiting other locations are part of a life-long project of ‘identity work’ in which personal identities are performed, confirmed and extended. By travelling, either physically or mentally, individuals anchor their identity - the entirety of ideas about who they are, where they come from and where they think they belong - in a broader, spatial framework.


2018 ◽  

What does it mean to be a good citizen today? What are practices of citizenship? And what can we learn from the past about these practices to better engage in city life in the twenty-first century? Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self is a collection of papers that examine these questions. The contributors come from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and history, and their essays make comparative examinations of the practices of citizenship from the ancient world to the present day in both the East and the West. The papers’ comparative approaches, between East and West, and ancient and modern, leads to a greater understanding of the challenges facing citizens in the urbanized twenty-first century, and by looking at past examples, suggests ways of addressing them. While the book’s point of departure is philosophical, its key aim is to examine how philosophy can be applied to everyday life for the betterment of citizens in cities not just in Asia and the West but everywhere.


Author(s):  
Anita L. Cloete

The reflection on film will be situated within the framework of popular culture and livedreligion as recognised themes within the discipline of practical theology. It is argued that theperspective of viewers is of importance within the process of meaning-making. By focusing onthe experience and meaning-making through the act of film-watching the emphasis is not somuch on the message that the producer wishes to convey but rather on the experience that iscreated within the viewer. Experience is not viewed as only emotional, but rather that, at least,both the cognitive and emotional are key in the act of watching a film. It is therefore arguedthat this experience that is seldom reflected on by viewers could serve as a fruitful platform formeaning-making by the viewer. In a context where there seems to be a decline in institutionalisedforms of religion, it is important to investigate emerging forms of religion. Furthermore, theturn to the self also makes people’s experiences and practices in everyday life valuableresources for theological reflection. This reflection could provide a theoretical framework forespecially empirical research on how film as specific form of media serves as a religiousresource and plays a role in the construction of meaning and religious identity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachelle K. Gould ◽  
Nicole M. Ardoin ◽  
Jennifer M. Thomsen ◽  
Noelle Wyman Roth

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliette Lambert

Extending the critical project of interrogating the consumer subject form, in this study, the consumer subject is read as potentially acritical, precarious and psychotic through Dufour’s Lacanian-inspired analysis of neoliberal subjectivity. Reflecting on two case studies from an ethnographic-type study of young women, identity and consumer culture, I demonstrate how participants attempt to fulfil neoliberal ideals related to agency, productivity and creativity. Relying on commodities for symbolic anchoring in doing so, a ‘psychotic’ and precarious subject position is evidenced. While the findings could certainly be interpreted as productive, tendencies toward materialism, uncertainty and anxiety, along with pervasive mental health issues, provided the impetus to further problematise dominant understandings of the consumer. Neoliberal consumer culture is evidenced as a harmful, dehumanising ideology that fosters competitiveness, individuality and meritocratic tendencies, encouraging a reliance on ever-changing, transient commodities to (in)form the self. This occurs at the expense of compromise, communality and social welfare, through which subjects may find more stable and emancipatory symbolic anchors. Only by recognising critical theorisations of the consumer as dominant subject positions of neoliberalism can cultural consumer researchers begin to imagine opportunities for resistance and emancipatory change.


Nordlit ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Hein Viljoen

Much of the South African poet Breyten Breytenbach's work has been concerned with borders. In this article I examine borders and creolization in three important poems from Nine landscapes of our time bequeathed to a beloved (Nege landskappe bemaak aan 'n beminde, 1993), Paper flower (Papierblom, 2002) and The wind-catcher (Die windvanger, 2007). The link between creolization and boundaries is the poet's conception of identity and freedom. As is often the case the boundaries of the self are questioned as the poet permutates the central concepts. Crossing boundaries entails entering into dialogue not only with the self but also with the mother tongue itself and with a variety of other artists and writers. In other words, in Breytenbach's work an abrogation and appropriation of the own tradition ("erfgoed") as well as of material from others, other places and other traditions occur. In these three case studies in particular it is clear how the poet stretches and deforms boundaries as part of his poetic project to concretize a dynamic freedom.


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