Becoming a People

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Erikson
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Different Order ◽  
As If

This chapter focuses on pseudospeciation, the process by which we come to view other persons who we know to be fellow human beings as if they were so unlike us in form or thought or spirit that they can be treated as though they are of a different order of being altogether. The chapter starts by considering the origins of war and fighting from a sociological perspective, with particular emphasis on feelings of difference and otherness—even of hostility and antipathy—that lie at the heart of what is generally meant by nationalism. It then examines how the process of becoming a people is linked to the idea of nations before explaining the concept of social speciation and how it differs from genetic speciation. It concludes by proposing a few minor changes to the notion of pseudospeciation, offering it as a contribution to sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis.

Bringing People Down

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-466
Author(s):  
John Vorhaus
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Status ◽  
Relational Concept ◽  
Degrading Treatment ◽  
As If

Under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, degrading treatment and punishment is absolutely prohibited. This paper examines the nature of and wrong inherent in treatment and punishment of this kind. Cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) as amounting to degrading treatment and punishment under Article 3 include instances of interrogation, conditions of confinement, corporal punishment, strip searches, and a failure to provide adequate health care. The Court acknowledges the degradation inherent in imprisonment generally, and does not consider this to be in violation of Article 3, but it also identifies a threshold at which degradation is so severe as to render impermissible punishments that cross this threshold. I offer an account of the Court’s conception of impermissible degradation as a symbolic dignitary harm. The victims are treated as inferior, as if they do not possess the status owed to human beings, neither treated with dignity nor given the respect owed to dignity. Degradation is a relational concept: the victim is brought down in the eyes of others following treatment motivated by the intention to degrade, or treatment which has a degrading effect. This, so I will argue, is the best account of the concept of degradation as deployed by the Court when determining punishments as in violation of Article 3.

scholarly journals Plant Life and More-than-human Agency in Zainab Amadahy’s Resistance

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 79-91
Author(s):  
Paula Wieczorek
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
Cultural Violence ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Plant Life ◽  
As If

For centuries humans have acted as if the environment was passive and as if the agency was related only to human beings. Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers, scholars, and artists express the need to narrate tales about the multitudes of the living earth, which can help perceive the Earth as vibrant and living. The following paper discusses Black/Cherokee Zainab Amadahy’s speculative fiction novel 2013 Resistance as an example of a story resisting the claim about human beings as the ultimate species. The paper initially scrutinizes the phenomena of “plant blindness” and then explores how Zainab Amadahy illustrates plant life in her book. Unlike in traditional literary depictions of botany, the writer presents tobacco as an active and responsive agent that influences the characters, which, consequently, opposes anthropocentrism. The article also addresses the cultural violence and disregard that has dominated the Western perception of animistic cultures and expresses the need to rethink the theory of animism. This paper draws from posthumanist writings by scholars including Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, and Stacy Alaimo. It also refers to some of the most influential contributions to critical plant studies made by Indigenous thinkers such as Robin Wall Kimmerer’ s Braiding Sweetgrass (2013).

scholarly journals Komunikasi Kenusantaraan (Studi Komunikasi Nusantara Perspektif Integrasi Interkoneksi)

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Mokhamad Mahfud
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
As If

The term "think globally and act locally" has begun to surface since the eighties, but until now, a quarter century later, there was also a surefire formula go see about it. Human experience feel things that otherwise like sara (suku, agama dan ras)  events that befall the nation, instead of peace, mutual trust, peaceful coexistence, at-ta'ayus as-silmi, tolerance, tasamuh among fellow human beings and between groups, but rather violence, violence , prejudice (prejudice), az- su'u zan  religion, ethnicity, class, race, interests, both at the local, regional, national and even international (global). As if all want to reverse the adage "think locally and act only", without having coupled "think globally". In the associate, connect and communicate with other groups and do not feel the need to consider the governance rules, laws, agreements and international relations.Each ethnic group, religion, class, culture wants to maintain, even cult, sect or school of thought wanted to strengthen and reinforce certain local religious identity, cultural identity, ethnic identity, political identity as felt in the shadow of the threat of domination and cultural hegemony, certain foreign cultures or civilizations.Pressure of social psychology in the real and the imagined then cause unfair treatment (injustice), discriminatory (political behavior discrimination of race, ethnicity, religion and origin) and subordinate (humble and do not consider important the presence of another person or group), here as if there is no problem indeed, in maintaining the identity and group identity, but the ripples that appear in events locally, regionally, nationally and internationally to prove there is indeed a problem in the social order of the world.This paper offers a model of communication between fellow men's race (human), which integrates and connectedness with nature and God (spirituality), in the context of Communication Studies allows develop integration-interconnection study Communications, for example, the model trialektika between Islamic, and Indonesian-ness can Modernity in trialektika developed to initiate some sort of communication, namely (Islamic [Komunikasi Islam(i)/ hadarah an-nas/Religion/‘irfani], Indonesianness (Komunikasi Indonesia/ Nusantara/ hadarah al-falsafah /Philosophy/ burhani), and Modernity [Modern/Western Communications]/ hadarah al-‘ilm/Science/bayani), researcher asumtion that Modern Communications refers to Western Communications.Komunikasi Nusantara is a science communication in digging up the basic values of the indegenous values or the values of local wisdom Indonesia (Nusantara Philosophy), then associate with theories derived from Komunikasi Islam(i)/Komunikasi Profetik and Modern/ Western Communications.

scholarly journals Educational Content of Today The Understanding of Architecture as a Collective Art

2019 ◽  
pp. 100-103
Author(s):  
Gro Lauvland
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Educational Content ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
The Given ◽  
As If ◽  
At Home

Our understanding of the world is manifested in what we make and produce. Through the last 250 years there has been a change in the understanding of man´s place in the world. Our way of building is characterized by market economy and controlled production processes — as if we can control everything through our consciousness. Both the given nature and what is transferred to us through history, are regarded as resources made for us. Today our understanding of the world makes the cities more and more similar. This understanding of nature and culture challenges our human conditions. As human beings, we are embedded in the place, according to both Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In line with their understanding the Norwegian architect and theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz argued, for instance in Stedskunst (1995), that it is the qualities of the place we identify with, and which makes it possible for us to feel at home.

scholarly journals Terminology: Aboutness, Representation, and Metasemantics

2021 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
Herman Cappelen ◽  
Josh Dever
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
As If ◽  
The Way

This short chapter does two things. First, it shows that in fact workers in AI frequently talk as if AI systems express contents. We present the argument that the complex nature of the actions and communications of AI systems, even if they are very different from the complex behaviours of human beings, and the way they have ‘aboutness’, strongly suggest a contentful interpretation of those actions and communications. It then introduces some philosophical terminology that captures various aspects of language use, such as the ones in the title, to better make clear what one is saying—philosophically speaking—when one claims AI systems communicate, and to provide a vocabulary for the next few chapters.

ODE TO THE HIPPIE

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 678-678
Author(s):  
Thomas Bridges
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Drop Outs ◽  
As If

Alas, former flower children are a social oddity. The threatening phenomenon known as the hippie is little more than a ghost of the 1960's-seldom thought about by the 60's generation and hardly known by 70's people. Ten years have scraped too many minds clean. Those optimistic child-people who danced through the streets of San Francisco have even faded out of the memories of their present selves. Metamorphosed into practical human beings? Or have they just grown up? Or do they remember too clearly?... Most tried to rejoin the establishment. As if they could just walk back into their former selves. But the alienation was too complete. The most sensitive and enthusiastic (intelligent?) minds of the 1960's will always be drop-outs or partly-ins—the most ambitious and durable working within the system to gather up whatever they need to get out of it again. Our alienation has settled to the bone. Terminal. We walk around incognito. Up front is our get-along face. One must survive, you know. Inside, we still don't believe in any of it. Do you?

Postscript - The COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Professor John Swarbrooke
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Actual Number ◽  
Main Text ◽  
Death Toll ◽  
The World ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
As If

I completed the main text of this book a few days before Coronavirus, as it was called at the beginning, started to become a major story in the news in Europe. Now, just over three months later, as the book is about go for printing it seems as if the COVID-19 pandemic, as it is now called, is about the only story in the world’s media. In the circumstances, it seems important that I say something about the virus and its potential impact on the subject of this book. As I write these words, in early Ma y 2020, the pandemic has killed at least 264,000 people worldwide and some 3.8 million people are confirmed to have been infected, although the actual number is likely to be significantly higher as many people who have had the virus may not have had it confirmed through testing. To put this in context, the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people, while the highly publicised outbreak of SARS in 2003 killed fewer than 1,000 people. The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in Africa resulted in the deaths of an estimated 11,300 people. So COVID-19 is far and away the largest pandemic, in terms of deaths, to hit the world in just over a century. Of course, we do not yet know the final death toll from it, for as I write it is still continuing. Furthermore, unlike SARS and Ebola this virus is a true pandemic, affecting virtually every part of the planet where human beings live.

scholarly journals The Unsuitability of “Unsubstitutability” in Theological Anthropology

2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-62
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Farris
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Significant Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
As If

When we wait for a significant other, it is not as if we are waiting for someone who looks like her, talks like her, or even walks like her. Instead, what we want is her. And, the same goes for the afterlife: if there is an afterlife, we long to see our loved ones. Not those who look like our loved ones, who sound like them, or even smell like them, but we actually want them. In the study of human nature, this is, arguably, one of the modern insights on humanity. The question of the “particularity” of human beings matters. In technical philosophical studies, the question of “particularity” is a question of thisness (i.e., the fact that objects are countable as discrete in virtue of some property or feature that makes an object what it is). What makes one person this person rather than that person? By showing how the concept of thisness is important in modern and contemporary theology, I will argue for a specific view as that which accurately captures both the historical consensus and the modern emphasis of personhood.

scholarly journals O rico e o pobre. Estudo da parábola do rico insensível e do pobre Lázaro (Lc 16,19-31)

2002 ◽  
Vol 62 (245) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Antônio Mesquita Galvão
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Point Of Interest ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Biblical Scholar ◽  
As If

A proposta do autor do artigo é que a parábola contada por Jesus não fique na tradição de uma história contada há dois mil anos atrás, mas penada nossas realidades a ponto de igualmente nos questionar, como acontecia a muitos ouvintes na Galiléia. O ponto de interesse da matéria situa-se no grande abismo, que Abraão diz existir entre o rico e o pobre. Em vida, esse abismo é fruto da indiferença de quem tudo tem, alheio à dor do necessitado. Na morte há como que uma mudança de mão. Quem tudo tinha torna-se carente e pedinte, e quem nada tinha entra no gozo amplo e eterno. Á insensibilidade do rico de todos os tempos é antológica. Á indigência a que o miserável é atirado converte-se em insulto contra a dignidade da pessoa humana de todos os tempos, convertendo-se igualmente num insulto àquele que o criou. A função do biblista é atualizar o fato histórico, fazendo-o reverter em gnomas morais.Abstract: The proposal of the author of the article is that the parable told by Jesus does not remain in the tradition of a story told two thousand years ago, but that it pervades our reality to the point of equally questioning tis, just as it did to many listeners in Galilee. The point of interest of the material is placed within the great separation which Abraham says exists between the rich and the poor. In life, this gap is the fruit of the indiference of those Who have everything and are above the pain of those in need. In death there is as if a change of hands. Those who had everything become needy and begging, and those Who had nothing come into full and eternal satisfaction. The insensibility ofthe richfrom all periods of time is anthological. The misfortune in which the miserable ones are thrown becomes an insult against the dignity of the human beings in all times, converting itself equally into an insult to He Who acated them. Thefunction of the biblical scholar is to bring this historical fact up to date, making it revert into moral statements.

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