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

2005 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Sommer

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.

2000 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Smith

A Foucauldian analysis of discourse and power relations suggests that law and the juridical field have lost their pre-eminent role in government via the delegated exercise of sovereign power. According to Foucault, the government of a population is achieved through the wide dispersal of technologies of power which are relatively invisible and which function in discursive sites and practices throughout the social fabric. Expert knowledge occupies a privileged position in government and its essentially discretionary and norm-governed judgements infiltrate and colonise previous sites of power. This paper sets out to challenge a Foucauldian view that principled law has ceded its power and authority to the disciplinary sciences and their expert practitioners. It argues, with particular reference to case law on sterilisation and caesarean sections, that law and the juridical field operate to manipulate and control expert knowledge to their own ends. In so doing, law continually exercises and re-affirms its power as part of the sovereign state. Far from acting, as Foucault suggests, to provide a legitimating gloss on the subversive operations of technologies of power, law turns the tables and itself operates a form of surveillance over the norm-governed exercise of expert knowledge.


1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-429
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Gittins

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.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang Longxi

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.


2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Valerie L. Jephson ◽  
Bruce Thomas Boehrer

This paper examines the strategies through which John Ford's play validates an image of the rising urban middle class as constitutionally confused and therefore destructive to the social fabric of seventeenth-century London. The portrayal of the middle class as struggling to inhabit signifiers of gentility while simultaneously undermining their value as indicators of adherence to any particular social code constructs the urban bourgeois as an object deserving of enmity and punishment; such sentiments are in turn mobilized in the service of humorous entertainment for an implicitly elite audience via a set of historical discourses associating political egalitarianism with incest, and class mobility with a self-interested disregard for traditional cultural practices.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 4148-4161
Author(s):  
Christine S.-Y. Ng ◽  
Stephanie F. Stokes ◽  
Mary Alt

Purpose We report on a replicated single-case design study that measured the feasibility of an expressive vocabulary intervention for three Cantonese-speaking toddlers with small expressive lexicons relative to their age. The aim was to assess the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic feasibility of an intervention method developed for English-speaking children. Method A nonconcurrent multiple-baseline design was used with four baseline data points and 16 intervention sessions per participant. The intervention design incorporated implicit learning principles, high treatment dosage, and control of the phonological neighborhood density of the stimuli. The children (24–39 months) attended 7–9 weeks of twice weekly input-based treatment in which no explicit verbal production was required from the child. Each target word was provided as input a minimum of 64 times in at least two intervention sessions. Treatment feasibility was measured by comparison of how many of the target and control words the child produced across the intervention period, and parent-reported expressive vocabulary checklists were completed for comparison of pre- and postintervention child spoken vocabulary size. An omnibus effect size for the treatment effect of the number of target and control words produced across time was calculated using Kendall's Tau. Results There was a significant treatment effect for target words learned in intervention relative to baselines, and all children produced significantly more target than control words across the intervention period. The effect of phonological neighborhood density on expressive word production could not be evaluated because two of the three children learned all target words. Conclusion The results provide cross-cultural evidence of the feasibility of a model of intervention that incorporated a high-dosage, cross-situational statistical learning paradigm to teach spoken word production to children with small expressive lexicons.


1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-18
Author(s):  
Kathryn C. Oleson ◽  
Robert M. Arkin
Keyword(s):  

Professare ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Claudemir Aparecido Lopes

<p class="resumoabstract">O professor Giorgio Agamben tem elaborado críticas à engenhosa estrutura política ocidental moderna. Avalia os mecanismos de controle estatal, nos quais os denomina ‘dispositivos’, cuja força está na imbricação às normas jurídico-teológicas com seus similares ritos e liturgias. Suas ocorrências e legitimidade preponderam no tecido social cuja organização sistêmica se põe quase como elemento natural e não cultural. O texto tem por objetivo explorar a concepção política de Agamben sobre a política contemporânea, especialmente considerando seu livro: ‘Estado de Exceção’, cuja investigação apresenta a possibilidade de atenuação dos direitos de cidadania e o enfraquecimento da prática da liberdade política e o processo de relação dos indivíduos no meio social através da redução das subjetividades ‘autênticas’. Analisamos ainda a transferência do mundo sacro elaborado pelos teólogos católicos presente na modernidade à política cuja democracia moderna faz do homem (sujeito) tornar-se objeto do poder político. Faz também, reflexão dos conceitos de subjetivação e dessubjetivação relacionando-os às implicações políticas do homem moderno. A pesquisa é bibliográfica com ênfase na análise dos conceitos elaborados por Agamben, especialmente quanto ao ‘dispositivo’. Conclui que o indivíduo ocidental, de modo geral, sofre o processo de dessubjetivação e está ‘nu’, indefeso e alienado politicamente. Ele precisa voltar-se ao processo de ‘profanação’ dos dispositivos para libertar-se das vinculações orientadoras que forçosamente o descaracteriza enquanto ser ativo e livre.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Palavras-chave</strong>: Política. Liberdade. Subjetivação.</p><h3>ABSTRACT</h3><p class="resumoabstract">Professor Giorgio Agamben has been criticizing the ingenious modern Western political structure. It evaluates the mechanisms of state control, in which it calls them 'devices', whose strength lies in the overlap with legal-theological norms with their similar rites and liturgies. Its occurrences and legitimacy preponderate in the social fabric whose systemic organization is almost as a natural and not a cultural element. The text aims to explore Agamben's political conception of contemporary politics, especially considering his book 'State of Exception', whose research presents the possibility of attenuating citizenship rights and weakening the practice of political freedom and the individuals in the social environment through the reduction of 'authentic' subjectivities. We also analyze the transfer of the sacred world elaborated by the Catholic theologians present in the modernity to the politics whose modern democracy makes of the man - subject - to become object of the political power. It also reflects on the concepts of subjectivation and desubjectivation, relating them to the political implications of modern man. The research is bibliographical with emphasis in the analysis of the concepts elaborated by Agamben, especially with regard to the 'device'. He concludes that the Western individual, in general, suffers the process of desubjectivation and is 'naked', defenseless and politically alienated. He must turn to the process of 'desecration' of devices to free himself from the guiding bindings that forcibly demeanes him while being active and free.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Keywords</strong>: Politics. Freedom. Subjectivity. </p><p> </p>


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl

Autonomy is associated with intellectual self-preservation and self-determination. Shame, on the contrary, bears a loss of approval, self-esteem and control. Being afflicted with shame, we suffer from social dependencies that by no means have been freely chosen. Moreover, undergoing various experiences of shame, our power of reflection turns out to be severly limited owing to emotional embarrassment. In both ways, shame seems to be bound to heteronomy. This situation strongly calls for conceptual clarification. For this purpose, we introduce a threestage model of self-determination which comprises i) autonomy as capability of decision-making relating to given sets of choices, ii) self-commitment in terms of setting and harmonizing goals, and iii) self-realization in compliance with some range of persistently approved goals. Accordingly, the presuppositions and distinctive marks of shame-experiences are made explicit. Within this framework, we explore the intricate relation between autonomy and shame by focusing on two questions: on what conditions could conventional behavior be considered as self-determined? How should one characterize the varying roles of actors that are involved in typical cases of shame-experiences? In this connection, we advance the thesis that the social dynamics of shame turns into ambiguous positions relating to motivation, intentional content,and actors’ roles.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Rony Trizudha ◽  
Sri Rahayuningsih ◽  
Ana Komari

As technology advances at this time, players in business are aware of the importance of product quality in the increasingly fierce competition in the industrial world due to the emergence of many similar companies. Therefore, companies must be able to compete to meet customer desires and try to retain customers. To maintain customers and their marketing areas, companies must have high competitiveness in order to survive by prioritizing quality improvement, increasing efficiency and increasing productivity to improve quality because by increasing quality, products can be accepted among consumers so that company goals can be fulfilled. Therefore, the company must carry out effective quality control which will result in high productivity, lower overall cost of making goods and the factors that cause production failure to be minimized. To improve quality, use the six sigma method, DMAIC and seven tools so that it can be known the cause of the damage and what actions are taken so that there needs to be a controversy to stabilize the processes of the production process so that we can know what percentage of damage and what factors cause damage, therefore there must be measurements and recommendations for improvement and control to reduce the causes From the analysis, it was found that the dent cup was 20.36%, the lid was 21.36% less dense, the lid was damaged in the finished product 18.72%, the cup was 19.28% less thick, the packaging was flexible 20.55%Seiring kemajuan teknologi pada saat ini pelaku di bisnis menyadari akan pentingnya kualitas produk dalam persaingan dunia industri yang semakin ketat karena banyak bermunculan perusahaan-perusahaan sejenis. Oleh sebab itu perusahaan harus dapat bersaing untuk memenuhi keinginan  pelanggan dan berusaha dapat mempertahankan pelanggan. Untuk mempertahankan pelangan dan wilayah pemasaranya perusahaan-perusahaan harus mempunyai daya saing yang tinggi untuk dapat bertahan dengan mengutamakan peningkatan mutu, peningkatan efisiensi dan peningkatan produktivitas untuk meningkatkan kualitas karena dengan peningkatan kualitas, produk dapat diterima di kalangan konsumen sehingga tujuan perusahaan dapat terpenuhi. Maka dari itu perusahaan harus melakukan pengendalian kualitas yang efektif akan menghasilkan produktivitas yang tinggi, biaya pembuatan barang keseluruhan yang lebih  rendah serta  faktor-faktor yang menyebabkan kegagalan produksi akan dapat ditekan sekecil mungkin. Untuk meningkatkan kualitas mengunakan metode six sigma, DMAIC dan seven tools agar dapat diketahui penyebab  kerusakan  dan  tindakan  apa  saja  yang dilakukan sehingga perlu ada kontror untuk menstabilkan  peoses proses produksi sehinga dapat di ketahui berapa persen  kerusakan dan faktor-faktor apa saja yang menyebabkan  kerusakan maka dari itu harus ada pengukuran dan  rekomendasi perbaikan serta melakukan kontrol untuk mengurangi penyebab kerusakan. Dari hasil analisis  di ketahui cup  penyok 20,36%, lid kurang  rapat  21,36%, lid  rusak  pada produk jadi 18,72%,cup kurang tebal 19,28 %kemasan lentur 20,55%


Author(s):  
Hallie M. Franks

In the Greek Classical period, the symposium—the social gathering at which male citizens gathered to drink wine and engage in conversation—was held in a room called the andron. From couches set up around the perimeter of the andron, symposiasts looked inward to the room’s center, which often was decorated with a pebble mosaic floor. These mosaics provided visual treats for the guests, presenting them with images of mythological scenes, exotic flora, dangerous beasts, hunting parties, or the specter of Dionysos, the god of wine, riding in his chariot or on the back of a panther. This book takes as its subject these mosaics and the context of their viewing. Relying on discourses in the sociology and anthropology of space, it argues that the andron’s mosaic imagery actively contributed to a complex, metaphorical experience of the symposium. In combination with the ritualized circling of the wine cup from couch to couch around the room and the physiological reaction to wine, the images of mosaic floors called to mind other images, spaces, or experiences, and, in doing so, prompted drinkers to reimagine the symposium as another kind of event—a nautical voyage, a journey to a foreign land, the circling heavens or a choral dance, or the luxury of an abundant past. Such spatial metaphors helped to forge the intimate bonds of friendship that are the ideal result of the symposium and that make up the political and social fabric of the Greek polis.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document