scholarly journals Introduction: Enquiries Into Contemporary Ritual Landscapes

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen ◽  
Eleonora A. Lundell ◽  
Marja-Liisa Honkasalo

Abstract ‘Landscape’ and ‘ritual’ have been largely discussed in the social and human sciences, although their inter-relatedness has gained little scholarly attention. Drawing on earlier studies of ritual and landscape, as well as the authors′ own ethnographic works, ‘ritual landscape’ is suggested here as a useful analytical tool with which to understand how landscapes are produced, and how they, in their turn, produce certain types of being. ‘Ritual landscape’ recognises different modalities of agency, power-relation, knowledge, emotion, and movement. The article shows how the subjectivity of other-than-human beings such as ancestors, earth formations, land, animals, plants and, in general, materiality of ritual contexts, shape landscapes. We argue that ways of perceiving landscape includes a number of material and immaterial aspects indicated by ways of moving through landscapes and interacting with different human and non-human subjects that come to inhabit the world, creating relations and producing agentive ensembles and complexes.

10.14201/3110 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo S. Vila Merino

RESUMEN: Los seres humanos, como seres culturales, tenemos nuestras referencias inmediatas en los significados con los que interaccionamos en nuestro proceso de socialización y es a partir de los mismos desde donde nos hacemos y construimos el mundo. En este sentido, y más aún en nuestras complejas sociedades multiculturales, resulta muy importante rescatar el valor del concepto de mundo de la vida y sus aplicaciones al ámbito educativo. Todo esto nos debe llevar a entender este proceso como integrado por acciones simbólico-significativas y argumentando la necesidad de desarrollar en el mismo posicionamientos comunicativos que potencien la dimensión ética e intercultural en los intercambios socioeducativos.ABSTRACT: Human beings, as cultural beings, have our immediate references in the meanings which we make contacts in our socialization process, and from this relations we build the world. In this sense, and still more in our multicultural and complex societies, is very important to rescue the value of the concept life-world and its applications to the educative ambit. This question must lead us to understand this process as integrated for symbolic-meaning actions and reasoning the need to develop in the same comrromicative positions that promote the ethical and intercultural dimension into the social-educative exchanges.SOMMAIRE: Nous, les êtres humains en tant qu'êtres culturales, nous avons nos références immédiates dans les significations avec lesquelles nous interagissons dans notre processus de socialisation. C'est à partir de ces mêmes significations que nous nous formons et à la fois construisons le monde. En ce sens-là, et même plus dans nos sociétés multiculturelles complexes, il est primordial de restituer la valeur du concept de monde de la vie et de toutes ses applications au domaine éducatif. Tout cela doit nous amener à comprendre ce processus comme intégré par des actions symbolique-significatives et, parallèlement à justifier le besoin de développer des positions communicatives qui favorisent la dimension éthique et interculturelle dans les échanges socioéducatifs.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 387-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Featherstone

The term global suggests all-inclusiveness and brings to mind connectivity, a notion that gained a boost from Marshall McLuhan's reference to the mass-mediated ‘global village’. In the past decade it has rapidly become part of the everyday vocabulary not only of academics and business people, but also has circulated widely in the media in various parts of the world. There have also been the beginnings of political movements against globalization and proposals for ‘de-globalization’ and ‘alternative globalizations’, projects to re-define the global. In effect, the terminology has globalized and globalization is varyingly lauded, reviled and debated around the world. The rationale of much previous thinking on humanity in the social sciences has been to assume a linear process of social integration, as more and more people are drawn into a widening circle of interdependencies in the movement to larger units, but the new forms of binding together of social life necessitate the development of new forms of global knowledge which go beyond the old classifications. It is also in this sense that the tightening of the interdependency chains between human beings, and also between human beings and other life forms, suggests we need to think about the relevance of academic knowledge to the emergent global public sphere.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146954052094422
Author(s):  
MJ Ryder

The diverse fields of business, management and marketing have long explored the concept of the ‘prosumer’ – the producer-consumer who not only consumes those products produced by industry, but also has some hand in their creation. But while the term itself is often credited to futurist Alvin Toffler , the concept he describes (and that which Ritzer et al. adapt) is a central concern of science fiction, which has much to offer our understanding of modern-day prosumption and is not limited by the language and limitations of purely scientific academic discourse. Indeed, one of the most important voices in this area is author and editor Frederik Pohl, with his co-authored novel The Space Merchants and short stories including ‘The Midas Plague’ and ‘The Man Who Ate the World’. In each of these works, Pohl seeks to satirise the mindless robot-like behaviour of human beings, while also posing a word of warning for the social, economic and ecological impact mass-prosumption. This is a particularly relevant message given the rise of ‘surveillance capitalism’ – the real world manifestation of the dystopias that Pohl and his contemporaries describe. In this paper, I argue that science fiction isn’t just a useful tool for social theorists, but rather, a vital resource, as it provides a speculative framework through which to interrogate the potential impacts and implications of new technology, and the links between production and consumption, technology and work. Furthermore, it provides the means through which to imagine possible futures and the lasting impacts of consumption that go beyond describing the world as it is, and move into the realms of what the world may become.


2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (S22) ◽  
pp. 11-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nitin Sinha

AbstractIn the period between the 1760s and the 1850s boatmen were the most important transport workers in early colonial eastern India, at least numerically. Unfortunately, they have received little scholarly attention so far. By looking at the regime of work, which surprisingly had strong bases in the notion of contract from as early as the 1770s, this article explores the nature of work, work organization, and resistance by boatmen. It argues that although work was structured according to the wage or hire-based (thika) contract regime, the social, political, and ecological conditions in which contract operated were equally crucial. The centrality of contract was premised upon how effectively it was enforceable and, in fact, historically enforced. Boatmen being one of the most important “native” groups with which the British were left on their often long journeys, this article suggests that contract helps to understand the formal “structure of work”, and the minute details of the journey help to understand the “world of work”, of which clandestine trade, weather, wind, rain, torrents, tracking, mooring, internal squabbling, and, not least, preparing food were some of the main components.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 230-246
Author(s):  
Ricardo González-García

Como una reunión simbólica de conciencia, toda gran obra de arte es un apocalipsis silencioso que, con sus significativas impresiones o interacciones, puede llegar a transformar la estructura social. Transfigurando el mundo mediante sus espacios de representación, es capaz de adquirir una capacidad profética que denuncia situaciones a fin de, como en el caso específico aquí ofrecido, reestablecer el equilibrio de los ecosistemas degradados por la huella que el ser humano ha impreso sobre ellos. Esta misma impronta antropocénica, auspiciada por la idea de progreso que confiere la utopía del crecimiento ilimitado propuesta por el sistema capitalista, paradójicamente podría llevar al ser humano a asistir al fin de su propia especie. Por esta razón, parte del arte contemporáneo lleva tiempo sumamente preocupado en concienciar a la sociedad y, así, frenar la llegada de un catastrófico escenario futuro. Debido a la urgencia de esta acuciante situación, se abordan diversas denuncias establecidas en las prácticas artísticas para cambiar la actitud de sus espectadores. Para ello, se proponen aquí dos vertientes: la de obras que muestran escenarios distópicos y la de otras más activistas que tratan de atajar la situación desde entornos concretos. As a symbolic gathering of conscience, every great artwork is a silent apocalypse that, with its significant impressions or interactions, can transform the social structure. Transfiguring the world through its spaces of representation, it is capable of acquiring a prophetic capacity that denounces situations in order to, as in the specific case offered here; restore the balance of ecosystems degraded by the footprint that human beings have printed on them. This same anthropocenic imprint, sponsored by the idea of progress that confers the utopia of unlimited growth proposed by the capitalist system, paradoxically could lead the human being to attend the end of his own species. For this reason, part of contemporary art has been extremely concerned about raising awareness in society and, thus, curbing the arrival of a catastrophic future scenario. Due to the urgency of this pressing situation, we complaints various complaints established in artistic practices to change the attitude of its spectators. To do this, we proposed two aspects here: that of works that show dystopian scenarios and that of other more activists which try to tackle the situation from specific environments.


Author(s):  
Antoni Santisteban Fernández ◽  
Neus González-Monfort

Individual identity is defined by unique traits and is constructed from the diversity of human beings and, at the same time, in relationships with other people. This gives rise to a plurality of ways of thinking and perceiving the world. The collective identity is constructed through the discourse or the story that is shared in the community, relationships, or in socialization spaces, among others, in the school, through the discourse of the teaching staff or the school texts. Otherness acts as a mirror where we look at ourselves to recognize ourselves. Otherness is the acceptance that there are different views when we interpret the world, different ways of thinking or ideologies, but it also shows that we human beings have much in common. Education for citizenship should aim to enable people to define their diverse identities in an education for freedom, equality, and participation. Education for citizenship must ask what identities are invisible and why, and demand the social change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-32
Author(s):  
Zh. V. Latysheva

Modern problems of the socio-humanistic sciences, including the interaction of structure/ agency, the ways and forms of both personal development and socio-cultural changes, the transformation of the value status of a social ego, the reinterpretation of its contribution to the creativeness of society require substantial amendments to the definitions and methodology of socio-humanistic research. In order to achieve this goal, the article considers one of the basic concepts of European philosophy, transcending from the point of view which differs from generally accepted. The singularity of the author’s approach is the social notion of this concept and the identification of its integrating capabilities regarding to semantically close concepts and terms of social theory of the 20th – 21st centuries. To reach these objectives, a comparative analysis of the concepts of social transcending and the concepts of action creativity (H. Joas), fabulation (A.-T. Tymieniecka), signification (P. Berger, T. Luckmann), noting (J. Alexander), metalanguage (R. Barthes), agency (E. Giddens et al.) was treated. Social transcending is as intentional and creative as human action. However, the first concept, besides, is intersubjective, communicative and teleological. As a fabulation, social transcending raises a person by means of functioning of many sociocultural practices, above the world of mundanity. However, in fabulation the mechanism of such exaltation is a artistic and aesthetic experience, while in social transcending all the interests peculiar to human beings are used: cognitive, ethical, religious, etc. Signification involves the individually-personal and sign-symbolic aspects of social transcending, its everyday and non-everyday levels, being one of the significant ways of social transcending. Noting and metalanguage also embody the options of signifying of social transcending; by means of agensy its dynamism is revealed. The author comes to the conclusion that the generic conceptual-substantive basis of the analyzed concepts is social transcending, which «incorporates» the most important processes of social creativity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-120
Author(s):  
Indah Sri Utari

The community of inmates children as a unique and unique social system is difficult to understand when viewed only from the outside, so it is necessary to systematically attempt to know the values, norms, relationships, and objectives-through where and with what they are living, and understand both their own experiences and the world in which they liveThe situational system of the inmates children as human beings (although in this case is the child) to be fostered, is one of the important elements in the whole process of assistance in the Penitentiary is no exception to the Children Penitentiary in Kutoarjo. The entire penitentiary system design, from the assistance program, the assistance mechanism, and the assistance implementation, is actually determined by the circumstances and the reality of the people who are to be fostered, the inmates.The reality of the children inmates who are always on the "social order" in their various communities is essentially constantly changing. Specifically, this study finds links between: the institutional reality of a children penitentiary, which includes the factual circumstances concerning facilities and infrastructure, and the administrative aspects of KutoarjoChildren Penitentiary. The reality of the member of KutoarjoChildren Penitentiaryin the form of identified number of occupants, placement systems, and formal and informal groupings of the targeted children in addition to the build and formed a community of the assisted children in KutoarjoChildren Penitentiary and the basic elements of the Social System of the Auxiliaries in all the community of assisted children and etc.As Soerjono Sukanto said that even though human "convicts" live in a confined state, they instinctively want to interact with fellow inmates. This instinct is referred to as "gregariousness" (Soekanto: 1998: 73), which in the last instance will give birth to so-called "social groups". In this context created social structure, social system, norms and so on.


MELINTAS ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Masmuni Mahatma

Alquran cannot be detached from the chain of history accompanying it. Alquran has always been associated with sacred values it contains. That is it’s <em>fitrah</em>. Hasan Hanafi, born in Cairo, develops a unique hermeneutics to view Alquran as revelation. In safeguarding the originality of the Scripture as much as possible, the potential of reason and thought cannot be avoided as well. For the Scripture is an ideal ‘mirror’ of the expressions of the reality in life together with all the social dynamic continuously approaching the believers. Without the involvement of reason and thought the Scripture might not be so much different from an ‘inscription’, which is passive, cold, and barely engendering things characterised as dialogical and productive. Viewed in its process of descent to human beings, the scriptural revelation is not something suddenly flying and drifting without reason. The revelation is closely related with the reality (of the past) tied up together by Allah. Each verse or set of verses in the Scripture has mirrored solution to particular problem in the banality of individual and communal life. The Scripture is not simply a ‘text’, for it is always breathing ‘context’. By having context, the Scripture cannot be uncoupled from the social reality of the believers who put their trust in it. The Scripture is a text merging with context, which in turn illuminates the believers all around the world.<br /><br />


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1577-1584
Author(s):  
Sara Iqbal Kakar ◽  
Humaira Riaz ◽  
Nayab Ahmad Khan

Purpose of the Study: This study emphasizes the contribution of fiction in highlighting the American exercise of power around the world predominantly Pakistan and Afghanistan. It investigates how America has become a dictating body deciding the life and death of human beings mainly in South Asian developing countries. Methodology: Being Qualitative, this study uses Eaglestone’s (2000) close reading technique to analyze words and structure of the texts of Khalid Hosseini's The Kite Runner and Nadeem Aslam Khan’s The Blind Man’s Garden. It develops a descriptive thesis leading to construct arguments by drawing a theoretical framework from Mbembe’s necropolitics (2003). Mbembe took his inspiration from Foucault’s idea of bio-power. Modern narrative discourse on sovereignty and its relation to war is taken as the main subject of necropolitics. Mbembe’s idea of sovereignty as an exercise to get control of the mortality of the enemy helps to interpret the texts via the close reading method. Main Findings: This study evaluated two novels to assert that necropolitics by taking its four basic concepts, power, war, politics, and death was the actual controlling power of a country. It analyzed fictional characters to argue how individuals endured hardships because of the necropolitical exercise of America and Russia in Afghanistan. Mbembe’s conception of necropolitics helps in understanding fiction. Applications of this study: The present study has significant implications from both theoretical and interpretative perspectives. Necropolitics, originally a political notion is reworked in fiction, which asserts that using this concept, power relations, their roots, and exercise around the world can be explored in various fields. This study contributes to dismantling the latent necropolitics in the society represented in fiction. It elevates the social and political consciousness of the general public of South Asia, particularly Pakistan and Afghanistan. This study can be helpful in the field of psychology to popularize the notion of necropolitics in contemporary society. Novelty/Originality of this study: Comparatively a new field, Necropolitics has been discussed in the fields of medical sciences and education. This study significantly highlights its existence in the field of literary studies. Fiction as a direct reflection of society helps in deconstructing the prevailing exercise of necropolitics in South Asian society. It is also helpful in raising the social and political consciousness of South Asian people.


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