Polished Person or Parasite? The Implications of Education for Social Identities and Self Concepts and the Culturally Diverse Emotional Consequences. An Indian Example

Paragrana ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-180
Author(s):  
Iris Clemens

AbstractEducation is not only an innocent tool but leads to many conflicts all over the world as well. For an analysis of these conflicts one has to keep in mind that education as a concept is a culturally diverse construction with very different connotations in theory as much as in the everyday world. Taking the example of an empirical study on concepts of education and educated persons in an Indian urban middle class sample, the implications of cultural constructions of education for self concepts, social identities and therefore for social inclusion and exclusion will be discussed. Following the figure of Sanskritization by Srinivas, the founded pattern of argumentation in the data is called educationalization.

2014 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabella Cosse

Abstract In this article I reconstruct the history of Mafalda, the famous comic strip by the Argentine cartoonist Quino that was read, discussed, and viewed as an emblematic representation of Argentina’s middle class. With the aim of contributing to discussions on the interpretation of the middle class in Argentina and Latin America, I examine the emergence, circulation, and sociopolitical significance of the comic from its first strips in 1964 until Quino stopped producing new installments in 1973, making use of two conceptual and methodological approaches: a perspective situated at the intersection of the everyday and the political, as well as a consideration of humor as a way of exploring social identities. I argue first that Mafalda’s ironic and conceptual humor worked with the contradictions of the middle class as it faced social modernization, cultural and political radicalization, and a weakening democracy. Second, I suggest that the strip contributed to a representation of a heterogeneous middle class marked by ideological differences but nonetheless conceived as one. Third, I claim that such a representation lost its relevance with the political polarization and violence of the 1970s, as portraying a middle class—or a society—united despite differences was no longer feasible in that context. To illustrate this, the article closes by noting that, shortly after Mafalda was discontinued, state terrorism would brutally demonstrate just how little space there was in Argentina for the young, antiestablishment generation depicted in the strip.


Antiquity ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (290) ◽  
pp. 825-836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Crossland

The landscapes of the central highlands of Madagascar are inhabited by the spirits of the dead as well as by the living. The ancestors are a forceful presence in the everyday world, and the archaeology of the central highlands is intimately entwined with them. This is made manifest both in the on-the-ground experiences encountered during fieldwork, and in archaeological narratives, such as the one presented here. Tombs are a traditional focus of archaeological research, and those that dot the hills of the central highlands are part of a network of beliefs and practices which engage with the landscape as a whole and through which social identity is constructed and maintained. In the central highlands, and indeed elsewhere in Madagascar, there is an intimate relationship between peoples’ understandings of their social and physical location in the world and their understanding of their relationship to the dead.


2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Van Oudtshoorn

Jesus� imperatives in the Sermon on the Mount continue to play a significant role in Christian ethical discussions. The tension between the radical demands of Jesus and the impossibility of living this out within the everyday world has been noted by many scholars. In this article, an eschatological-ontological model, based on the social construction of reality, is developed to show that this dialectic is not necessarily an embarrassment to the church but, instead, belongs to the essence of the church as the recipient of the Spirit of Christ and as called by him to exist now in terms of the coming new age that has already been realised in Christ. The absolute demands of Jesus� imperatives, it is argued, must relativise all other interpretations of reality whilst the world, in turn, relativises Jesus� own definition of what �is� and therefore also the injunctions to his disciples on how to live within this world. This process of radical relativisation provides a critical framework for Christian living. The church must expect, and do, the impossible within this world through her faith in Christ who recreates and redefines reality. The church�s ethical task, it is further argued, is to participate with the Spirit in the construction of signs of this new reality in Christ in this world through her actions marked by faith, hope and love.


Author(s):  
Alan Cole

This chapter highlights several important elements at work in the process of writing history. The first thing to see is that writing history represents a doubling of reality: in addition to the everyday world that one lives in, where one's senses are engaged in a fluid and continuous manner, the writer of history works to evoke scenes and events that, though invisible, can be made to appear to the reader as integral parts of reality, albeit in the past. Put this way, one can appreciate how the skills needed to write history reflect the growing human ability to artify the world. Why this matters for understanding Chan literature is that one wouldn't be far wrong in describing Chan as a gradually solidifying set of literary gestures designed to enhance—and organize—the present, by carefully designing and curating images of an imaginary past.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-73
Author(s):  
Megh Vilas Bhatta

There is an increasing recognition of political and socio-economic right and identification of the LGBTI throughout the world. Hereby, I soaked into lived experiences of LGBTI people and interpreted those experiences for better understanding of their daily life activities, the gap between their individual identities and social identities, prevailing exclusionary provisions and need of their social inclusion in term of gender identities and social development. The study also relates to the multiple realities of the world view of LGBTI investigated through interpretive paradigms and narrative inquiry as methodology which focuses on critical life events depicted through participants’ stories, exploring their holistic views and holds valuable potential for researchers in a broad range of socio-cultural and economic structures. The research questions; how do LGBTI perform everyday life activities, how have they been appraising their identity and why social exclusionary practices have been affecting the lives of LGBTI in the development process of Nepal have been instrumental to materialize them. Nepalese Journal of Development and Rural StudiesVol. 14 (Joint issue) (1&2), 2017, Page: 63-73


Author(s):  
Chris Vanden Bossche

Dickens employs a range of class discourses to imagine possibilities of social being defined in terms of middle-class selfhood. This self seeks social inclusion represented as the achievement of the status of the gentleman or gentlewoman. The nineteenth-century shift of gentility from inborn quality to a quality of character that is earned through self-making in turn raises the possibility of mere self-invention and along with it the pursuit of self-interest at the expense of others. This problematic accounts for the repeated plot structure in which a protagonist is excluded from genteel society and can only re-enter it through earning his or her way in the world. In the late novels, Dickens focuses in particular on the way in which the desire for social inclusion is generated by gestures of exclusion and thus questions gentility as a viable category for defining social being.


Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Lennon

AbstractThis paper defends what the philosopher Merleau Ponty coins‘the imaginary texture of the real’.It is suggested that the imagination is at work in the everyday world which we perceive, the world as it is for us. In defending this view a concept of the imagination is invoked which has both similarities with and differences from, our everyday notion. The everyday notion contrasts the imaginary and the real. The imaginary is tied to the fictional or the illusory. Here it will be suggested, following both Kant and Strawson, that there is a more fundamental working of the imagination, present in both perception and the constructions of fictions. What Kant and Strawson failed to make clear, however, was that the workings of the imagination within the perceived world, gives that world, anaffective logic. The domain of affect is that of emotions, feelings and desire, and to claim such an affective logic in the world we experience, is to point out that it has salience and significance for us. Such salience suggests and demands the desiring and sometimes fearful responses we make to it; the shape of the perceived world echoed in the shapes our bodies take within it.


Author(s):  
Åsa Trulsson

Contemporary spiritualties are often portrayed as a turn to a subjective and individualized form of religion, consisting of individually held truth claims or private peak experiences that are generated sporadically at retreats and workshops. The portrayal is ultimately related to a perception of everyday life in contemporary Euro-America as mundane, rationalized, and secular, but also the exclusion of practices centered on the body, the home and the everyday from what is deemed properly religious. This article explores the sacred technologies of the everyday among women in England who identify as Goddess worshippers. The purpose is to further the understanding of religion and the everyday, as well as the conceptualization of contemporary Goddess-worship as lived religion. Through examining narratives on the intersection between religion and everyday activities, the technologies of imbuing everyday life with a sacred dimension become visible. The sacred technologies imply skills that enable both imagining and relating to the sacred. The women consciously and diligently work to cultivate skills that would allow them to sense and make sense of the sacred, in other words, to foster a sense of withness through the means of a host of practices. I argue that the women actively endeavor to establish an everyday world that is experienced as inherently different from the secular and religious fields in their surroundings; hence it is not from disenchantment or an endeavor with no social consequences. The women’s everyday is indeed infused with different strategies where the body, different practices, and material objects are central in cultivating a specific religious disposition that ultimately will change the way the women engage with and orient themselves in the world.


2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (11) ◽  
pp. 1425-1449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann L Cunliffe ◽  
Matthew Eriksen

This article aims to extend contemporary work on relational leadership theory by conceptualizing leadership as embedded in the everyday relationally-responsive dialogical practices of leaders. Relational leadership requires a way of engaging with the world in which the leader holds herself/himself as always in relation with, and therefore morally accountable to others; recognizes the inherently polyphonic and heteroglossic nature of life; and engages in relational dialogue. This way of theorizing leadership also has practical implications in helping sensitize leaders to the importance of their relationships and to features of conversations and everyday mundane occurrences that can reveal new possibilities for morally-responsible leadership. We develop and illustrate the notion of relational leadership by drawing on the work of Bakhtin and Ricoeur, and on an empirical study of Federal Security Directors.


Author(s):  
Nina L. Chulkina

The paper represents lingvo-cultural and semiotic description of the vocabulary, which introduces the everyday life of the poor characters of the F. Dostoevskys novels. In this case the procedure of the construction of text associative fields and the concept of idiogloss are used. Associative text fields are built, from one side, around the base concepts of daily activity - HOUSE/DWELLING; CLOTHING; FOOD; MONEY, DEBTS, LOAN; DISEASE, DEATH; WORK, BUSINESS; and idioglosses POVERTY; SHAME; FEAR; PRIDE, THE PINCHED PRIDE; GENTLENESS - on the other hand. These two measurements - semantic and pragmatic - make it possible to reconstruct on the texts of Dostoevsky the everyday world of poor characters, to reveal those specific idiosenses, which are concluded in the lexical items being investigated. Besides, the author hopes that such description can become additional material for the creation of the corresponding articles of the Dostoevskys Language Dictionary, which is making now in the V.V. Vinigradov Russian Language University (Russian Science Academy). At the V.V. Vinogradov Russian Language University University of Russian Science Academy in the sector of experimental lexicography under the guidance of Corresponding Member of the Russian Science Academy, Professor Y.N. Karaulov, work on creation of the F.M. Dostoevskys Language Dictionary has been conducted for many years. At the same time, collections of articles are published - The Word of Dostoevsky, viewed as a kind of extension of Dostoevskys Language Dictionary. The authors of the collection should implement the overall thrust of the research results as a guide - the solution of interpretational, hermeneutic tasks. Meanwhile it is also important to identify and describe the vocabulary that is significant for interpretation of Dostoevskys texts and idioglosses in particular, i.e. such lexical units that are important for understanding, for deciphering and interpreting of the meaning of his literary works, for characterizing his authors style (idiostyle), for recreating his picture of the world, his universal and national ideals .


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