scholarly journals The Tent in the Context of the Byzantine Power Symbolism in the 10th–12th Centuries

Author(s):  
Evgeny Stelnik ◽  

ntroduction. The tent (σκηνή, τέντα) was a simple and everyday object of Byzantine life. Diplomats, merchants, pilgrims, soldiers, travelers, and simply wanderers spent a considerable part of their lives in a tent. It was a natural element of the Byzantine landscape, and geographical mobility was an important part of the lifestyle of the Byzantine elite and its psychology. But this simple, everyday thing in a certain context took on an extremely important meaning and turned into an important religious and social symbol. A simple object could indicate complicated social and ideological constructions of the 10th–12th centuries. The task of the study is to reveal the implicit power context which in certain cases endowed simple everyday objects (like a tent) with an extremely important meaning. Methods. The article is written in the general context of structuralist methodologies. We regarded the tent as a simple sign indicating the complex representations that lie behind its content. Structuralist methods allow for a correct reconstruction of Byzantine everyday representations in different strata of society. Analysis and Results. The rich tent in Byzantine society of the 10th–12th centuries was not just a part of the daily military life of the aristocracy, but also an important element of power relations. Tents defined the social status of their owners, emphasized their power and importance. Aristocratic tents of that time were a space where power decisions were made and court life took place. The tent as a power symbol relied on a broad religious context. The Tabernacle of Moses, which was the model for every tent in the Byzantine Empire, was also created by the Lord’s will, with Moses himself acting as “royal scribe”. The folkloric tent of Charos in the Acritic songs turns out to be the center of the “lower” world in which Charos ruthlessly reigns. Behind each reading of the symbolic meaning of the tent lie different social practices of different groups of Byzantine society, but they are all filled with their own understanding of the essence of power.

Author(s):  
Robert G. Ousterhout

The rich and diverse architectural traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean and adjacent regions are the subject of this book. Representing the visual residues of a “forgotten” Middle Ages, the social and cultural developments of the Byzantine Empire, the Caucasus, the Balkans, Russia, and the Middle East parallel the more familiar architecture of Western Europe. The book offers an expansive overview of the architectural developments of the Byzantine Empire and areas under its cultural influence, as well as of the intellectual currents that lie behind their creation. The book alternates chapters that address chronological or regional developments with thematic studies that focus on the larger cultural concerns, as they are expressed in architectural form.


Author(s):  
Stefan Winter

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The book has shown that the multiplicity of lived ʻAlawi experiences cannot be reduced to the sole question of religion or framed within a monolithic narrative of persecution; that the very attempt to outline a single coherent history of “the ʻAlawis” may indeed be misguided. The sources on which this study has drawn are considerably more accessible, and the social and administrative realities they reflect consistently more mundane and disjointed, than the discourse of the ʻAlawis' supposed exceptionalism would lead one to believe. Therefore, the challenge for historians of ʻAlawi society in Syria and elsewhere is not to use the specific events and structures these sources detail to merely add to the already existing metanarratives of religious oppression, Ottoman misrule, and national resistance but rather to come to a newer and more intricate understanding of that community, and its place in wider Middle Eastern society, by investigating the lives of individual ʻAlawi (and other) actors within the rich diversity of local contexts these sources reveal.


Author(s):  
Laurie Maguire

This book explores blank space in early modern printed books; it addresses physical blank space (from missing words to vacant pages) as well as the concept of the blank. It is a book about typographical marks, readerly response, and editorial treatment. It is a story of the journey from incunabula to Google books, told through the signifiers of blank space: empty brackets, dashes, the et cetera, the asterisk. It is about the semiotics of print and about the social anthropology of reading. The book explores blank space as an extension of Elizabethan rhetoric with readers learning to interpret the mise-en-page as part of a text’s persuasive tactics. It looks at blanks as creators of both anxiety and of opportunity, showing how readers respond to what is not there and how writers come to anticipate that response. Each chapter focuses on one typographical form of what is not there on the page: physical gaps (Chapter 1), the &c (Chapter 2) and the asterisk (Chapter 3). The Epilogue uncovers the rich metaphoric life of these textual phenomena and the ways in which Elizabethan printers experimented with typographical features as they considered how to turn plays into print.


Social networks fundamentally shape our lives. Networks channel the ways that information, emotions, and diseases flow through populations. Networks reflect differences in power and status in settings ranging from small peer groups to international relations across the globe. Network tools even provide insights into the ways that concepts, ideas and other socially generated contents shape culture and meaning. As such, the rich and diverse field of social network analysis has emerged as a central tool across the social sciences. This Handbook provides an overview of the theory, methods, and substantive contributions of this field. The thirty-three chapters move through the basics of social network analysis aimed at those seeking an introduction to advanced and novel approaches to modeling social networks statistically. The Handbook includes chapters on data collection and visualization, theoretical innovations, links between networks and computational social science, and how social network analysis has contributed substantively across numerous fields. As networks are everywhere in social life, the field is inherently interdisciplinary and this Handbook includes contributions from leading scholars in sociology, archaeology, economics, statistics, and information science among others.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 183449092110257
Author(s):  
Qiong Li ◽  
Chen Deng ◽  
Bin Zuo ◽  
Xiaobin Zhang

This study explored whether vertical position affects social categorization of the rich and the poor. Experiment 1 used high- and low-income occupations as stimuli, and found participants categorized high-income occupations faster when they were presented in the top vertical position compared to the bottom vertical position. In Experiment 2, participants responded using either the “up” or “down” key to categorize high- and low-income occupations, and responded faster to high-income occupations with the “up” key and low-income occupations with the “down” key. In Experiment 3, names identified as belonging to either rich or poor individuals were presented at the top or bottom of a screen, and the results were the same as in Experiments 1 and 2. These findings suggest that social categorization based on wealth involved perceptual simulations of vertical position, and that vertical position affects the social categorization of the rich and the poor.


1992 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 298-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben A. Nelson ◽  
J. Andrew Darling ◽  
David A. Kice

Epiclassic occupants of the site of La Quemada left the disarticulated remains of 11-14 humans in an apparently sacred structure outside the monumental core of the site. Several lines of evidence are reviewed to generate propositions about the ritual meanings and functions of the bones. A comparative analysis reveals the complexity of mortuary practices in northern and western Mexico, and permits the suggestion that these particular remains were those of revered ancestors or community members. The sacred structure is seen as a charnel house, in which the more ancient tradition of ancestor worship expressed in shaft tombs was essentially perpetuated above ground. Hostile social relations are clearly suggested, however, by other categories of bone deposits. Recognition of the rich variability of mortuary displays leads to questions about their role in the maintenance of the social order.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 947-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua C Gordon

AbstractOver the past 25 years, Sweden has gone from having one of the most generous unemployment benefit systems among the rich democracies to one of the least. This article advances a multi-causal explanation for this unexpected outcome. It shows how the benefit system became a target of successive right-wing governments due to its role in fostering social democratic hegemony. Employer groups, radicalized by the turbulent 1970s more profoundly than elsewhere, sought to undermine the system, and their abandonment of corporatism in the early 1990s limited unions’ capacity to restrain right-wing governments in retrenchment initiatives. Two further developments help to explain the surprising political resilience of the cuts: the emergence of a private (supplementary) insurance regime and a realignment of working-class voters from the Social Democrats to parties of the right, especially the nativist Sweden Democrats, in the context of a liberal refugee/asylum policy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Musayev Shahbaz Shami

The article investigates the new idea of alphabet of M.F.Akhundzada and the social-scientific relationships with his contemporaries in the field of realizing this idea. İt is noted that the idea of new alphabet constitutes the basis of the concept of enlightenment. According to the rich scientific and epistolary heritage of writer-thinker, he put forward the issue of the necessity of alphapet reform giving ground that it causes to the massive illiteracy and non-compliance with Arabic alphabet used in Azerbaijan to the phonetic nature of Azerbaijan language as the result of social-historical processes and making special difficulties in teaching process. However M.F.Akhundzada doesn’t consider his mission to be completed with putting forward an idea, he made a new alphabet and sent it to the official counties of the Ottoman Empire and Iran, as well as the scientific centers of the important five countries of Europe for discussing it. The article has investigated the visit of M.F.Akhundzada to İstanbul and its results, as well as the correspondences with the official counties of Iran and consultations with his contemporariesfor discussing new alphabet project. The article as involved to the study of letters he sent to his contemporaries, his relevant writings kept in the archive of  M.A.Akhundzada, and appreciated the idea and considerations of other researchers about the problem. The Article clarifies the reasons of not realizing the idea of new alphabet of  M.F.Akhundzada, and showed historical-culturological importance of this idea. It is noted that new alphabet idea collected supporters during little time, the issue of changing Arabic alphabet became social requirement in society and after Azerbaijan regained its state independence, the country started to Latin graphics alphabet


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Miriam Aparicio

This article introduces a new systemic theory called “The Three Dimensional Spiral of Sense”, applied to Identity and Professionalization. The epistemological mainstays of the theory are stressed here, a theory supported by more than 30 years of empirical research at CONICET (National Council of Scientific Research, Argentina), with individuals belonging to different populations, some of them covering periods of over 20 years (intra-generational studies), and others covering three generations in-line (inter-generational studies). This article presents the most specific theoretical frameworks, and it formulates the six disciplinary areas in which the new analysis of the social data was carried out: Education, Health, Science, Media, International Relations and Interculturality. The first area – Education – is dealt with through different levels (secondary level, tertiary level, University and PhD training. Here, we only make reference to the studies carried out, returning to some epistemological issues in this theory. The methodology used was quantitative (statistical analysis, a semi-structured survey) but mainly qualitative (hierarchical evocations, interviews). The approach was macro-micro-meso-macro, micro, not quite common yet. It consists of a kind of sui generis systemism which recovers relationships (links, back and forth) between individuals and contexts, without overlooking neither the former nor the latter, thus, avoiding any type of reductionism. Individuals, organizations and frameworks interplay and feedback themselves. The results, particularly the qualitative ones, show the rich interactions underlying the continuance or innovation processes, which favor or hinder the individuals’ development and identity in times of abrupt change; at the same time, these results reveal the need for Professionalization in emerging countries.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Versanudin Hekmatyar ◽  
Fentiny Nugroho

Abstract: The objective of this study is to describe the pattern of land tenure and forms of livelihood diversification in rural area. By using qualitative approach, data was collected and presented descriptively. The results are as follows, first, land is an important production factors as capital and labor. Land in Kedungprimpen village is still closely linked to the livelihoods of its inhabitants. High level of dependence of the population on agricultural land is also closely related to the local community's view that underlies the social differentiation of the rich, ample and poor. Second, this fact further encourages households todeal with the crisis, undertake series of livelihood activities to meet their basic needs. The selection of diversified forms of livelihood is mainly based on rational reasons related to the types of resources that can be optimized. Generally, livelihood diversification in Kedungprimpen Village is on agricultural andnon-agricultural sectors. Agricultural sector includes land cultivation, sharecrop, rent, mortgage, and labor system. Non-agricultural sector includes trade, handicrafts production, stockbreeding, and carpentry.Keywords: pattern of land tenure, land tenure, land diversification, peasant


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