scholarly journals Cartography of a Pedagogical Experience: Architecture as a (In) Discipline in Process

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-53
Author(s):  
Maria Júlia Barbieri
Keyword(s):  
Work Teams ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Body ◽  
Environmental Perceptions ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Drift Theory ◽  
Mind Theory ◽  
Teaching Learning

This article focuses on the experience of teaching and teaching-learning relationswith a focus on the creative processes in the Architecture and Urbanism Course, more specifically in a curricular unit of Architecture Design. The reflection proposed here takes into account the body-environment relationship as a methodological matrix for teaching and investigates the way in which students understand, interpret and act from their own body’s experiences in space. The theoretical subsidies that support this approach are related to the studies of cognition, mainly from the perspective of the embodied mind theory developed by VARELA, THOMPSON, & ROSCH (1992) in addition to JOHNSON (2007) and his theory of meaning-making, and studies developed by KASTRUP (1999) in his theory of inventiveness. We seek in these theorists the possibility of weaving a discussion that understands the process of creation as an unceasing movement of exchanges between the body and the environment. In this sense, we developed and applied a methodology that aims to explore different experiences of the body in space as mediators of the creative process in architecture. Removing students from the closed space of the classroom, getting them out of chairs and desks and returning the movement to the bodies and the rediscovery of environmental perceptions is the starting point for this methodology developed in the light of CARERI’s drift theory (2013). The drift gains a very valuable sense here, since by launching the body into space in search of unexpected encounters, we are exploring the powers of this encounter so that students can make this event a fertile field for the creation process, returning them to the fecund environment of discovery as opposed to the sterile space of the classroom. The (in) disciplinary character of this methodology, in the most radicalsense of transdisciplinarity, makes the body and space have their blurred limits, and can thus co-evolve in motion, giving rise to creative processes, in which students they invent themselves at the same time as they invent the world in which they learn. All cartographies developed in the student creation processes in this course are presented on the social network Instagram, where the work teams share their processes, appropriating the tools and languages specific to this media.

Reading Signs and Symbols with Abdelkébir Khatibi

2020 ◽  
pp. 237-260
Author(s):  
Rim Feriani ◽  
Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani ◽  
Debra Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
Radical Theory ◽  
Abdelkebir Khatibi ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Theories Of Meaning

This chapter considers the ways in which Khatibi’s practices of reading contribute to theories of meaning through his thinking on the deciphering of signs and symbols and of making sense of the world, and of the worlds of the text, in their multifaceted forms. It takes as its starting point what Khatibi terms, in his introductory essay ‘Le Cristal du Texte’ in La Bessure du Nom propre, ‘l’intersémiotique’, migrant signs which move between one sign system and another. Khatibi takes as his own project examples from semiotic systems found within Arabic and Islamic cultures, from both popular culture, such as the tattoo, to calligraphy and the language of the Koran, from the body to the text and beyond – including storytelling, mosaics, urban space, textiles. His readings reveal the intersemiotic and polysemic meanings created in the movements of these migrant signs between their sign systems. For Khatibi, this ‘infinity’ of the ‘text’ is linked also to a mobile and migrant identity refracted in the multifaceted surfaces of the crystal (hence the title of the essay – ‘Le Cristal du Texte’) rather than in one reflection as in a mirror. Moving from these concerns of Khatibi with which he develops his radical theory of the sign, of the word and of writing, the chapter goes on to propose new readings of a selection of other writers with a shared, but varied, relationship to their Islamic heritage. These are writers working with and through that heritage – and importantly, as for Khatibi, including the Sufi heritage – and whose writing is also resonant with Khatibi’s intersemiotic theoretical and cultural project concerned with the individual and the collective, the historical and the contemporary, the political, the social and the linguistic.

scholarly journals “This journey has definitely changed me”: An ethnographic narrative exploring disabled peoples’ lives through embodied experiences and identity negotiation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Callan Sait
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Embodied Experiences

<p>Following calls from both disability studies and anthropology to provide ethnographic accounts of disability, this thesis presents the narratives of nine people living with disability, focusing on what disability means to them, how it is incorporated into their identities, and how it shapes their lived experiences. While accounts of disability from disability studies often focus on the social model of disability (Shakespeare 2006) and emphasise social stigma and oppression (Goffman 1967, Susman 1994), anthropological accounts often emphasise the suffering and search for cures (Rapp and Ginsburg 2012) that is assumed to accompany disability. Both approaches have their benefits, but neither pay particularly close attention to the personal experiences of individuals, on their own terms.  By taking elements from both disciplines, this thesis aims to present a balanced view that emphasises the lived experiences of individuals with disability, and uses these experiences as a starting point for wider social analysis. The primary focus of this thesis is understanding how disability shapes an individual’s identity: what physical, emotional, and social factors influence how these people are perceived – by themselves and others? Through my participants’ narratives I explore how understandings of normal bodies and normal lives influence their sense of personhood, and investigate the role of stigma in mediating social encounters and self-concepts. Furthermore, I undertake a novel study of the role of technology in the lives of people living with disability. My work explores how both assistive and non-assistive (‘general’) technologies are perceived and utilised by my participants in ways that effect not just the physical experience of disability, but also social perceptions and personal understandings of the body/self.  I argue that although the social model of disability is an excellent analytical tool, and one which has provided tangible benefits for disabled people, its political nature can sometimes lead to a homogenisation of disabled experiences; something which this thesis is intended to remedy by providing ethnographic narratives of disability, grounded in the embodied experiences of individuals.</p>

scholarly journals Sociological theorizing as meaning making: the case of ecological modernization theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Philippe Sapinski
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
The Body ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
Business Elite ◽  
The Social

In this paper, I propose a novel way to consider sociological theorizing. I argue that the structural analysis method first developed by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss provides a powerful tool to deconstruct and critique sociological theories. I propose that this method can be used to redefine certain theories not as sets of proposals from which testable hypotheses are to be derived, but rather as different versions of foundational narratives of Western society. Viewed in this way, sociological theorizing contributes to construct the Western cosmology – the body of tales and narratives that explain the creation of the social world, its relationship with nature, and its future direction.As a case in point, I argue that the narrative of ecological modernization can thus be analyzed and deconstructed using the same tools Lévi-Strauss uses to make sense of native American cosmologies. Doing so, I find that the narrative of ecological modernization developed as a mirror image of older tales of modernization, closely associated with the myth of progress – according to which Western society emerged from a state of nature in which no rational division of labour and no private property existed. This inversion transforms the myth of creation at the heart of the modern Western cosmology into a utopian narrative that finds considerable political traction with a certain part of the business elite and associated organic intellectuals, interested in maintaining existing relations of production and power.

scholarly journals “This journey has definitely changed me”: An ethnographic narrative exploring disabled peoples’ lives through embodied experiences and identity negotiation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Callan Sait
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Social Model Of Disability ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Embodied Experiences

<p>Following calls from both disability studies and anthropology to provide ethnographic accounts of disability, this thesis presents the narratives of nine people living with disability, focusing on what disability means to them, how it is incorporated into their identities, and how it shapes their lived experiences. While accounts of disability from disability studies often focus on the social model of disability (Shakespeare 2006) and emphasise social stigma and oppression (Goffman 1967, Susman 1994), anthropological accounts often emphasise the suffering and search for cures (Rapp and Ginsburg 2012) that is assumed to accompany disability. Both approaches have their benefits, but neither pay particularly close attention to the personal experiences of individuals, on their own terms.  By taking elements from both disciplines, this thesis aims to present a balanced view that emphasises the lived experiences of individuals with disability, and uses these experiences as a starting point for wider social analysis. The primary focus of this thesis is understanding how disability shapes an individual’s identity: what physical, emotional, and social factors influence how these people are perceived – by themselves and others? Through my participants’ narratives I explore how understandings of normal bodies and normal lives influence their sense of personhood, and investigate the role of stigma in mediating social encounters and self-concepts. Furthermore, I undertake a novel study of the role of technology in the lives of people living with disability. My work explores how both assistive and non-assistive (‘general’) technologies are perceived and utilised by my participants in ways that effect not just the physical experience of disability, but also social perceptions and personal understandings of the body/self.  I argue that although the social model of disability is an excellent analytical tool, and one which has provided tangible benefits for disabled people, its political nature can sometimes lead to a homogenisation of disabled experiences; something which this thesis is intended to remedy by providing ethnographic narratives of disability, grounded in the embodied experiences of individuals.</p>

The Social Practice of Being Born Again: Historical and Cultural-Sociological Perspectives on Conversionist Piety

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-70
Author(s):  
Katharina Krause
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Practical Theology ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Born Again ◽  
Analytical Tools

AbstractWhat kind of practices, emotions and self-understandings are linked to conversion? This contribution offers a set of analytical tools which help to understand processes of constructing, performing and maintaining conversionist identity. In doing so, it builds on both, source material related to 17th and 18th century New England and conversion research in the area of sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies. Holistic in its approach, it reconstructs conversionist piety as a social practice that builds up into pious cultures of body, emotion, and meaning-making. The analytical concepts developed on the way may prove to be a starting point for further empirical research on lived religion in Practical Theology and Religious Studies.

Gems, Cameos, and Social Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 357-383
Author(s):  
Jörn Lang
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Functional Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Individual Protection

This chapter focuses on the social practice of Roman images in the form of engraved gems and cameos. They were carried along on the body of their owner, so that the way they were perceived was highly flexible. The function of the representations was thus not limited to spatially fixed contexts of perception and could potentially function in all social configurations in which their wearer interacted socially. This essay aims to consider gems and cameos as objects within social spheres of activity. The starting point is the use of the objects. This makes it possible at least to limit the social interactions into which the images were integrated. Following upon this functional approach and an overview of common pictorial motifs, examples of possible ways these representations were concretely integrated to social practices will be shown. To this end, both outwardly directed functions such as social status or affiliation with a social group as well as actor-oriented aspects such as personal commemoration or the desire for individual protection are considered.

Ästhetik des Südens. Ästhetik des Nordens. Anmerkungen zur Klimatheorie der Kunst

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Konrad Lotter
Keyword(s):  
Life Style ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Reflex Action ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

Die eigentümliche Verbindung geographischer Begriffe wie »Süden« und »Norden« mit dem philosophischen Begriff der Ästhetik verweist auf die sog. Klimatheorie, die die Autonomie der Kunst bestreitet und ihre Eigenart und Entwicklung durch das Wetter und andere Naturbedingungen erklärt. Zum einen werden die verschiedenen Ansätze dieser Theorie z.Zt. der europäischen Aufklärung dargestellt, die das Klima durch den Körper, die Lebensweise oder die Arbeit des Menschen vermittelt, auf seine geistige Produktion bezieht. Das Hauptanliegen des Aufsatzes ist es, die Entwicklungen der Klimatheorie und ihre Aufhebung in die physiologische Ästhetik Nietzsches, die Stilpsychologie Worringers oder die Ästhetik von Marx, die den ideologischen Überbau als Refl ex der sozialökonomischen Basis begreift, aufzuzeigen. Zum anderen wird die Verdrängung der (klassizistischen) Ästhetik des Südens durch die (romantische) Ästhetik des Nordens analysiert, die sich zunehmend von ihrem Ausgangspunkt entfernt und den Begriff des Klimas durch den der Nation und der Rasse ersetzt.<br><br>The peculiar association of geographical terms like »south« and »north« with the philosophical term of aesthetics refers to the so called climatology, which denies the autonomy of art and explains its characteristics and its development by weather and other natural phenomena. On the one hand, various concepts of the European enlightenment are described, relating climate, mediated through the body, the life style or the work of men, to spiritual production. The main objective of the article is to demonstrate the development of climatology, its integration (Aufhebung) into Nietzsche’s physiological aestetics, into Worringer’s Stilpsychologie (psychology of style) as well as into the aestetics of Marx, who interprets the ideological superstructure as a reflex action of the social and economical basis. On the other hand, the repression of the (classical) aesthetics of the »south« by the (romantic) aestetics of the »north« is analysed. Thus removing itself more and more from its starting point, the »northern aesthetics« substitutes the notion of climate with that of nation and race.

scholarly journals Subject and network: potential and political limits of the (un)making of bodies online

Cadernos Pagu ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 13-30
Author(s):  
Remedios Zafra
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Electronic Devices ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Subjective Awareness ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Symbolic Construction

This essay concerns subjective construction on the Internet, the potential and limitations for the deconstruction of the social meanings of the body (there where, interfaced and displaced by the machine, it is made, but factitiously). Potentials and limits also for the ideation of camouflaged forms of repetition and symbolic repression present new technological scenarios. In this text, screens, as the material node of cyberspace, dress us and carry a new complexity in the identity and subjective constitution, to which are added the different spaces of the online relationship (such as social networks) which territorialize the Internet today; spaces that we think condition the presentation and representation of the "I" in its relationship with others and the constitution of desire and possible collectivities. The starting point will be the body as a symbolic construction, with its ways of seeing, its identity and social filters and its subjective pretensions; but also the subject from a materialist position that emphasizes the technologically located and amplified body, conditioned by the biopolitical design of the most common electronic devices of recent decades. From them we analyze some of the points of tension, possibilities and political conditionalities for subjective awareness and practice on the Internet.

Sociology and history: M. S. Archer's Social Origins of Educational Systems

1986 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Educational Change ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
The Body ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social

One of the more ambitious intellectual projects of recent years is the body of work by Margaret S. Archer which centres on her Social Origins of Educational Systems, published in 1979. Archer's thesis is that modern educational systems are of two basic kinds, centralized and decentralized, and that their character and functioning are conditioned by the social and political conflicts of their formative phases. The underlying contrast is between France and England: this was Archer's starting-point, and in 1971 she published Social Conflict and Educational Change in England and France 1789–1848 in collaboration with Michalina Vaughan. Social Origins of Educational Systems extended this in time, bringing the story down to the present day, and in national coverage, adding Russia and Denmark to the countries examined. A shorter ‘University edition’—reduced to 234 pages from over 800—has now been published which is again restricted to England and France.

Emergence from what? Comments on Sabbagh & Gelman

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 727-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIAN MACWHINNEY
Keyword(s):  
Optimality Theory ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Strong Version ◽  
Phonological Development ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Strong Formulation

Sabbagh & Gelman (S&G) present an insightful criticism of the emergentist approach to language acquisition. The analysis takes as its starting point an expressed frustration with the fact that emergentism is not packaged as a single theory or formalism. As a result, S&G decide to focus their critical attention on a particularly strong version of emergentism in which, ‘only domain-general tools are required to account for language development.’ This strong formulation of the emergentist position matches up well with the disembodied connectionism of the 1980s (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986). However, it misrepresents the richer expressions of emergentism being developed by the authors of this volume. In particular, this ‘strong’ version fails to properly appreciate the degree to which emergentists view cognition as grounded on the body, the brain, and the social situation.Consider a simple example from phonological development. There is a universal tendency to avoid sequences of nasal consonants followed by voiceless obstruents, as might arise in forms like ‘manpower.’ This constraint is grounded on the facts of speech production (Huffman, 1993) and figures prominently in recent elaborations of Optimality Theory (Kager, 1999). Languages use at least five phonological processes to deal with this problem. These processes include nasal substitution, post-nasal voicing, denasalization, nasal deletion, and vowel epenthesis. Initially, children may apply a variety of these processes (Bernhardt & Stemberger, 1998). Which processes are preserved and which are dropped out will depend on the shape of the target language, whether it be Indonesian, Quechua, Toba Batak, English, or Kelantan Malay. In the terms used by S&G, each of these phonological processes is a small emergentist ‘buzzsaw’ cutting patterns that are shaped not by some innate cognitive ‘blueprint,’ but by the emergent facts of articulatory phonology.

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