scholarly journals Walking Backwards on Uneven Ground

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kate Glasson
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Aesthetic Preference ◽  
Form Function ◽  
Meaning Creation ◽  
Ethnographic Methodology ◽  
Cumulative Knowledge ◽  
Contemporary Architecture

<p>All place has embedded meaning – it is a reflexive method for understanding ourselves through existence in space. We create meaning in place by associating it with (personal and/or collective) memory. As we frame our worlds in context of our places and spaces, architects have an ethical responsibility to their clients, and to the wider society whom they serve. This thesis posits that contemporary architecture in Aotearoa must respond to a need to diversify views on aesthetic preference. This research investigates memory and meaning creation as considered through nostalgia, and subsequently, the cumulative knowledge gained through impressions or experiences. This research utilises an auto-ethnographic methodology to explore personal experience – through memory – as the building blocks of the self. This self-construction is inextricably related to the development of personal aesthetic preferences and is extrapolated out to the collective aesthetic preference or norm. This work reflects on - and moves us towards - a critique of form, function, and meaning-making processes, that claim objectivity; in support of subjectivities.</p>

scholarly journals Walking Backwards on Uneven Ground

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kate Glasson
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Aesthetic Preference ◽  
Form Function ◽  
Meaning Creation ◽  
Ethnographic Methodology ◽  
Cumulative Knowledge ◽  
Contemporary Architecture

<p>All place has embedded meaning – it is a reflexive method for understanding ourselves through existence in space. We create meaning in place by associating it with (personal and/or collective) memory. As we frame our worlds in context of our places and spaces, architects have an ethical responsibility to their clients, and to the wider society whom they serve. This thesis posits that contemporary architecture in Aotearoa must respond to a need to diversify views on aesthetic preference. This research investigates memory and meaning creation as considered through nostalgia, and subsequently, the cumulative knowledge gained through impressions or experiences. This research utilises an auto-ethnographic methodology to explore personal experience – through memory – as the building blocks of the self. This self-construction is inextricably related to the development of personal aesthetic preferences and is extrapolated out to the collective aesthetic preference or norm. This work reflects on - and moves us towards - a critique of form, function, and meaning-making processes, that claim objectivity; in support of subjectivities.</p>

Monkey on My Back. An Autoethnographic Narrative of a Therapeutic Experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Wiesner
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Therapeutic Experience ◽  
Postmodern Philosophy ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Global Uncertainty

With a conscious attempt to contribute to contemporary discussions in mad/trans/queer/monster studies, the monograph approaches complex postmodern theories and contextualizes them from an autoethnographic methodological perspective. As the self-explanatory subtitle reads, the book introduces several topics as revelatory fields for the author’s self-exploration at the moment of an intense epistemological and ontological crisis. Reflexively written, it does not solely focus on a personal experience, as it also aims at bridging the gap between the individual and the collective in times of global uncertainty. There are no solid outcomes defined; nevertheless, the narrative points to a certain—more fluid—way out. Through introducing alternative ways of hermeneutics and meaning-making, the book offers a synthesis of postmodern philosophy and therapy, evolutionary astrology as a symbolic language, embodied inquiry, and Buddhist thought that together represent a critical attempt to challenge the pathologizing discursive practices of modern disciplines during the neoliberal capitalist era.

Vai Sambar! American Meaning Making in Afro-Brazilian Dance

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (S1) ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
Jessica Damon
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Research Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
White Community ◽  
Afro Brazilian

This paper describes the interaction between an American community of dancers and the wave of Afro-Brazilian influence that entered that community. Through personal experience, academic research, community observation, and conversations, the author examines the role of samba and the religious dances of the orixds within a suburban white community, highlighting how meaning is changed and constructed based on cultural context. The author emphasizes how women in this community responded to the political, social, and sexual implications of a non-native dance form, and how their resulting self-identification as a community was transformed. The essay questions how Americans can locate themselves within the greater cultural context of samba and other Afro-Brazilian dance forms, not simply as cultural outsiders but as women deeply connected to the unique American reality of these practices.

scholarly journals Brain-Computer Interfaces and Creative Expression: Interface Considerations for Rehabilitative and Therapeutic Interactions

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie M. Scott ◽  
Chris Raftery
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Computer Interface ◽  
Creative Arts ◽  
Embodied Interaction ◽  
Computer Interfaces ◽  
Brain Signals ◽  
Digital Environments ◽  
The Brain

By translating brain signals into new kinds of outputs, Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) systems hold tremendous potential as both transformative rehabilitation and communication tools. BCIs can be considered a unique technology, in that they are able to provide a direct link between the brain and the external environment. By affording users with opportunities for communication and self-expression, BCI systems serve as a bridge between abled-bodied and disabled users, in turn reducing existing barriers between these groups. This perspective piece explores the complex shifting relationship between neuroadaptive systems and humans by foregrounding personal experience and embodied interaction as concepts through which to evaluate digital environments cultivated through the design of BCI interfaces. To underscore the importance of fostering human-centered experiences through technologically mediated interactions, this work offers a conceptual framework through which the rehabilitative and therapeutic possibilities of BCI user-system engagement could be furthered. By inviting somatic analysis towards the design of BCI interfaces and incorporating tenets of creative arts therapies practices into hybrid navigation paradigms for self-expressive applications, this work highlights the need for examining individual technological interactions as sites with meaning-making potentiality, as well as those conceived through unique exchanges based on user-specific needs for communication. Designing BCI interfaces in ways that afford users with increased options for navigation, as well as with the ability to share subjective and collective experiences, helps to redefine existing boundaries of digital and physical user-system interactions and encourages the reimagining of these systems as novel digital health tools for recovery.

Psychology and World Heritage? Reflections on Time, Memory, and Imagination for a Heritage Context

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-276
Author(s):  
Ciarán Benson
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Semantic Memory ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
World Heritage ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Common Humanity ◽  
World Heritage Sites ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Heritage Studies ◽  
The Future

AbstractConcepts of memory—specifically notions of collective memory—are associated in heritage studies with the central idea of authenticity. In this article I review what is relevant in the psychology of memory to these discourses, and reflect on this association of collective memory and authenticity in heritage studies, notably in the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity. Concepts of time are central to this review. The idea of world heritage is, it is suggested, a future-oriented ideal for a common humanity. The metaphorical underpinnings of our vernacular uses of time-concepts, such as past and future, are examined. Psychological considerations of memory as retrieval or reconstruction are then outlined. The distinction between kinds of memory, notably episodic and semantic memory, is then presented. These, it is argued, are building blocks for collective memory, which, in turn, is the seedbed for the underemphasized but potent idea of collective imagination. If the primary function of memory is actually oriented to the future, then imagination is what puts kinds of memory to work in both predicting and creating the future. Our ability to imagine—to mentally project forward—is heavily dependent on what we know—that is, on semantic memory. The article concludes with some reflections on the policy implications of this analysis for the visitor to world heritage sites.

Qualitative semiotics: Can we research consumer meaning-making?

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 478-491
Author(s):  
Chris Barnham
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Concept Formation ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Semiotic Model ◽  
Meaning Creation ◽  
Consumer Cognition ◽  
Marketing Profession ◽  
Peircean Semiotics

The notion of “meaning” is central to marketing because it is only through the making of meaning that “added value” can be created. The marketing profession has several models of how such meaning is created, but Peircean semiotics can shed further light on the activity of meaning-making itself and the stages that are involved in this process. This article explores the differences between Peircean and Saussurian semiotics and discusses how these two semiotic traditions construe meaning creation. In particular, it applies the Peircean semiotic model of meaning-making to the notion of concept formation, and the classificatory aspects of this process. This enables convergences to be identified between qualitative research methodologies and semiotics. This, in turn, opens up the possibility of a new kind of qualitative research that understands, and explores, how individual consumers form their concepts. It does this by identifying the semiotic structures that are involved in this process. It will be argued that the resulting framework of “Qualitative Semiotics” has the potential to take semiotics beyond the remit of cultural analysis and to refocus it on processes of individual consumer cognition.

Jewish Life in Amsterdam and the Formation of the Western Sephardi Diaspora 1579–1700

2020 ◽  
pp. 214-258
Author(s):  
Jane S. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Social Unit ◽  
New Model ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Historical Trajectory

This chapter illustrates a twofold journey of Conversos, a physical trek northward to freedom and a spiritual journey to the practice of Judaism, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They had no personal experience of life in a Jewish community after the Expulsion from Spain. What united them was a sense of shared oppression at the hands of the Inquisition in Portugal and the collective memory, however faint, of being portugueses de la nación hebrea, homens de nação, or simply members of the nação, the 'Nation'. The chapter explores a distinctive social unit that Conversos formed with extraordinarily tight bonds in Seville, Madrid, Lima, and elsewhere, and a sense of kinship with other Portuguese and Spanish Conversos, wherever they were. This background produced a new and different historical trajectory. The Amsterdam community outstripped the others in culture and affluence and served as their model and guide. Amsterdam, in turn, drew its models of the Jewish community from the Sephardim of Venice. It also examines the emerging new political reality, United Provinces of the Netherlands, and a new model of the Jewish community, the western Sephardi diaspora.

Contemporary Autoethnography Is Digital Autoethnography

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Tasha R. Dunn ◽  
W. Benjamin Myers
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Digital Spaces

Autoethnography has become legitimized through its ability to connect culture to personal experiences. This legitimization has occurred alongside a titanic shift in communication made possible by digital technology, which has rapidly transformed, multiplied, and mediated the ways through which we engage one another. This essay explores and exemplifies the necessity of autoethnography to evolve in concert with the ways our lives have become inextricably tethered to digital technology. Due to this shift, we propose that contemporary autoethnography is digital autoethnography, a method we propose that relies on personal experience(s) to foreground how meaning is made among people occupying and connected to digital spaces. Digital autoethnography is distinguishable from traditional autoethnography because the cultures analyzed are not primarily physical; they are digital. In short, the work of digital autoethnography is situated within and concerned about digital spaces and the lived experiences, interactions, and meaning-making within and beside these contexts. Embracing digital autoethnography pushes us to consider and reflect upon the ways we have changed over time with the influx of digital technology. Additionally, the method provides a framework to keep autoethnography relevant in spite of the inevitable changes to human experience that will occur as digital connectivity becomes increasingly enmeshed in our everyday lives.

CULTURAL HERITAGE AND IMAGES OF THE CITY: TRANSFORMATION OF SAWAHLUNTO IN INDONESIA

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Agseora Ediyen ◽  
Shuri Mariasih Gietty Tambunan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
City Government ◽  
City Image ◽  
Image Construction ◽  
Mining City ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
The City

In order to be acknowledged as a World Heritage Centre by UNESCO in 2016, the city government transformed Sawahlunto, which used to be an old mining city, into what the government claimed as a culturally touristic mining city. The city had basically been declared as a dead city; however, the government has strategically increased its economics through tourism. This article focuses on the meaning-making process in the construction of the city image(s) basing the process in the discussion of the politics of collective memory and cultural heritage. Data, mainly findings from observations, interviews and textual analysis, were collected from two tourism sites namely Goedang Ransoem Museum and Lubang Tambang Mbah Soero. The aim of the research is to interpret how the people in Sawahlunto make sense of the image construction of the city or even contest it as the government conveyed particular meaning in redefining the city‟s identity. Abidin Kusno‟s conceptualization of collective memory in architecture is mainly used to analyze the architectural elements of the two tourism sites. Furthermore, the analysis also refers to Hobsbawn and Thompson‟s notion of cultural heritage and Leif Edvinson‟s images of the city. Research findings reveal that the city government constructs a dominant meaning of what they convey as cultural heritage by utilizing local laws and the authority from other regions which have more experiences in transforming their city into a city of cultural heritage. On the other hand, the people in Sawahlunto have their own understanding of what their city means for them in relation to their own cultural heritage. All in all, the complexity of the meaning-makitng process in the city‟s transformation between the government and the people could be read as a battleground of contesting discourses.

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