scholarly journals What Is It Like to Be a Nazi? Racial Vision and Scientific Selves in German Portrait Photographic Practice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Katharina Mosha Skarpelis
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Novel Technologies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Racial Knowledge ◽  
Point Of Departure

Default ways of reading others come with a host of problems, often caused by a lack of adequate tools for obtaining analytical and interpretive access to the phenomenon of interest; in the case of Nazis, this has led to a flattening of National Socialist racial thinking into a blunt racial essentialism that, as Ann Stoler put it, ignores nuance and conflicts in historical debates about race that are then juxtaposed to later, presumably more sophisticated, racial epistemologies (Stoler 2016). Horror at historical atrocities has led to a glossing over of significant variation in scientific and cultural practices that are consequential for our understanding of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes substantively, and for our ability as cultural and comparative historical sociologists to make claims about the past, methodologically and causally.What Is It Like to Be a Nazi employs Nagel’s paper as metaphorical point of departure to study not consciousness, but to more attentively interrogate the scientific practices of those whose ways of thinking and existing in the world seem so alien to us, as well as the practices of contemporary social science purporting to understanding National Socialist science. My contribution to this project consists in homing in on one historical form of racial knowledge production and visualization, that of portrait photographic practice. By choosing portrait photographers, the larger category of “Nazi” is narrowed down to a professional group who generated visual propaganda for the National Socialist regime and sustained the dictatorship by way of artistic production.How did National Socialist photographers generate “race” in images? Through an analysis of photographic instruction manuals, reflections of the image makers on their craft and the photographs themselves, I theorize three processes by which National Socialist-period photographers created race in images: contemplation, freezing, and sculpting. Photography, far from being a transcriptional art, brimmed with agency and was in constant disagreement about the nature of perception, and the best way of capturing phenomena occurring in the world through novel technologies. While local circumstances of photographic production under National Socialist rule at first glance appear excessively specific and perhaps exceptional, they raise more universal questions about perception, vision and interpretation that remain at issue today (Browne 2010; Morning 2011; Morning 2014; Nelson 2008).

scholarly journals Developing Asia – Dynamic but fractured

2021 ◽  
pp. 211-229
Author(s):  
Robert Wihtol
Keyword(s):  
Economic Transition ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Territorial Disputes ◽  
Socialist Market Economy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Governance Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Socialist Market

In the past seventy–five years, developing Asia has transformed more rapidly than any other region. What is behind this success? Will Asia go on to lead the world, or will its rise encounter obstacles? Asia is politically diverse, with democracies, hybrid governments and numerous authoritarian regimes. Several are unstable. Paths to prosperity have varied, including the East Asian model, China’s “socialist market economy”, Indian self–reliance, and economic transition in Central Asia. Regional cooperation is chronically weak, due to the youthfulness, dispersion and diversity of Asia’s sovereign states. China’s rise threatens to fracture the region further. As the region emerges from the Covid–19 crisis, East Asia is well positioned to lead an economic recovery. However, many challenges remain. Political and governance systems are weak. Territorial disputes could escalate into open conflict, including Taiwan. Human capital is poorly developed, and populations are aging. Finally, the region could be polarized between the United States and China.

The World-Revealing Goblet: Reading Farhād Mīrzā’s Geographical Treatise Jām-i Jam as a Lithograph

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 409-449
Author(s):  
Zeinab Azarbadegan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Persian Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
University Library ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Geographic Knowledge ◽  
The World

Abstract This article examines a copy of Farhād Mīrzā’s Jām-i Jam (the World-Revealing Goblet) published in 1856 in Tehran and kept at Columbia University Library offsite storage. It demonstrates the dual importance of this book in geographic knowledge production and as part of the library of Saʿīd Nafīsī, one of the most prominent Iranian scholars of Persian literature. Methodologically, the paper offers various ways to study a single lithograph to decipher larger historical processes in histories of education, translation, and print. First, it analyzes the paratext to expose scholarly and political networks in order to examine the genealogy of geographic knowledge production in mid-nineteenth century Qajar Iran. Second, it studies the content and translation practices employed by Farhād Mīrzā to offer novel strategies for analyzing dissemination and reception of new ways of production and categorization of geographic knowledge as well as methods utilized in composition of pedagogical geography books. Finally, it discusses how cataloging practices affect current scholarship and lead to rendering certain texts “hidden.” It therefore illustrates how the study of Farhād Mīrzā’s Jām-i Jam, a book aspiring to reveal the world, can expose much about scholarly practices not only in the past but also the present.

scholarly journals Open-source projects for autonomous robotics and systems: A survey

Filomat ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (15) ◽  
pp. 4953-4966
Author(s):  
Ameer Khan ◽  
Shuai Li ◽  
Dechao Chen ◽  
Yangming Li
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
The Self ◽  
Main Stream ◽  
Production Chain ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

Open-Source has not only removed the monopoly of the few technological companies, but has also distributed the knowledge, at no cost. With knowledge moves on from person to person, and each person adds his/her contribution to the past work, a knowledge production chain keeps rolling, greatly reducing the effort to re-invent wheels. It allows the public availability of data and enables the addition, modification, and edition of data more efficiently at a faster pace. Robots, considered as a replacement of man-power are of meticulous interests for researchers in the past few decades. Their immunity to walk and talk more or less like a human is worth praising, but this radical change was not so obvious a decade or two ago before the wide propagation of open-source, the continuous spread of research work around the world allows the brilliant minds to add their pieces to incrementally growing joint efforts. It has revolutionized the robotics from the simple remote-control cars to the self-driven cars. This survey summarizes main stream open source projects emerging in recent years and expects to increase the exposure of existing open source projects and increase the popularity of them, with an intention to further reduce unnecessary effort to re-invent existing systems.

scholarly journals Solid As a Rock? An Ethnographical Study of the Management of Rock-carvings

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Anders Gustafsson ◽  
Håkan Karlsson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Heritage Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Specific Culture ◽  
Point Of Departure

This paper takes its point of departure in a critical and ethnographically directed discussion ofhow Swedish heritage management —in practiceconstructs, organises and presents the past (ke. , the cultural heritage) to the public at the rock-carvings in Tanum. This ethnographical approach is helpful when trying to move beyond the structures —and specific ways of viewing the world —that are a consequence of our own archaeological socialisation. Suddenly activities that, with an archaeological eye, seem to be completely normal, present themselves instead as peculiar examples of the culture ofcontemporary archaeology/heritage management. In this paper we present examples —derived from both the past and present —ofhow this specific culture approach handles and stages the rock-carvings in Tanum. It is stressed that, for various reasons and not least ethical and democratic ones, this culture and its rituals need to be examined even further from an ethnographical point of view

scholarly journals “What Ghosts are Haunting us Today?” Slavoj Žižek’s The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto in Post-Pandemic Capitalist Realism. The Revolutionary Subject and Work

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-88
Author(s):  
Vlad-Eugen Neagu
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
Global System ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World

However controversial a topic, Marxist thought still remains the most complex tool for the critique of Capitalism. Derrida calls Marxism “hauntological”, always reappearing as a spectre of the past, always quasipresent, but also as a potential lost future. After the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, the relevance of The Communist Manifesto seemed to have slowly waned, in a world that adopted the tenets of Neoliberalism partly as a defense against authoritarian regimes, and partly as a mean to converge toward the countries at the forefront of the global system, that had already accrued a massive lead in economic and social development. The Covid-19 virus has shocked the world to its core, but it remains to be seen whether it has brought about a paradigm shift or it has merely accentuated some of the past problems, while also triggering a kind of forced nostalgia for the apparent normality of a system that was already ridden with issues. Mark Fisher points out that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (Fisher 1), thus indicating the need for criticism and measures against a neoliberal monopoly on thought itself. As for Žižek’s The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto, it remains to be analyzed whether it can revive the interest in the original text, as to begin compounding a viable alternative for a postpandemic global system that does not yet seem to fully grasp that it is running out of time.

scholarly journals 9 The Point of Study Practices Is to Discover the Kind of Questions That We “Also” Should Ask

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Nancy Vansieleghem
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Way Of Thinking

Abstract To develop an idea of study, a lead is taken on the work of the artist Mark Dion. Dion’s work, and more in particular his “Tate Thames Dig,” brings together many of the elements that fosters the coming into being of matters of study. By re-enacting the 14th century cabinets of curiosity, Dion questions how modern science shape our current understanding of knowledge production. With his work, he causes an amazement for the ecology of things. At the same time he evokes a request for an entanglement between science and the world that signals an exposure to the plurality of our present. By doing so, he calls into being a way of thinking about scientific practices as study practices. Not as isolated practices that aim at discovering new knowledge, but as collective practices that give something the power to affect and make a public thinking.

Revealing Blue on the Northern Northwest Coast

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Melonie Ancheta
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Copper Oxides ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Tools And Methods ◽  
Blue Paint

The distinctive black, red and blue or green designs created by the Haida and Tlingit of the Northwest Coast of North America are iconographic of these cultures and recognized around the world. While almost every other aspect of Haida and Tlingit life has been studied and remarked for the past two hundred years, references to the significance of color, and the materials used to make color, have been rare—and, in the case of the traditional blue paint, consistently incorrect. Mistakenly attributed to copper oxides early in the ethnographic study of the Northwest Coast, subsequent scholars have persisted, without scientific verification, in claiming the traditional blue comes from copper oxides. As important and informative as the traditions of carving and weaving, if we are to provide a more comprehensive picture of the past, the use of color needs to be integrated with what we already know about the Haida and Tlingit cultures of the NW Coast, including the materials, tools, and methods of making and applying paint. The study of color use, and pigment and paint technology can provide new insights into the complex critical thinking and technical skills of individual artists, as well as the Haida and Tlingit cultures from which they came. The roles these artifacts played within their cultures can be revealed more comprehensively when we understand the significance of specific materials. Investigating the reasons for using specific colors such as blue, and the materials that make those colors, gives us new descriptive and interpretive information about daily life, sociopolitical standards, cultural practices, worldviews, and the cosmologies of the Haida and Tlingit. Identifying specific pigments can provide valuable information relating to provenance and authorship of artifacts and helps us identify sibling artifacts. We are better able to conserve the artifacts we hold according to the materials with which they are made if we have a full understanding of all those materials.

Science and Communication

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celeste M. Condit ◽  
L. Bruce Railsback
Keyword(s):  
Predictive Power ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Dominant Model ◽  
Relational Norms ◽  
Current Definition ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of

Whether understood as a set of procedures, statements, or institutions, the scope and character of science has changed through time and area of investigation. The prominent current definition of science as systematic efforts to understand the world on the basis of empirical evidence entails several characteristics, each of which has been deeply investigated by multidisciplinary scholars in science studies. The aptness of these characteristics as defining elements of science has been examined both in terms of their sufficiency as normative ideals and with regard to their fit as empirical descriptors of the actual practices of science. These putative characteristics include a set of commitments to (1) the goal of developing maximally general, empirically based explanations certified through falsification procedures, predictive power, and/or fruitfulness and application, (2) meta-methodologies of hypothesis testing and quantification, and (3) relational norms including communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, organized skepticism, and originality. The scope of scientific practice has been most frequently identified with experimentation, observation, and modeling. However, data mining has recently been added to the scientific repertoire, and genres of communication and argumentation have always been an unrecognized but necessary component of scientific practices. The institutional home of science has also changed through time. The dominant model of the past three centuries has housed science predominantly in universities. However, science is arguably moving toward a “post-academic” era.

scholarly journals Alone in the world?: Making sense of Canada’s disputes with Saudi Arabia and China

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-161
Author(s):  
Roland Paris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
International Support ◽  
The Past ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The World

Canada has found itself in serious diplomatic disputes over the past year with Saudi Arabia and China. The Saudis took issue with the Canadian foreign minister’s call to release human rights activists from prison, whereas China was angry at Canada’s arrest of a senior Chinese executive on an extradition request from the United States. These incidents should not be viewed as isolated aberrations. Authoritarian regimes seem increasingly emboldened to lash out at countries that displease them, including allies of the United States. But Ottawa has succeeded in rallying considerable international support for its position in the China dispute, suggesting that while Canada may be exposed, it is not destined to be alone.

The Plot Against the Past: Reuse and Modification of Ancient Mortuary Monuments as Persuasive Efforts of Appropriation

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Western World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Architectural Elements ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Alexander Kluge ◽  
Ancient Monuments ◽  
Point Of Departure

‘The were not for something in human beings in complicity with it’ writes Alexander Kluge (1990, 20) in The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time. Kluge is concerned with condensed dramatic cinematic time and his present now lies several decades in the past. However, the image of an empowered present plotting against a defenceless past presents itself as an adequate point of departure. Reuse and modification of ancient monuments after extended periods of disuse—monuments herein defined as anything from monoliths and sarcophagi to large earthen mounds and wooden or stone buildings—are frequent phenomena throughout the world. Reuse can range from one-time visits and the placing of human remains and artefacts to the rearrangement of architectural elements and remodelling of entire structures. No cultural continuity is required (Bradley 1993, 117–21) for discontinuous reuse can bridge centuries and even millennia. Reuse of monuments is an ongoing phenomenon. Not only prehistoric monuments but also historic monuments have been affected. I therefore will follow Taylor’s lead (Taylor 2008, 24), overstep the disciplinary thresholds and not pay attention to a prehistory-history distinction. The term prehistory was only born in the early nineteenth century AD (Rowley-Conwy 2006; Taylor 2008, 2) and people who reuse or manipulate monuments do not draw lines between historic and prehistoric monuments. Additionally, the onset of modernity brought along expanded chronological constructions of time. How we from the so-called Western World look upon the past and our expectations of the future not only has made us more time conscious in relation to the present but entirely changed our conceptualization of time (Koselleck 2004). To historians and archaeologists time is stratigraphic and sequential. Archaeologists are concerned with fixing objects and events in their proper place and time. Today most people look at the past with a temporal depth to it (Dodgshon 2008, 6). However, the way we look at time is not how everybody else conceives of it. Different cultural contexts create different concepts of time (e.g. Lévi-Strauss, 1970, 16; Hirsch 2006).

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