scholarly journals Culture and Symbolism Nexus in Anthropology

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-124
Author(s):  
Surya Bhakta Sigdel
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Cultural Interpretation ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
The Way

Study of symbols or the theory of symbolism makes micro study of the culture. Symbols are the gestures, objects and language, which form the basis of human communication. Interpretation of symbol may differ according to the culture. At the same time a symbol may have one meaning in one culture another meaning in another culture. Symbols represent signs which are used to signify objects, real or imaginary. Symbols are arbitrary based on convention of culture. Interpretation of symbol depends on culture. Symbols are means of Communication of language, a form of ritual expression, cultural interpretation, expression of art and belief. Symbols should not be looked at in an abstract way and at meaning as constructed apart from human action but rather at the way meaning is constructed and used in the context of this action. Symbolism studies how a culture functions on the basis of its meanings, how a symbol is interpreted and so on. Symbolism studies the interrelationship between culture, language and people. Culture is constructed on the basis of different symbols. There are different meanings of symbols. The same symbol in different contexts may have different kinds of meanings. Symbols are directed by cultural norms. As cultural norms are diverse symbols too are multicoil, multifocal and multivariate and they can represent many things. Symbols do not necessarily have the same meaning in different context. Thick description by Clifford Geertz takes into account the fact that any aspect of human behavior has more than one meaning.

scholarly journals The meaning of the Ceprotan tradition in bersih desa for the people of Sekar village

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-159
Author(s):  
Laras Andita Yuningtyas ◽  
Sigit Pranawa ◽  
Yuhastina Yuhastina
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Local People ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Symbol Systems ◽  
Cultural Interpretation ◽  
Village Community ◽  
The People ◽  
Clifford Geertz

The purifying tradition carried out by the Sekar Village community is always accompanied by a traditional ceremony called Ceprotan. This Ceprotan traditional ceremony only exists in Sekar Village. Its implementation load with folklore values that the local people believe. This study aimed to know the meaning of the Ceprotan tradition for the people of Sekar village. This research used a qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. The intake of informants was done through the purposive sampling technique. Data obtained using both secondary and polymer data. Data collection techniques used were interviews, observation, and documentation. To ensure the validity of the data, the researcher used source triangulation techniques on the data obtained. The data were then analyzed with cultural interpretation techniques or the "thick description" approach by Clifford Geertz to interpret the symbol systems of cultural meaning in a deep painting. This study's findings were that the village's purifying tradition accompanied by the Ceprotan traditional ceremony carried out by the Sekar Village community, especially Krajan Lor and Krajan Kidul Hamlets, was done as an expression of gratitude, hope, and prayer to God Almighty for good things. Based on cultural practitioners' symbolic activities that appeared and were interpreted, this tradition was also carried out as a form of appreciation and reminder to the ancestors of Sekar Village, which until now is believed by the community as Danyang who consider influencing the survival of the local people. This belief contains in the folklore of the origin of Sekar Village. It continues to maintain as a form of refinement of the customs and culture of Sekar Village.

Biography and Historiography: Mutual Evidentiary and Interdisciplinary Considerations

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert I. Rotberg
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
The Real ◽  
Human Motivation ◽  
Cultural Variables ◽  
Historical Biography ◽  
Human Endeavor ◽  
Perceived Constraints

Biography is history, depends on history, and strengthens and enriches history. In turn, all history is biography. History could hardly exist without biographical insights—without the texture of human endeavor that emanates from a full appreciation of human motivation, the real or perceived constraints on human action, and exogenous influences on human behavior. Social forces are important, but they act on and through individuals. Structural and cultural variables are important, but individuals pull the levers of structure and act within or against cultural norms. The success of historical biography as a craft ultimately turns on the nature of its evidence and the interdisciplinary methodologies that it can bring to bear on its subject.

A Language for Modeling Cultural Norms, Biases and Stereotypes for Human Behavior Models

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Solomon ◽  
Michael van Lent ◽  
Mark Core ◽  
Paul Carpenter ◽  
Milton Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Behavior Models

Minds, Machines, and Giving a Damn

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Chodat
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Walker Percy ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Partial Success ◽  
The Way

The 1960s saw the triumph of cognitive science over behaviorism. This chapter examines three literary–philosophical objections to this shift: “West Coast” phenomenology, Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2, and the writings of Walker Percy, the first of the postwar sages featured in this book. For “West Coast” philosophers, cognitive science ignores the way human action is structured by what we “give a damn” about—a sense of significance that orients our actions. Powers’s novel goes a step further: no more than machines do we know what to give a damn about. Percy’s essays and fiction challenge both these positions, asking us to see analogies between the significance we find in language and the significance we find in living a Christian life. Establishing such an analogy is the goal of Percy’s 1971 Love in the Ruins, which seeks to embody—with only partial success—what terms such as “faith” and “community” might mean.

Humans and the Environment

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Environmental Archaeology ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

The environment has always been a central concept for archaeologists and, although it has been conceived in many ways, its role in archaeological explanation has fluctuated from a mere backdrop to human action, to a primary factor in the understanding of society and social change. Archaeology also has a unique position as its base of interest places it temporally between geological and ethnographic timescales, spatially between global and local dimensions, and epistemologically between empirical studies of environmental change and more heuristic studies of cultural practice. Drawing on data from across the globe at a variety of temporal and spatial scales, this volume resituates the way in which archaeologists use and apply the concept of the environment. Each chapter critically explores the potential for archaeological data and practice to contribute to modern environmental issues, including problems of climate change and environmental degradation. Overall the volume covers four basic themes: archaeological approaches to the way in which both scientists and locals conceive of the relationship between humans and their environment, applied environmental archaeology, the archaeology of disaster, and new interdisciplinary directions.The volume will be of interest to students and established archaeologists, as well as practitioners from a range of applied disciplines.

scholarly journals Aesthetics and Creativity. Identity Configurations

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Livia Durac ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Human Attitude ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
The Way

Reflecting on human attitude towards reality, together with deciphering the emotional code that accompanies it, has configured - in time – the aesthetic universe, open to human reflection, creation, and evaluation. Aesthetics appears through the way in which consciousness reacts and capitalises upon things in nature and society, or which belong to human subjectivity, including on artistic work, which have an effect on sensitiveness due to their harmony, balance and grandeur. As a fundamental attribute of the human being, creativity is the engine of cultural evolution, meaning the degree of novelty that man brings in his ideas, actions, and creations. Aesthetical values, together with the other types of values, contribute to what society represents and to what it can become, hence motivating human action and creation. Their role is to create a state of mind that encourages the cohesion, cooperation, and mutual understanding of the society. Integrating a chronological succession of the evolution of the concepts that objectify its structure, its aesthetics and creativity, this article stresses the synergetic nature of the two dimensions of human personality, paving the way to beauty, as a form of enchantment of the human spirit.

Poetry in Film: Performance, Identity, and Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-84
Author(s):  
David Whitley
Keyword(s):  
Personal Transformation ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Film Performance ◽  
Institutional Authority ◽  
Development Analysis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This paper will examine the way poetry – and particularly the performance of poetry by adolescent characters – is represented in film. The paper argues that film offers a space within which it is possible to reflect in particularly probing ways on the relationship between poetry’s often contradictory roles in both expressing cultural norms and enabling repressed, neglected or forbidden aspects of individuals’ experience to be articulated. In particular, the performance of poetry by adolescents in films often takes place in dramatized contexts where the exercise of institutional authority is being questioned and individuals are undergoing difficult forms of personal transformation, awakening or development. Analysis and comparison of some exemplary instances in which the performance of poetry plays a central role in such struggles reveals much about the continued potency of poetic forms in an era when mainstream poetry itself has come to be widely perceived as either marginal or irrelevant to most ordinary people’s lives.

The Subjectivity of Nature

2017 ◽  
pp. 22-42
Author(s):  
James Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Objective World ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
The Way

Daoism proposes a radical reversal of the way that modern human beings think about the natural world. Rather than understanding human beings as “subject” who observe the “objective” world of nature, Daoism proposes that subjectivity is grounded in the Dao or Way, understood as the wellspring of cosmic creativity for a world of constant transformation. As a result the Daoist goal of “obtaining the Dao” offers insights into the ecological quest to transcend the modern, Cartesian bifurcation of subject and object, self and world. From this follows an ideal of human action not as the projection of agency onto an neutral, objective backdrop but as a transaction or mediation between self and world.

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