scholarly journals The Arts of Coexistence: A View From Anthropology

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Asu Schroer
Keyword(s):  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Conservation Science ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Disciplinary Field ◽  
Science Community ◽  
Alternative Approaches

In this perspectives essay, I propose some ways in which current thinking in anthropology might inform the emergent cross-disciplinary field of coexistence studies. I do so following recent calls from within the conservation science community (including this special issue), acknowledging that understanding human-wildlife coexistence in the fractured landscapes of the Anthropocene1 requires being open to alternative approaches beyond conventional frameworks of conservation science and management (see for instance; Carter and Linnell, 2016; Pooley, 2016; Chapron and López-Bao, 2019; Pooley et al., 2020). The essay suggests that relational (non-dualist) ways of thinking2 in anthropology, often building on Indigenous philosophy and expertise, may help ground coexistence studies beyond Euro-Western modernist conceptual frameworks—frameworks that perpetuate exploitative and colonial logics that many scholars from across academia view as being at the heart of our current ecological crisis (e.g., Lestel, 2013; van Dooren, 2014; Tsing, 2015; Todd, 2016; Bluwstein et al., 2021; Schroer et al., 2021). By proposing “relations” rather than objectified “Nature” or “wildlife” as the more adequate subject of understanding and facilitating coexistence in shared landscapes, I understand coexistence and its study first and foremost as an ethical and political endeavor. Rather than offering any conclusive ideas, the essay's intention is to contribute some questions and thoughts to the developing conversations of coexistence studies scholars and practitioners. It does so by inviting conservation scientists to collaborate with anthropologists and take on board some of the current thinking in the discipline. Amongst other things, I suggest that this will help overcome a somewhat dated notion of cultural relativism—understood as many particular, cultural views on one true objective Nature (only known by Science), a perspective that explicitly and implicitly seems to inform some conservation science approaches to issues of culture or the “human dimensions” of conservation issues. Ultimately, the paper seeks to make a conceptual contribution by imagining coexistence as a dynamic bundle of relations in which the biological, ecological, historical, cultural, and social dimensions cannot be thought apart and have to be studied together.

scholarly journals ADDRESSING CULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY IN TRAVEL WRITING: READING AND REFLECTING ON WILLIAM DALRYMPLE’S ‘NINE LIVES’.

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Nidhi Tiwari
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Environmental Economic ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Sustainability ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Is Development ◽  
Brundtland Report

Ever since the focus on cultural diversity and identities acquired prominence globally, there has been a shift in limiting sustainability only to environmental, economic and social dimensions. Culture is more than just the manifestation of culture, for example, ‘the arts’ and should be viewed instead as the ‘whole social order’ (Williams 1983). This naturally leads to an interrogation of the construct of sustainable development. The definition which emerged in the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987) is the widely accepted one and it states, “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Performance Art, Performativity, and Environmentalism in the Capitalocene

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Chin Davidson
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Feminist Art ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Arts ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Eco Art

Since the late 20th century, performance has played a vital role in environmental activism, and the practice is often related to concepts of eco-art, eco-feminist art, land art, theatricality, and “performing landscapes.” With the advent of the Capitalocene discourse in the 21st century, performance has been useful for acknowledging indigenous forms of cultural knowledge and for focusing on the need to reintegrate nature and culture in addressing ecological crisis. The Capitalocene was distinguished from the Anthropocene by Donna Haraway who questions the figuration of the Anthropos as reflexive of a fossil-fuel-burning ethos that does not represent the whole of industrial humanity in the circuit of global capital. Jason W. Moore’s analysis for the Capitalocene illustrates the division between nature and society that is affirmed by the tenets of the Anthropocene. Scientists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer had dated the Anthropocene age to the industrial acceleration of the late-18th/mid-19th century but Moore points to the rise of capitalism in the 15th century when European colonization reduced indigenous peoples to naturales in their modernist definition of nature that became distinct from the new society. As material property, women were also precluded from this segment of industrial humanity. By the 20th century, the Euro-American system for progressive modernism in the arts was supported by the inscription of cultures that represented un-modern “primitivist” nature. The tribal and the modern became a postcolonial debate in art historical discourse. In the context of the Capitalocene, a different historiography of eco-art, eco-feminist art, and environmental performances can be conceived by acknowledging the work of artists such as Ana Mendieta and Kara Walker who have illustrated the segregation of people according to the nature/society divide. Informed by Judith Butler’s phenomenological analyses of performative acts, the aesthetic use of bodily-oriented expression (with its effects on the viewer’s body) provides a vocabulary for artists engaging in the subjects of the Capitalocene. In the development of performances in the global context, artists such as Wu Mali, Yin Xiuzhen, and Ursula Biemann have emphasized the relationship between bodies of humans and bodies of water through interactive works for the public, sited at the rivers and the shores of streams. They show how humans are not separate from nature, a concept that has long been conveyed by indigenous rituals that run deep in many cultures. While artists have been effective in acknowledging the continuing exploitations of the environment, their performances have also reflected the “self” of nature that humans are in the act of destroying.

Social Dimensions of Epistemological Disputes: The Case of Literary Theory

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-263
Author(s):  
Mark A. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Organizational Forms ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
The Arts ◽  
A Current ◽  
Academic Study

Epistemological reflection has been a major source of innovation in the human sciences while having very little influence on the arts or sciences. This variation is explained using a sociological framework emphasizing the organizational forms that underpin or are implicit in epistemological positions. The fine arts and the harder sciences are, respectively, too weakly and too strongly organized to be open to epistemological influence. By contrast, the human sciences might plausibly be organized either more loosely or more tightly, and epistemological argument is used in part to urge movement in one or the other direction. This perspective is applied to the academic study of literature both historically and in relation to a current epistemological dispute between realist and relativist scholars. The argument is unresolvable in practice, it is argued, because of constraints on scholarly interpretation set by consumers. Parallels are drawn with circumstances in sociology.

scholarly journals Recreational fishing on YouTube: Insights on harvesting patterns, social engagement and sentiments related to the distributional range shift of a marine invasive species

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerio Sbragaglia ◽  
Lucía Espasandín Soneira ◽  
Salvatore Coco ◽  
Alberto Felici ◽  
Ricardo A. Correia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Invasive Species ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Range Shift ◽  
Recreational Fishing ◽  
Recreational Fisheries ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Pomatomus Saltatrix ◽  
Distributional Range ◽  
Associated Data

Fisheries are among the human activities that are most strongly affected by ongoing climate-related changes in the presence and abundance of fish species across the globe. The ecological and social repercussions of such changes for recreational fisheries are however still poorly understood. Here, we explore selected ecological and social dimensions of recreational angling and spearfishing targeting the bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) in Italy. The bluefish has undergone a northward expansion in the region over the last 20-30 years, during which it reached new areas and increased in abundance. Using digital videos and their associated data published by recreational fishers on YouTube we characterized ecological and social dimensions using a culturomics approach. Specifically, we focused on harvesting patterns, social engagement and sentiments related to the bluefish. Our study revealed four major results: (i) similar harvesting patterns (i.e., declared mass and seasonal upload patterns) related to videos by recreational anglers and spearfishers; (ii) higher social engagement (i.e., number of views and likes) for videos by recreational anglers than spearfishers; (iii) differences in themes of discussion, with anglers being mainly interested in fishing strategy and gears and spearfishers being more interested in fishing actions shown on the videos; iv) positive and negative sentiments of both recreational anglers and spearfishers towards the invasiveness and aggressiveness of the species. The latter represents an interesting trade-off associated with recreational fishing of the bluefish: it is perceived as an invasive species, but it is also a valued fish target because its voracity contributes to the quality of the recreational fishing experience. Our study showcases the value of exploring social media and associated data to better understand the ecological and human dimensions of marine recreational fisheries in relation to distributional range shifts of species associated with climate change.

Reviews were often either antagonistic to this new form of theatre or baffled by it. In both cases it frequently resulted in dismissive reviews and a rejection of the playwright. Gradually, however, the tide of anti-Brecht feeling was beginning to turn and it was given a following wind when the Berliner Ensemble made their second visit to London in 1965. Ideas in the British theatre were on the move; the arts in general in the 1960s were in a time of change and expansion. Then the ‘politicisation’ of theatre in the post-1968 period, which led to the development of the ‘fringe’ theatre scene, provided a perfect context for the rehabilitation of Brecht. His plays – including their politics this time – were ideal material for that rather un-British event, the construction of an ‘alternative’ theatre discourse. As with so much that starts artistic life as ‘alternative’, Brecht’s plays were soon absorbed into the mainstream of British theatre, and less than a decade later his work featured in the programmes of even the most conservative of repertory theatres and was hailed as ‘classic’ by the British national companies. Brecht had been appropriated. But the problem with appro-priation, of course, is that its very purpose is to pull sharp teeth and nullify political bite. And Brecht’s political message would be sanitised for a British establishment’s flirtation with socialism. As British political theatre was itself eroded by the Thatcherite 1980s, Brecht’s status within British culture – never completely convincing – became unsure. In the 1990s, Britain blinks, uncertainly and with nostalgia, in a post-cold war, post-industrial and postmodern light. Not only are the political enemies no longer identifiable, authors, too, have gone largely the way of cultural relativism. Whether there will be a meaningful place and function again for Brecht in British theatre remains to be seen. The first chapter of this book considers the context and development of Brecht’s ideas and theories on theatre performance, focusing in particular on the differences and similarities between Brecht and the ‘naturalistic’ actor/director Constantin Stanislavski – ‘measuring the distance’ between them. It then considers Brecht’s choice of actors and his methods of working with them, and how these illuminate his theoretical ideas on performance. Material is drawn from published interviews with and performance reviews of key performers such as Helene Weigel, Ekkehard Schall, Angelika Hurwicz and Charles Laughton. In Chapter 2, the subject is the penetration of British theatre by Brecht material in the 1950s. The chapter explains how both early British productions of Brecht and new playwrights in Britain were influenced by the work of the Berliner Ensemble. Two tendencies are high-lighted: that of some practitioners to imitate the outward appearances of Berliner produc-tions, thus placing the emphasis on theatrical ‘style’ rather than process, and that of others to attempt to follow Brecht’s precepts for the rehearsal process in a context ill-suited to them.

2002 ◽  
pp. 15-15
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Political Theatre ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Performance Reviews ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Alternative Theatre ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
And Function ◽  
Post Industrial

scholarly journals Student Production of Pencasting E-Learning Videos: What Drives Engagement?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-339
Author(s):  
Kerry Traynor
Keyword(s):  
Visual Representation ◽  
Video Production ◽  
Simple Explanation ◽  
Video Content ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Channel One ◽  
Assessment Design ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Disciplinary Field ◽  
E Learning

This research paper shares innovative practice on a final year undergraduate module at a British university in which students create e-learning videos about key theories and concepts within their disciplinary field, Communication and Media. It analyses two student videos published on a class YouTube channel - one of them the most popular video on the channel, driving thirty times as many subscribers as the other - to develop understanding of factors affecting engagement. The videos use pencasting, an animation technique which has been shown to improve engagement, to visually represent and explain educational concepts and theories. This paper sets out current thinking on video as an educational tool, student video production, and the characteristics of engaging video content. Next, the module and assessment design are shared, together with an outline of teaching to support the pencasting production element. In conclusion, educators are encouraged to consider designing assessments in which students produce e-learning videos about key concepts and theories within their field of study, and five practical suggestions are offered for creators (both students and faculty) to improve engagement (1) create videos with a high proportion of visual representation, focusing on smooth, continuous flow approaches such as pencasting; (2) provide practical value through clear and simple explanation; (3) consider viewer emotional responses to the video; (4) create thumbnails that articulate the visual representation approach employed; and (5) employ an extensive range of tags to improve performance in search results.

scholarly journals The Times of Caring in a Nuclear World: Sculpture, Contamination and Stillness

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Wallace Heim
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Relational Ethics ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Nuclear Site ◽  
The Times ◽  
Affective Dimensions ◽  
Practice Care ◽  
Living Being

Care takes time. Caring, whether with, for, or about a living being or entity that is more-than-human, disrupts expectations of how a linear, human time should progress. To practice care for the contaminated, the lands, waters, and animate life altered by human industry, is to extend that indeterminacy into distant, deeper time. Aesthetic representation of the affective and ethical dimensions of care, in this extreme, offers an experience that can transfer the arguments about nuclear contamination into more nuanced and sensed responses and contributes to current thinking about care in the arts worlds. I was commissioned to make a sculpture exhibition in 2020 as part of an anthropological study into the future of the Sellafield nuclear site in West Cumbria, UK. The exhibition, ‘x = 2140. In the coming 120 years, how can humans decide to dismantle, remember and repair the lands called Sellafield?’, consisted of three sculptural ‘fonts’ which engaged with ideas of knowledge production, nuclear technologies, and the affective dimensions of care about/for/with the contaminated lands and waters. This article presents my intentions for the sculptures in their context of a nuclear-dependent locale: to engage with the experience of nuclear futures without adversarial positioning; to explore the agential qualities of the more-than-human; and to create a stillness expressive of the relationality of the human and the contaminated through which one could fathom what care might feel like. These intentions are alongside theories of time, aesthetics, and care across disciplines: care and relational ethics, science and technology studies, and nuclear culture.

The Meaning of Mortality in Modern Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Gary Rodin ◽  
Sarah Hales
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Advanced Disease ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Medical Interventions ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
Societal Interest

This chapter contextualizes Managing Cancer and Living Meaningfully (CALM) in relation to growing societal interest in the psychological impact of disease and the central role of healthcare providers in managing the threat of mortality and the end of life. There has been increasing recognition that the enormous investment in biotechnology and aggressive medical interventions for advanced disease has not been matched by complementary attention to the human dimensions of these conditions. There is now a growing public voice of patients and their families for more support in managing the psychological, emotional, and spiritual elements of advanced disease. The global palliative care movement emerged to address these unmet needs, but there has been less systematic attention in this field to the relief of psychological than physical suffering. CALM is a psychosocial intervention that is uniquely integrated with oncology and palliative care and focused on the psychological and social dimensions of advanced cancer.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document