scholarly journals Philosophy and Cultural Heritage. An Approach to Philosophy in Museal Contexts

Author(s):  
Thomas Ebers

The following considerations form a philosophical approach to the meaning of cultural heritage. They are an attempt to answer the question, which position and task philosophy holds or may hold for this heritage. In a first section it is shown that there is no escape from the cultural heritage. For this purpose, it is resorted to the juxtaposition of «to have or to be» by the social psychologist Erich Fromm. Following this distinction, two basic approaches are sketched that precisely fail to do justice to the cultural heritage and to the way of dealing with it that is necessary for one’s own location in the world. These sketches serve as a background against which the significance of philosophy in and for the cultural heritage is discussed, in order to be able to grasp the appropriate approach to philosophy in museal contexts. As a result, museums are proving to be part of the philosophical heritage, at least in terms of possibility.

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (36) ◽  
pp. 01-20
Author(s):  
Adriana Hoffmann Fernandes ◽  
Helenice Mirabelli Cassino

This article combines thoughts about childhood, visual culture and education. It is known that we live among multiple images that shape the way we see our reality, and researchers in the visual culture field investigate how this role is played out in our culture. The goal is to make some applications those ideas, to think about the relationship between the images and education. This article tries to grasp what visual culture is and in what ways presumptions about childhood generate and are generated by this association. It also discusses the genesis of these presumptions and the images they generate through a philosophical approach, questioning the role of education in a culture tied to the media, and about how children, who are familiar with multiple screens, presage a new visual literacy. We see how images play a fundamental role in the way children give meaning to the world around them and to themselves, in the context of their local culture. Given this context, it is necessary to consider how visual culture is tied to the elementary school, and what challenges confront the generation of wider and more creative ways to approach visual framing in children’s education.


Author(s):  
Seung-Hyun Lee

From being a simple communication technology to a key social tool, the mobile phone has become such an important aspect of people's everyday life. Mobile phones have altered the way people live, communicate, interact, and connect with others. Mobile phones are also transforming how people access and use information and media. Given the rapid pervasiveness of mobile phones in society across the world, it is important to explore how mobile phones have affected the way people communicate and interact with others, access the information, and use media, and their daily lifestyle. This article aims to explore the social and cultural implications that have come with the ubiquity, unprecedented connectivity, and advances of mobile phones. This article also focuses on the discussion about people's dependence on, attachment and addiction to mobile phones, social problems that mobile phones generate, and how people value mobile phone use.


Through case studies of incidents around the world where the social media platforms have been used and abused for ulterior purposes, Chapter 6 highlights the lessons that can be learned. For good or for ill, the author elaborates on the way social media has been used as an arbiter to inflict various forms of political influence and how we may have become desensitized due to the popularity of the social media platforms themselves. A searching view is provided that there is now a propensity by foreign states to use social media to influence the user base of sovereign countries during key political events. This type of activity now justifies a paradigm shift in relation to our perception and utilization of computerized devices for the future.


Author(s):  
Janice M. Burn ◽  
Karen D. Loch

Many lessons from history offer strong evidence that technology can have a definite effect on the social and political aspects of human life. At times it is difficult to grasp how supposedly neutral technology might lead to social upheavals, mass migrations of people, and shifts in wealth and power. Yet a quick retrospective look at the last few centuries finds that various technologies have done just that, challenging the notion of the neutrality of technology. Some examples include the printing press, railways, and the telephone. The effects of these technologies usually begin in our minds by changing the way we view time and space. Railways made the world seem smaller by enabling us to send goods, people, and information to many parts of the world in a fraction of the time it took before. Telephones changed the way we think about both time and distance, enabling us to stay connected without needing to be physically displaced. While new technologies create new opportunities for certain individuals or groups to gain wealth, there are other economic implications with a wider ranging impact, political and social. Eventually, as the technology matures, social upheavals, mass migrations and shifts in economic and political power can be observed. We find concrete examples of this dynamic phenomenon during the Reformation, the industrial revolution, and more recently, as we witness the ongoing information technology revolution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil McLaughlin

This article presents the story of the rise, fall and revival of Erich Fromm, arguably the most important psychosocial thinker of the 20th century. Fromm was a major intellectual figure in the 1940s, 1940s and 1950s in a period of time when psychosocial work was growing in influence. Work that continues in that tradition is outlined and the implications this story holds for the psychosocial school of thought is spelled out through given events in the world today (Trumpism and right wing nationalism in particular) that once again create space for psychosocial ideas. The opportunities and the challenges faced today by the psychosocial perspective are discussed in light of the lessons that can be learned by looking at the earlier case of the rise and fall of Erich Fromm and the current global revival of interest in his theories. I conclude by offering some thoughts on how elements of sectarianism have sometimes plagued the psychosocial perspective and how this can be avoided in the coming years as we look forward to the coming triumph of depth psychological perspectives in the social sciences.


2020 ◽  
Vol 170 ◽  
pp. 05001
Author(s):  
S Sindhu ◽  
M K Reshmi

Culture is an important aspect of human civilization. Preserving and giving value to the cultural heritage of a region can pave the way for local as well as regional development. This includes tangible, intangible and the natural heritage of cities. It is necessary to develop a cultural infrastructure plan along with other aspects such as transportation, built, green and grey in frastructure. Cultural infrastructure refers to places where culture is experienced, participated in or showcased in. This includes the existing cultural heritage of a place as well as the planning of spaces for cultural stimulation and involvement. With the advent of fourth industrial revolution smart cities are gradually becoming the way of life across the world. The Smart City uses Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) to effectively manage transportation, water services, waste disposal, energy and other community services. In this scenario it becomes imperative to have strategic infrastructure planning. Indian Government has recently launched the Smart City Mission in India and several smart city projects are underway across the country. It becomes necessar y in this context that Indian cities with their rich tradition and cultural heritage do not lose their unique identity in this process of transformation into smart cities. Even as smart city projects stress the need for heritage preservation there is a lot of ambiguity in how they can be integrated and used to advance urban intelligence. The technologies of the smart city have considerable potential to be used for the management and enhancement its cultural heritage and can help in the creation of a cultural infrastructure plan. This paper will examine the significance of cultural infrastructure in future cities and how it can be integrated into the city planning process of Indian cities through the study of relevant case studies from around the world.


Author(s):  
Martin Clayton

Music's uses and contexts are so many and so various that the task of cataloguing its functions is daunting: how can we make sense of this diversity? These functions appear to range from the individual (music can affect the way we feel and the way we manage our lives) to the social (it can facilitate the coordination of large numbers of people and help to forge a sense of group identity). This article argues that musical behaviour covers a vast middle ground in which relationships between self and other or between the individual and the collective are played out. It surveys some of the extant literature on music's functions – referring to literature from ethnomusicology, anthropology, musicology, psychology, and sociology, and discussing a wide variety of musical contexts from around the world – and develops an argument emphasizing music's role in the management of relationships between self and other.


Author(s):  
Suparna Dhar ◽  
Indranil Bose ◽  
Mohammed Naved Khan

Digital social networking (DSN) sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram, Pinterest, among many others have garnered millions of users worldwide. It is an instance of information and communication technology that has brought about changes in the way people communicate, interact, and affected human lifestyle and psyche across the world. Some people have become addicted; some see this as beneficial, while others are skeptical about its consequences. This risk-benefit paradox of DSN flummoxes academicians and practitioners alike. This chapter discusses the social and organizational and business risks and benefits of DSN. It goes on to provide a timeline of the evolution of DSN sites, enumeration of typical characteristics of DSN sites, and a systematic comparison of offline and digital social networking. The chapter intends to serve as a cornerstone towards developing a framework for organizational strategy formulation for DSN.


With the rapid emergence of ever more diverse forms of cultural tourism, sacred indigenous practices around the world are increasingly becoming part of the repertoire of experiences available in the global travel market. Particularly, the growing tourist use of sacred plants with psychoactive properties in shamanic contexts is a sensitive issue that is still under-researched. By implementing an ethnographic case study approach in the Mazatec town of Huautla de Jimenez (HDJ), Mexico, this study analyses the effects of the touristic commodification of sacred-plant ceremonies in the social capital of indigenous communities. Findings reveal that tensions and disputes based on differing aspirations between traditionalists and modernists residents of HDJ have emerged as a result of the commodification of sacred-mushroom rituals or veladas. The lack of trust relations among local stakeholders diminishes the collective capacity to implement community-based initiatives of cultural heritage conservation and sustainable tourism development, which is indicative of a fractured social capital. Although the effects of neo-shamanic tourism in HDJ match those of more traditional forms of tourism in rural and indigenous settings, the case study of HDJ exemplifies how the touristic commodification of culture has reached the most sacred and intimate cultural practices in the most remote corners of the world. Findings are placed on a global context to enhance a holistic understanding of how touristic commodification of intangible cultural heritage affects structural relations of social capital in destination communities.


Author(s):  
Eric Hobsbawm

This chapter discusses Marxist historiography in the present times. In the interpretation of the world nowadays, there has been a rise in the so-called anti-Rankean reaction in history, of which Marxism is an important but not always fully acknowledged element. This movement challenged the positivist belief that the objective structure of reality was self-explanatory, and that all that was needed was to apply the methodology of science to it and explain why things happened the way they did. This movement also brought together history with the social sciences, therefore turning it into part of a generalizing discipline capable of explaining transformations of human society in the course of its past. This new perspective on the past is a return to ‘total history’, in which the focus is not merely on the ‘history of everything’ but history as an indivisible web wherein all human activities are interconnected.


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