Introduction

1997 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Leon J. Weinberger
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Lay Leaders ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
Constant Feature ◽  
The Difference

This chapter provides an overview of Jewish hymnography. Synagogue hymnography, compared to its Christian and Muslim counterparts, is distinctive in both its focus and its volume. There is nothing comparable in Christianity or Islam to the vast Jewish liturgical corpus. The disparity in output is due both to the difference in focus and to the rabbinic encouragement to be creative in prayer. Lay leaders in the synagogue responded enthusiastically to the rabbinic advice, and urged their cantor-poets to compose additions to the obligatory šemaʻ and ʻamidah, as well as celebrations and observances of life-cycle events. A constant feature of the Jewish experience emerged with the hymnic ritualization of the great events of human life. There is also a difference in the historical experience of the Jews exiled from their national home. Given a life in exile, the synagogue poet would often appeal to God for national restoration. This book studies Jewish hymnography in the eastern Mediterranean and in western and central Europe, demonstrating how its literary history was largely determined by contemporary culture.

On the sources of cosmopolitanism as an idea: The Russian and the European views

2020 ◽  
pp. 44-69
Author(s):  
E. E. Dmitrieva
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Literary History ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
General Term ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Literary Environment

The article is concerned with the difference in understanding of the term ‘cosmopolitan’ inRussiaandFrance. Often considered a predominantly negative phenomenon inRussia, cosmopolitanism fi st provoked a discussion at the time when the emphasis shifted from ideology to understanding of the historical-literary process. Since the late 18th c., the idea of the possible existence of a literary work within the global literary environment (the concept of world literature)   was adjusted by the ‘golden chain’ metaphor, which enabled implementation of the ‘universality’ concept as a unity principally separate from the French idée universelle. During this evolutionary period emerged a distinctive subject of literary history: fi st, ‘humanity’ as a general term (initially identifi    with universalism or cosmopolitanism), and then ‘a nation’. But it is the discovery of the national that the author believes is connected with particularism and provincialism,   the latter summoning the memory of the noble intention of universalism and cosmopolitanism. An interim summary of the process was produced by Joseph Texte, a professor of comparative literature inLyon, at the end of the 19th c.

The logic of entrapment: Digital proletarians; digital fascism; symbiosis between a virus and autocracy

Maska ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (200s3) ◽  
pp. 98-108
Author(s):  
Miško Šuvaković
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Media Representation ◽  
Essential Difference ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Artistic Interpretation ◽  
Transitional Forms ◽  
The Difference

Abstract This text was written on the occasion of the 200th issue of Maska magazine. My goal is to identify and interpret the time when the text is written and when the 200th issue of Maska will be published. I identified a situation of sociability at the time of the coronavirus pandemic and the dominance of digital/postdigital communications. I am interested in the difference between media representation, virus events and political-or-artistic interpretation of modern and transitional forms of human life. If we are talking about digital art/culture/society in relation to the technological turns from the mechanical to the analogue-electronic world, from the analogue to the digital world, from the digital world to the post-digital world, and from the post-digital world into a De Re media possible world, then we are facing a conflict between the dialectic of emancipation through the new and the differentiation of the production/and/consumption of the new in a time and space where the human being is becoming the product of its own product. It is important to index the contemporary antagonism between the ‘digital proletarian’ and ‘digital fascism’. Confronted with digital fascism, digital proletarians pursue a risky process of self-fulfilment and thereby liberation/emancipation in complex digital practices and their impacts on other forms of existence – in a critical and dialectic ontology. Therein lies the essential difference between the politics of functionalism and that of liberation.

On the Proportion of Marriages at different Ages of the Sexes

1858 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 188-200
Author(s):  
Samuel Brown
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Progressive Increase ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
Social Statistics ◽  
Moral Qualities ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Natural Decay

In a paper which was read before the Institute of Actuaries on the 31st May, 1852, “On the Uniform Action of the Human Will, as exhibited by its Mean Results in Social Statistics,” I drew attention to the remarkable regularity with which marriages are contracted in any country, and the very small limits of difference from the average number which appear from year to year. The observations made by M. Quetelet in Belgium, from 1825 to 1845, showed that the extreme difference in the total number of marriages was little more than half the difference of the extremes in the number of deaths in the same period. Such a conclusion seemed to imply that the subject was worthy of more research. If the law of mortality can be so accurately defined at different ages, that pecuniary interests, amounting to some hundreds of millions sterling, can be valued and adjusted with the greatest nicety, it is reasonable to conclude that the labour of a statistical inquiry into the proportion of marriages at different ages would be rewarded with the discovery of some equally defined law, since the variations from year to year in a given number of facts appear, from a large number of observations, to be even less than in the former case. It is true that, as human life must fail at some time, from the natural decay of the powers of life, every interval of age after man has once attained maturity may be expected, under ordinary circumstances, to show a steady and progressive increase in the liability to disease and death. On the other hand, it may be, argued that marriage is the exercise of the free will of man—that consequently, it does not depend on the age or period of life, but on the arbitrary exertion of those feelings or mental and moral qualities which are not subject to natural laws, or at least not to such laws as we are able to express numerically in the same manner we can the law of mortality in any given population. If we consider, however, marriage as, in one sense, the natural provision for the preservation or increase of the species, and the counteraction to the law of mortality by which the species would perish, we should not be surprised to find that, however imperceptibly to individuals, there is a tendency to obey some unknown law of nature which at the period of maturity would lead to the maximum of marriages, and gradually diminish with age in the same manner as the tendency to disease and death increases with age. The motives and caprices of individuals would only have the same effect on the general results which the different habits of individuals may have in increasing or diminishing the rate of mortality. Accordingly, M. Quetelet, in a comparison of the number of marriages in Belgium for each five years of age after 21, for both sexes, for a period of five years consecutively, showed that the average results in each period scarcely differed at all from year to year. The table is so remarkable, that I have reduced the proportion to 100 of the total marriages in each year, and present it to show the small differences which will then be seen to prevail.

scholarly journals Strategies of contemporary culture in the concept of simulacres by J. Bordriyar

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
S. M. Forkosh
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Significant Feature ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Principal Role ◽  
The Real ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Characteristic Features

The article analyzes the concept of simulators of J. Baudrillard in the context of the formation of a methodological toolkit for the research of contemporary culture. It is determined that attempts to consider the work of Baudrillard by certain stereotypes hide the fact that this philosopher, when creating models of the field of research, did not address the emerged methodological structures. The actual formation of a conceptual apparatus describing author’s models of the field of research turns methodological tools into signs that determine the field of Baudrillard’s research. One of the main conclusions that can be  made by exploring the Baudrillard concept is the provision of modern consumption as a consumption of signs and symbols that has lost touch with the pleasure of biologically based human needs. This process is called the desire of buyers to be identified. Baudrillard seeks to show that the signs themselves produce their referents and meanings. Moreover, the signs try to break with all meanings and references and to be closed only on interaction with each other. As a result, a real universe of signs appears and this sign-object machine seeks to absorb the «real» world. This is probably because language has always been a means of social control, and since in the era of globalization such exploitation of language has only intensified, now the signs are completely detached from their referents and the «era of simulation and simulacra» arises. The fundamental is discussing the evolution of the sign in its similarity with the evolutionary interpretation of labor. A «free» worker can produce only equivalences and a «free and emancipated sign» can only refer to equivalent values. That is why the philosopher determines the significance of the new European sign in the simulacrum of «nature» (the simulacrum of «nature» is regarded as the Idea of Nature). The problems of natural science and the metaphysics of reality are characteristic features of the entire bourgeoisie since the Renaissance.The principal role in the formation of Baudrillard’s conceptual representations belongs to language. The postmodern overcoming of the subject-object difference is realized by Baudrillard by appealing primarily to the linguistic or «sign» nature of reality. The object is transformed into an object-sign and as such, within the framework of the general theory of sign systems, becomes an encoded fragment whose main characteristic is not simply the stereotyped craving for «difference philosophy» but the subordination of the object system code to its totality. Objects appears from human life, and the life disappears as a subject, turning into a human-object, which like a thing, performing a certain function, appears in inter-human relations. Signed consumption covers the whole life of people, from consumption of things and ending with consumption of the environment of human life, which includes labor, leisure, culture, social sphere, nature. All this enters into human life in the form of consumed signs, «simulacrum», transforming it as a whole into a simulation, in the manipulation of signs. The sign, the «simulacrum,» indirectly helps a person to master reality, but at the same time he destroys the real, replaces it with himself. Therefore, it is impossible to distinguish reality from error, since a significant feature of our culture is that illusion, imitation or simulation is so deeply preserved in our lives that it makes impossible the distinction between the real world and the realm of the imagination. The position of the researcher that in the era of postmodernity the distinctions between true and false, authentic and unauthentic, real and unreal are disappearing, is one of the central in his works and indicates a possible vector of cultural development.

scholarly journals GENETINIS DISKURSAS MEDIJŲ KULTŪROJE: GUNDYMAS PREKINIU NEMIRTINGUMU

Problemos ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Vytautas Rubavičius
Keyword(s):  
Genetically Modified Organisms ◽  
Private Property ◽  
World View ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Proper Form ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Universe

Straipsnyje grindžiama nuomonė, jog postmodernybė yra iš modernybės kylantis kapitalizmo sistemos būvis, kuriam būdinga gyvybės suprekinimas ir suišteklinimas. Postmodernybę charakterizuoja populiariosios ir medijų kultūros išplitimas. Tos kultūros apima ne tik kultūros prekes, bet ir vartojimo būdus, įgūdžius ir jų lavinimą. Pastaruoju metu jos kuria nemirtingumo vaizdiniams bei nuojautoms palankią kultūrinę, intelektinę ir pasaulėvaizdinę terpę, kurioje struktūriškai įsitvirtina genetinis diskursas ir jo nustatomos žmogaus ir jo gyvenamo pasaulio aiškinimo gairės. Svarbus šio diskurso bruožas yra technologinis inžinerinis jo pobūdis, išryškėjęs susiejant nano ir biotechnologijas, kuriomis tikimasi įveikti gyvąją ir negyvąją gamtą skiriančią prarają, iš reikalingų atomų bei molekulių kuriant reikalingų ląstelių dalis ir klonuojant gyvas būtybes. Gyvybė suprekinama ir suišteklinama patentuojant gyvybės elementus – genus ir su jais susijusius procesus. Daroma išvada, jog visi genetikos, informatikos ir kitų mokslų laimėjimai, teikiantys žmogaus gyvenimo ilginimo galimybių, kurios palaiko gundančią nemirtingumo idėją, jau yra persmelkti prekinių santykių, tad ir pats nemirtingumas įmanomas tik kaip prekė. Aptariami kai kurie evoliuciniai ir religiniai techno sapiens sampratos aspektai. Detaliau gvildenamos dvi „nemirtingumo“ versijos: Z. Baumano, kuris nemirtingumo pažadą sieja su kompiuterinės technikos plėtra prasidėjus „Antrajai medijų erai“, ir J. Baudrillard’o, tegiančio, jog klonavimo technologijos „apgręžia“ evoliuciją ir žmogų gundo virusiniu ar vėžiniu belyčiu nemirtingumu.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: genetinis diskursas, klonavimas, medijų kultūra, nanobiotechnologijos, nemirtingumas, suprekinimas.Genetic Discourse in Media Culture: Temptation by Commodified ImmoralityVytautas Rubavičius   SummaryPostmodernity is maintained as a stage of the development of capitalism. The difference between modernity and postmodernity is explained in relation to the new sphere of commodification and resourcification, namely, that of life and of all natural living processes. Postmodern media culture, or popular culture, is peopled by signs of immortality and various kinds of immortals – cyborgs, clones, zombies, immortal human beings and others. Thus, culture accustoms a consumer to immortals and immortality which is concidered as the main goal of a human being and evolution. By nano-bio-technologies and genetic discourse this goal is made scientifically valid, thus reachable. Genetic discourse is becoming the fundamental world-view providing focal landmarks for the emerging future. Media culture supports the spreading of genetic discourse and facilitates its understanding. The temptation by immortality can be considered as a version of modernist ideology of human liberation from various natural, social and heavenly bonds. This liberation, and also secularization, is supported by a scientific genetic technological discourse which is becoming a stimulating factor of postmodern media production. The genetic explanation of the world is particularly handy for technological reflexivity: the entire world is as if encapsulated into human genes, which become the principle explaining the mystery of life, evolution and the future of humanity, thus rendering power to produce the human proper form and the future of people. All the possibilities stemming from the new genetic and biotech discoveries fell under the regulation of property relations by patenting, thus making “immortality” – as a temptation and brand – not only an exeptional commodity, but also a political tool and a commodifying force. As the relationships of private property have penetrated natural biogenetic diversity and, having turned it into a resource, the cognitive subject has reached the goal to secularise the Universe, which he has set for himself: only he as the owner and producer of genes lures people with the eternal shapes of the clones and their genetic information, which will be sustained in any location of the Universe. The temptation by “immortality” will become even stronger when the genetic code is mastered. The future of humanity is related to the mixed forms of life, trans-genic or otherwise genetically modified organisms and techno-human forms that will help to postpone, and later to conquer, death. Even thinkers with religious tendencies perceive the technological improvement of human beings as their evolution towards the techno sapiens and consider such a development as an advancement towards the Kingdom of God. The technologization of human beings is imagined in terms of their divination. Yet in this case the character of contemporary science secularising God and obliterating the perception of divinity is overlooked. Two versions of immortality are analyzed more closely – that of Z. Bauman, who links it with the development of computer technologies, and that of J. Baudrillard, who gives a warning that by cloning technologies humanity is trying to inverse the evolution and to return to the undifferentiated state of cells. The conclusion is drawn that regardless of how we understand ‘immortality,’ argue over its reality or unreality, all possibilities to prolong human life granted by genetics, informatics and other advances in science and technologies, which support the tempting idea of immortality, have already been penetrated by commodity relationships; therefore, “immortality” itself will be available only as a commodity.Keywords: cloning, commodification, genetic discourse, immortality, media culture, nano-bio-technologies.

scholarly journals Contribution of avoidable causes of death to premature mortality in Poland and selected European countries

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan Wojtyniak ◽  
Jakub Stokwiszewski
Keyword(s):  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Average Rate ◽  
Premature Mortality ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Annual Percent Change ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
Central European ◽  
The Difference

Our study, availing the new, agreed by the OECD and Eurostat, lists of preventable and treatable causes of death, seeks to quantify the contribution of avoidable causes to premature mortality and its dynamics in Poland and Central European countries – Czechia, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia, in comparison with Sweden serving as a benchmark country in 1999–2017. We calculated age standardised death rates for the broad groups of avoidable causes and more specific ones, which comprised preventable and treatable cancer and diseases of the circulatory system (DCS), preventable injuries and alcohol-related diseases. Deaths from not avoidable causes were also analysed. The analysis of time trends in the death rates and calculation of the Average Annual Percent Change (AAPC) for the overall trend were performed with joint-point models. The contribution of changes in mortality from avoidable causes to increase life expectancy during 1999–2017 and contribution of the difference in mortality from these causes to the difference in life expectancy between five countries and Sweden were based on the decomposition of temporary life expectancy between birth and age 75 [e(0-75)]. For the calculation of life expectancy, we used the classic Chiang method and the decomposition of life expectancy by the death causes and age was conducted with the Arriaga method. The AAPC of death rates from avoidable causes in 1999–2017 was similar in all the countries but Lithuania, where the decline started later. The decline in the death rates from not avoidable causes is much slower than the rates from avoidable causes. Mortality from treatable causes was decreasing faster than from preventable causes in most populations. In 1999–2017, the average rate of mortality decline for preventable cancer was greater among men than among women, while for treatable cancer the sex-related differences were much smaller and in favour of women. As for preventable and treatable death from DCS, their decrease was faster among women than men in all the countries but Sweden. Improvements in mortality from causes that could be avoided through prevention or treatment made substantial positive contributions to the overall change in life expectancy in all the countries. The differences in temporary life expectancy e(0-75) between the analysed Central European countries and Sweden were much smaller in 2017 than in 1999, due to the reduction of the gap in mortality from avoidable causes. Our results show that among men, and to a lesser extent among women, mortality from preventable causes contributes more than mortality from causes that can be effectively treated to shorter life expectancy in the countries of Central Europe than in Sweden. This indicates that in reducing the health gap between the inhabitants of Central Europe and Western Europe, the healthcare system should consider disease prevention even to a greater extent than just treating them.

scholarly journals Komiksy Marzeny Sowy. Marzi opowiada o dzieciństwie w PRL-u

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 99-111
Author(s):  
Anna Podemska-Kałuża
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Valuable Source ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Adult World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Difficult Times ◽  
International Success

Marzena Sowa’s Comics. Marzi Talks About Childhood in PRLPolish screenwriter Marzena Sowa is the author of the comics’ cycle about Marzi, which was published in the years 2005–2011 and was an international success (the drawings prepared by Sylvain Savoia). The storiesabout the red-haired girl, the daughter of the workman and the resident of industrial city are the forms autobiographical, that show the reality of life in Poland in the 1980s. The prospect of a child, who is a careful observer of the adult world, has allowed the presentation of history of country in Central Europe at the end of communism. The cycle of Marzi presents an evocative picture of experience “last generation of PRL”, is the witness to the contemporary culture and the record of the struggles of society with the problems of everyday life in “difficult times”. Since its debut in 2005, the critic compares this comic diary from the time of puberty to the famous Persepolisof Marjane Satrapi. For the modern reader the books of Marzena Sowa is a valuable source of knowledge about Poland in the days of “Solidarity” and Lech Wałęsa, as well as the iconic comics that has a big power of social and cultural impact.

scholarly journals GUGAT CERAI: MEMBEBASKAN PREMPUAN DARI PENDERITAAN

QAWWAM ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-122
Author(s):  
Nurmala Fahriyanti
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
State Law ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Religious Law ◽  
The Family

In Mataram West Nusa Tenggara, people is lives are regulated on daily basis by religious law, traditional (adat) law and state law. To understand these complex cultural and religious processes as they affect women in particular, I will examine the issue of divorce, also known as sue divorce. This tipe of divorce is socially-sanctioned. I will focus my examination in Mataram, an city of Lombok West Nusa Tenggara. In Lombok society marriage constitutes an important part of the life cycle.  Someone is not considered an adult until marriage.  Marriage is not only united two individual, but also united two families. However this dream canot be realized over the long term.  If family problems arise and  there are no suitable solutions, people may choose to divorce. For instance, if a wife unable to fulfill her obligations as a wife, her husband can divorce her by verbal means alone, according to any of the three existing legal systems (religious customary or state law). By contrast, if her husband unable to fulfill her obligations as a husband his wife can divorce him in only one way by making an application to Islamic Court to do divorce. In marriage available successful couple builds the family that sakinah, mawaddah and warahmah. But then available also that unsuccessful and end with separate or divorce. Separate constitutes a thing that often happens deep good human life divorce the initiating from the husband and also divorce the initiating from the wife, that its cause islamic law puts attention that adequately significant to that thing. It can appear if understand about islamic law, undoubtedly will find both of previous thing and its terminological  islamic law. There is no divorce without started by marriage. But upon that aim not attained, therefore divorce constitutes last way out that must been sailed through. Divorce can't be done but there is grounds which corrected by religion, adat and state law. In islamic law, that divorce grounds experience developing according to social development. Basically islamic law establishes that divorce reason which is wrangle which really culminates and jeopardize the so called soul safety with “ syiqaq ”. Intention is if worried a couple its happening dispute (dispute not only means wrangle among husband or wife can also distinctive principle and opinion) therefore delegate a someone of its husband family and a someone of wife family. And if both of wife and husband will goodness and they can make resolution and look for the solution, but if there are suitable solution wife or husband can do divorce.

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