Postmodernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

The term ‘postmodernism’ appears in a range of contexts, from academic essays to clothing advertisements in the New York Times. Its meaning differs with context to such an extent that it seems to function like Lévi-Strauss’ ‘floating signifier’(Derrida 1982: 290): not so much to express a value as to hold open a space for that which exceeds expression. This broad capacity of the term ‘postmodernism’ testifies to the scope of the cultural changes it attempts to compass. Across a wide range of cultural activity there has been a sustained and multivalent challenge to various founding assumptions of Western European culture since at least the fifteenth century and in some cases since the fifth century bc: assumptions about structure and identity, about transcendence and particularity, about the nature of time and space. From physics to philosophy, from politics to art, the description of the world has changed in ways that upset some basic beliefs of modernity. For example, phenomenology seeks to collapse the dualistic distinction between subject and object; relativity physics shifts descriptive emphasis from reality to measurement; the arts move away from realism; and consensus politics confronts totalitarianism and genocide. These and related cultural events belong to seismic changes in the way we register the world and communicate with each other. To grasp what is at stake in postmodernism it is necessary to think historically and broadly, in the kind of complex terms that inevitably involve multidisciplinary effort. This multilingual impetus, this bringing together of methods and ideas long segregated both in academic disciplines and in practical life, particularly characterizes postmodernism and largely accounts for such resistance as it generates. Although diverse and eclectic, postmodernism can be recognized by two key assumptions. First, the assumption that there is no common denominator – in ‘nature’ or ‘truth’ or ‘God’ or ‘the future’ – that guarantees either the One-ness of the world or the possibility of neutral or objective thought. Second, the assumption that all human systems operate like language, being self-reflexive rather than referential systems – systems of differential function which are powerful but finite, and which construct and maintain meaning and value.

Postmodernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

The term ‘postmodernism’ appears in a range of contexts, from academic essays to clothing advertisements in the New York Times. Its meaning differs with context to such an extent that it seems to function like Lévi-Strauss’ ‘floating signifier’: not so much to express a value as to hold open a space for that which exceeds expression. This broad capacity of the term ‘postmodernism’ testifies to the scope of the cultural changes it attempts to encompass. Across a wide range of cultural activity there has been a sustained and multivalent challenge to various founding assumptions of Western European culture that have been in place since at least the fifteenth century and in some cases since the fifth century BCE. During the past century new and cognate developments in science, in art, in philosophy and in politics, all have disturbed beliefs that have been basic to modernity: beliefs concerning, for example, structure and identity, transcendence and particularity, the nature of time and space, and causality. Such beliefs are not mere abstractions but powerful engines of knowledge with very practical outcomes. For example, phenomenology seeks to collapse the dualistic distinction between subject and object; relativity physics shifts descriptive emphasis from reality to measurement; the arts move away from realism; consensus politics confronts totalitarianism and genocide. These and related cultural events belong to seismic changes in the way we register the world, formulate thought, and communicate with each other. To grasp what is at stake in postmodernism it is necessary to think historically and broadly, and in that context to recognize that what we are discussing is a condition we are already ‘in’ and not at all a set of beliefs that we can choose or not choose to believe. For these and other reasons it is more appropriate to speak of ‘postmodernity’ rather than the more limited ‘postmodernism’ which sounds as though it might be something optional. Both terms are employed here depending on whether discussion concerns a general condition (postmodernity) or a particular challenge (postmodernism). The difficulty in achieving an agreed focus and vocabulary results in part from the fact that grasping the full range of postmodernity requires investigation across the range of practice, both in and out of academia, and requires a broadly diverse set of problems and issues. Postmodernity is not an ‘academic’ issue; it affects everyone at the most practical level and across the range of practice in various terms. What one might call its ‘multilingual’ impetus – this bringing together of methods and ideas long segregated both in academic disciplines and in practical life – particularly characterizes postmodernism and largely accounts for such resistance as it generates. In academic contexts discussion has been particularly hampered by institutional commitments to traditional disciplinary classifications. Despite lip service to the contrary, universities, libraries and publishers all continue to pursue essentially disciplinary agendas. Few alleged ‘interdisciplinary’ or ‘multidisciplinary’ programmes actually confront the founding methodological differences between disciplines, or amount to much more than mere splicing activities of the kind Charles Dickens pilloried nearly two centuries ago with his book reviewer who boned up on Chinese metaphysics by consulting the Encyclopaedia Brittanica under ‘C’ for China and under ‘M’ for Metaphysics, and then ‘combined his information’. Although diverse and eclectic, postmodernism can be recognized by two key assumptions: first, the assumption that there is no common denominator – in ‘nature’ or ‘truth’ or ‘God’ or ‘time’ – that guarantees either the One-ness of the world or the possibility of neutral, objective thought; second, the assumption that all human systems operate like language as self-reflexive rather than referential systems, in other words systems of differential function that are powerful but finite, and that construct and maintain meaning and value.

scholarly journals Crossing the Rubicon: Death in ‘The Year of the Transplant’

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Spare Parts ◽  
Heart Transplants ◽  
The World ◽  
Organ Removal ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One ◽  
Intense Debate ◽  
Sydney Australia

How death should be measured was a subject of intense debate during the late 1960s, and one in which transplant surgeons had a particular interest. Legislation required a doctor to first pronounce ‘extinct’ the patients from whom ‘spare parts’ were sought for grafting. But transplant surgeons increasingly argued the moment of death was less important than was the moment of establishing that a patient was beyond the point of no return in dying, at which time she or he should be passed to the transplant team. This raised concerns that people identified as being a potential source of organs might not be adequately cared for in their own right. In 1968 the World Medical Association issued an international statement on death at its meeting in Sydney, Australia following a debate between delegates about how and by whom death should be assessed prior to organ removal. Soon afterwards Australian surgeons performed two of the one hundred and five heart transplants carried out around the world that year, dubbed by theNew York Timesto be one during which an ‘international epidemic’ of such grafts were carried out. This essay examines debates about death and transplanting, then analyses the pioneering Australian heart transplants, in the context of the Declaration of Sydney and continuing international discussions about whether these operations were moral and legal.

“Little Plants in the Country”: Henry Ford's Village Industries and the Beginning of Decentralized Technology in Modern America

Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 181-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard P. Segal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
New York ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Proximity ◽  
The World ◽  
Word Processors

“Technology Spurs Decentralization Across the Country.” So reads a 1984 New York Times article on real-estate trends in the United States. The contemporary revolution in information processing and transmittal now allows large businesses and other institutions to disperse their offices and other facilities across the country, even across the world, without loss of the policy- and decision-making abilities formerly requiring regular physical proximity. Thanks to computers, word processors, and the like, decentralization has become a fact of life in America and other highly technological societies.

Time, Money, and the Weather: Ming China and the “Great Depression” of the Mid-Fifteenth Century

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
William S. Atwell
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
Absolute Level ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
Handicraft Production ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Deep Recession

During the fifteenth century, especially during its middle decades, “almost all parts of the then-known world [i.e., Europe, the Middle East, and the economically advanced regions of Asia] experienced a deep recession. By then, the ‘state of the world’ was at a much lower level than it had reached in the early fourteenth century. During the depression of the fifteenth century, the absolute level of inter-societal trade dropped, currencies were universally debased (a sure sign of decreased wealth and overall productivity), and the arts and crafts were degraded” (Abu-Lughod 1993, 85; see also Lopez and Miskimin 1962; Lopez, Miskimin, and Udovitch 1970; Postan 1973, 41–48; Wallerstein 1974, 21–38; Munro 1998, 38–39). In much of Eurasia, the worst years of this “depression” probably ended sometime during the 1460s or 1470s. Over the next six or seven decades, economic conditions in many parts of the world improved significantly, reflected in dramatic increases in agricultural and handicraft production; in the volume of interregional and international trade; and, except for the western hemisphere where Afro-Eurasian diseases decimated native populations during the early sixteenth century, in demographic growth.

IN PURSUIT OF SOCIAL PROGRESS

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-449
Author(s):  
Matthew Adler ◽  
Marc Fleurbaey
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
New York ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
University Professors ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
International Panel ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

In 2014, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote: ‘Some of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don't matter in today's great debates … I write this in sorrow, for I considered an academic career and deeply admire the wisdom found on university campuses. So, professors, don't cloister yourselves like medieval monks – we need you!’ At that time, a group of academics were working to launch the International Panel on Social Progress, with the aim of preparing a report analysing the current prospects for improving our societies.1 It gathered about 300 researchers from more than 40 countries and from all disciplines of the social sciences, law and philosophy.

scholarly journals (Im)possible Escape? H. G. Wells, Utopia and the World State

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 235-241
Author(s):  
Barbara Klonowska
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
World State ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Utopian Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Recent Monograph

This article reviews the recent monograph by Maxim Shadurski, The Nationality of Utopia. H. G. Wells, England, and the World State (New York: Routledge, 2020) in the context of utopian studies on the one hand, and the political ideas of the nation state vs. world state on the other.

The Style of Walter Frye and an anonymous mass in Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, manuscript 5557

1992 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 191-221
Author(s):  
Andrew Kirkman
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The One ◽  
Duke Of Burgundy

The Brussels manuscript 5557 is one of the most important sources of the later fifteenth century. Not only is it the one northern manuscript from the period to have survived largely intact, but it was apparently compiled for the chapel of no less a magnate than Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Presiding over one of the most opulent courts of Europe, Charles was more than just a great patron of the arts: he was an active composer himself. The sophisticated taste of his establishment is reflected in the extraordinary quality of the music in the Brussels manuscript: great masses by Dufay and Regis rub shoulders with most of the surviving motets of Charles's great employee, Antoine Busnoys, while the original nucleus of the manuscript boasts a clutch of English masses rivalled only by that in Trent 93/90.

Listen

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gautam Shroff
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Daily Newspaper ◽  
Communications Industry ◽  
The World ◽  
Illegal Activities ◽  
Concept Of Information ◽  
Tabloid Press ◽  
Classic Paper

As the scandal over Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation’s illegal phone hacking activities broke to television audiences around the world, I could not help but wonder why?’And I am sure many others asked themselves the same question. What prompted Murdoch’s executives to condone illegal activities aimed at listening into private conversations? Obvious, you might say: getting the latest scoop on a murder investigation, or the most salacious titbit about the royal family. But let us delve deeper and ask again, as a child might, why? So that more readers would read the News of the World, of course! Stupid question? What drove so many people, estimated at over 4 million, a significant fraction of Britain’s population, to follow the tabloid press so avidly? The daily newspaper remains a primary source of news for the vast majority of the world’s population. Of course, most people also read more serious papers than the News of the World. Still, what is it that drives some news items to become headlines rather than be relegated to the corner of an inside page? The scientific answer is Information; capitalized here because there is more to the term than as understood in its colloquial usage. You may call it voyeurism in the case of News of the World, or the hunger to know what is happening around the world for, say, the New York Times. Both forms of enquiry suffer from the need to filter the vast numbers of everyday events that take place every second, so as to determine those that would most likely be of interest to readers. The concept of Information is best illustrated by comparing the possible headlines ‘Dog Bites Man’ and ‘Man Bites Dog’. Clearly the latter, being a far rarer event, is more likely to prompt you to read the story than the former, more commonplace occurrence. In 1948, Claude E. Shannon published a now classic paper entitled ‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication’. By then the telegraph, telephone, and radio had spawned a whole new communications industry with the AT&T company at its locus. Shannon, working at AT&T Bell Laboratories, was concerned with how fast one could communicate meaning, or information in its colloquial sense, over wires or even the wireless.

scholarly journals Humanbecoming Hermeneutic Sciencing: A Global Perspective on Presence in “In Harm’s Way”

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-87
Author(s):  
Steven L. Baumann ◽  
Alsacia L. Sepulveda-Pacsi
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
The New York Times ◽  
The World

The purpose of this article is to report the details of the humanbecoming hermeneutic sciencing of presence in In Harm’s Way. Humanbecoming hermeneutic sciencing is dialoguing with an artform by discoursing with penetrating engaging, interpreting with quiescent beholding, and understanding with inspiring envisaging. The artform explored in this article is the comments and images of 60 nurses from around the world included in The New York Times story titled “In Harm’s Way.” The report is on the meaning of presence as lived and talked about by nurses on the front lines at the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Social Entrepreneurship

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bornstein ◽  
Susan Davis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Learning By Doing ◽  
Social Entrepreneurs ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Local Problems ◽  
Local Solutions

In development circles, there is now widespread consensus that social entrepreneurs represent a far better mechanism to respond to needs than we have ever had before--a decentralized and emergent force that remains our best hope for solutions that can keep pace with our problems and create a more peaceful world. David Bornstein’s previous book on social entrepreneurship, How to Change the World, was hailed by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times as “a bible in the field” and published in more than twenty countries. Now, Bornstein shifts the focus from the profiles of successful social innovators in that book--and teams with Susan Davis, a founding board member of the Grameen Foundation--to offer the first general overview of social entrepreneurship. In a Q & A format allowing readers to go directly to the information they need, the authors map out social entrepreneurship in its broadest terms as well as in its particulars. Bornstein and Davis explain what social entrepreneurs are, how their organizations function, and what challenges they face. The book will give readers an understanding of what differentiates social entrepreneurship from standard business ventures and how it differs from traditional grant-based non-profit work. Unlike the typical top-down, model-based approach to solving problems employed by the World Bank and other large institutions, social entrepreneurs work through a process of iterative learning--learning by doing--working with communities to find unique, local solutions to unique, local problems. Most importantly, the book shows readers exactly how they can get involved. Anyone inspired by Barack Obama’s call to service and who wants to learn more about the essential features and enormous promise of this new method of social change, Social Entrepreneurship is the ideal first place to look.

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