Technikanthropologie

2020 ◽  

This handbook provides an overview of approaches to, and methods and topics on a historical anthropology of technology. This includes basic concepts, the variety of human technical concepts, technicised practices and the technicisation of senses and skills. Furthermore, it presents important representatives of an anthropology of technology since the early modern period. With its interdisciplinary approach, this volume historically and systematically approaches various problems relating to humans and machines that are currently being debated. At the centre of attention is the quintessential anthropological question of what a ‘human being’ is with respect to technology. However, this consideration does not derive from the concept of a unique, unchanging essence of man, but examines the historical changes of man through and with technology. Particularly in light of new technologies such as digitisation and artificial intelligence research, the relationship between humans and machines is once again on the agenda, in which humans and humanity seem to be the subject of discussion.

2021 ◽  
pp. 371-397
Author(s):  
Sanja Zubčić

The Glagolitic space refers to the area where in the Middle Ages or the Early Modern Period the Glagolitic script was used in texts of different genres and on different surfaces, and/or where the liturgy was held in Croatian Church Slavonic, adopting a positive and affirmative attitude towards Glagolitism. In line with known historical and social circumstances, Glagolitism developed on Croatian soil, more intensely on its southern, especially south-western part (Istria, Northern Croatian Littoral, Lika, northern Dalmatia and adjacent islands). Glagolitism was also thriving in the western periphery of that space, in today’s Slovenia and Italy, leading to the discovery and description of different Glagolitic works. It is the latter, their structure and language, that will be the subject of this paper. Starting from the thesis that innovations in language develop radially, i.e. starting from the center and spreading towards the periphery, it is possible to assume that in the western Glagolitic periphery some more archaic dialectal features will be confirmed among the elements of the vernacular. It is important that these monuments were created and used in an area where the majority language is not Croatian, so the influence of foreign language elements or other ways of expressing multilingualism can be expected. The paper will outline the Glagolitic activity in the abovementioned space and the works preserved therein. In order to determine the differences between Glagolitic works originating from the peripheral and central Glagolitic space, the type and structure of Glagolitic inscriptions and manuscripts from Slovenia and Italy will also be analysed, especially with respect to potential periphery-specific linguistic features. Special attention is paid to the analysis of selected isoglosses in the Notebook or Register of the Brotherhood of St. Anthony the Abbot from San Dorligo della Valle.


Author(s):  
Heather L. Ferguson

This chapter draws on Katip Çelebi's Düstūrü’l-‘amel li ıṣlāhı ’l-ḥalel, or the Guiding Principles for the Rectification of Defects, to outline how attention to genre, to the relationship between conceptual models and administrative practice, to the role of sultanic authority as an anchor for imperial order, and to the significance of comparative historical analysis offers an alternative approach to Ottoman state-making in the early modern period. It further suggests that the “middle years” of the state might best be understood as a tension between principles of universal rule and the practices designed to entice and co-opt regional elites into a coherent sociopolitical order.


Author(s):  
Laura Marcus

The years of childhood have become increasingly central to autobiographical writing. Historians have linked this development to the new ideas about life-stages that emerged in the early modern period. Philippe Ariès (1914–84) made a key contribution in 1960 with a book on the child and family life in the ancien régime, known in English as Centuries of Childhood. ‘Family histories and the autobiography of childhood’ considers how genealogy (the tracing of family history) and the shaping of family relations by cultural and social forces have been central concerns for many modern autobiographers. It also looks closely at the relationship between child and parent and at the impact of mixed cultures.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
Lynneth J. Miller

Using writings from observers of the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague, this article explores the various understandings of dancing mania, disease, and divine judgment applied to the dancing plague's interpretation and treatment. It argues that the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague reflects new currents of thought, but remains closely linked to medieval philosophies; it was an event trapped between medieval and modern ideologies and treated according to two very different systems of belief. Understanding the ways in which observers comprehended the dancing plague provides insight into the ways in which, during the early modern period, new perceptions of the relationship between humanity and the divine developed and older conceptions of the body and disease began to change, while at the same time, ideologies surrounding dance and its relationship to sinful behavior remained consistent.


2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-Part2) ◽  
pp. 1531-1560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Forman

This article traces the connections between the circulation of commodities and counterfeit coins in The Roaring Girl. Contextualizing the play's representation of counterfeits within a discussion of the relationship between real and counterfeit money in the early modern period, I argue that the play registers and addresses economic pressures, in part through its commentary on, and revision of, the conventions of stage comedy. In particular, the play offers enhanced forms of realism and the fiction of the “individual” in the title character, Moll, to compensate for the absence of legible material guarantees for value, legitimacy, or status. I conclude with a reading of the play's representation of masterless persons as the necessary shadow side of the plethora of opportunities seemingly offered by the market.


2021 ◽  
pp. 29-55
Author(s):  
Regina Toepfer ◽  
Peter Burschel ◽  
Jörg Wesche

AbstractThe introduction offers insights into the praxeological approach of the SPP 2130 “Early Modern Translation Cultures”. Translation is considered a central and ubiquitous cultural technique of the Early Modern period, and one that contributed decisively to shaping that epoch. The SPP 2130 takes current translation studies theories as its point of departure, historicizes them, and applies them to Early Modern translation phenomena. It combines philological, anthropological, and societal translation concepts to develop a definition of translation that lends itself well to an interdisciplinary approach and provides a workable basis not only for the study of languages and literatures, but also for the scholarly investigation of images, music, and history. The graduated conception of translation makes it possible to take widely differing translation methods and practices into account and to examine not only inter- and intralingual translations but also intermedial, intercultural, and performative translation processes.


Author(s):  
K.J. Kesselring

Homicide can seem timeless, somehow, determined by unchanging human failings. But a moment’s reflection shows this is not true: homicide has a history. In early modern England, that history saw two especially notable developments: one, the emergence in the sixteenth century of a formal distinction between murder and manslaughter, made meaningful through a lighter punishment than death for the latter in most cases, and two, a significant reduction in the rates of homicides individuals perpetrated on each other. This book explores connections between these two changes. It demonstrates the value in distinguishing between murder and manslaughter, or at least in seeing how that distinction came to matter in a period which also witnessed dramatic drops in the occurrence of homicidal violence. Focused on the ‘politics of murder’, the book examines how homicide became more effectively criminalized from c. 1480 to 1680, with chapters devoted to coroners’ inquests, appeals and private compensation, duels and private vengeance, and print and public punishment. The English had begun moving away from treating homicide as an offence subject to private settlements or vengeance long before other Europeans, at least from the twelfth century. What happened in the early modern period was, in some ways, a continuation of processes long underway, but intensified and refocused by developments from the late fifteenth to late seventeenth centuries. Exploring the links between law, crime, and politics, bringing together both the legal and social histories of the subject of homicide, the book argues that homicide became more fully ‘public’ in these years, with killings seen to violate a ‘king’s peace’ that people increasingly conflated with or subordinated to the ‘public peace’ or ‘public justice’.


Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes work on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The core of the subject matter is philosophy and its history. But the volume’s chapters reflect the fact that philosophy in the early modern period was much broader in its scope than it is currently taken to be and included a great deal of what now belongs to the natural sciences. Furthermore, philosophy in the period was closely connected with other disciplines, such as theology, law and medicine, and with larger questions of social, political, and religious history. Volume 10 includes chapters dedicated to a wide set of topics in the philosophies of Thomas White, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume.


2021 ◽  

The responsibility to protect and intervention possessed a central political importance in the early modern period. This volume asks whether there was also a duty to intervene alongside the right to do so. This draws attention to the relationship between the responsibility to protect, security and reputation, which is the focus of the contributions the book contains. Chronologically, they range from the 15th to the 18th centuries and discuss monarchical duties to protect, alliance commitments, confessional legitimation and motives, as well as those based on patronage, contractual relationships and electoral processes. One of the book’s important findings is a deeper understanding of reputation, which is comprehensively examined here as a political guiding factor with reference to changing understandings of security for the first time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 480-503
Author(s):  
Amanda Flather

This paper explores the neglected topic of the organization and use of household space for work (paid and unpaid) during the early modern period. It engages critically with the concept of ‘the open house’ in relation to recent arguments about processes of spatial and social closure of houses and households in the early modern period associated with the development of a capitalist socio-economic system. Drawing on a variety of sources including diaries, autobiographies, inventories and court records the analysis considers how work was organized in the domestic context and how experience varied according to gender, age, status and location as well as time of day, week or year. The paper argues that a perceived dichotomy between an open house and a closed home secluded from the social and business world of community and commerce is inadequate in the consideration of space and attitudes in this period. Individuals in larger houses could control access to certain spaces at specific times and work could be concentrated in certain rooms. But in practice in most households the complicated demands of the household economy required openness to outsiders that rendered the boundaries of houses more permeable and potentially more unstable than they are today. The analysis considers the case of England and compares rural and urban homes in a particular regional context, but it opens up several ways for historians to think about the relationship between work and home in other European regions.


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