scholarly journals Unsafe Ground

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-39
Author(s):  
Jonathan Paul Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
General Sense ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
The World

This paper discusses how everyday technologies contribute to the enaction of disability, in particular by continually frustrating the formation of a general sense of ease in the world. It suggests that bodies have a fundamental relationality, within which technology comprises a central aspect; and that the very entity called the human is constituted through relationships with technologies. Then, it considers two ways that the organisation of technology is involved in the realisation of both ability and disability. First, it describes how the distribution of technological resources for activity are centred around bodies that are attributed normality and correctness, which also de-centres bodies falling outside this category: the former are enabled to act while the latter are not. Second, it proposes that ability and disability also involve habit: activities that have not only been repeated until familiar, but in which body and technologies can be forgotten. That typical bodies are centred allows them to develop robust habitual relationships with technological environments in which body and technologies can recede from attention, and crucially, to acquire a sense that their engagements will generally be supported. Atypical bodies, as de-centred, lack this secure ground: they cannot forget their relations with environments, and cannot simply assume that these will support their activity. This erodes bodily confi dence in a world that will support the projects, whether ordinary or innovative, that constitute a life.

The Remembered Anthropologist: Engaging with the Insights of M. N. Srinivas

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-240
Author(s):  
Nita Mathur
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Village Studies ◽  
Specific Sense

The plethora of M. N. Srinivas’s articles and books covering a wide range of subjects from village studies to nation building, from dominant caste in Rampura village to nature and character of caste in independent India, and from prospects of sociological research in Gujarat to practicing social anthropology in India have largely influenced the understanding of society and culture for well over five decades. Additionally, he meticulously wrote itineraries, memoirs and personal notes that provide a glimpse of his inner being, influences, ideologies, thought all of which have inspired a large number of and social anthropologists and sociologists across the world. It is then only befitting to explore the major concerns in the life and intellectual thought of one whose pioneering contributions have been the milestones in the fields of social anthropology and sociology in a specific sense and of social sciences in India in a general sense. This article centres around/brings to light the academic concerns that Srinivas grappled with the new avenues of thought and insights that developed consequently, and the extent of his rendition their relevance in framing/understanding contemporary society and culture in India.

What We Strive For and Value

2019 ◽  
pp. 200-222
Author(s):  
E. Tory Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Goal Orientation ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Significant Others ◽  
Shared Reality ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Shared Goals

Humans recognize that their significant others want and expect them to be and to become a certain kind of person, and they accept these goals and standards in their own self-regulation (internalization). This is a critical and central aspect of the shared reality motivation that makes humans special motivationally, and “special” in this case means possessing something distinctive and important. Within positive and within negative child–caretaker interactions, there are different kinds of interactions that create different kinds of shared realities. One kind of interaction creates a promotion shared reality that the world is a place where nurturance, mastery, and growth can occur: Your life can get better and better. Another kind of interaction creates a prevention shared reality that you have to work to maintain or restore safety and security: Your life will remain fine if you are careful. In addition to creating different types of shared goals and standards, different kinds of child–caretaker interactions create shared goals and standards that vary in their strength. The stronger the goals and standards, the more likely a person is to attain them, but the more that person will suffer if he or she fails to attain them. And how strongly people engage in an activity and “feel right” about it depends on whether they pursued a goal in a manner that fits their goal orientation—in an eager way for promotion and in a vigilant way for prevention. Fit intensifies the value of people’s decisions and their achievements, making positives more positive and negatives more negative.

scholarly journals A critical review of the world catalogs of Empidoidea (Insecta: Diptera) by Yang et al. (2006, 2007)

Zootaxa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 1846 (1) ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRADLEY J. SINCLAIR ◽  
SCOTT E. BROOKS ◽  
JEFFREY M. CUMMING
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Classification Schemes ◽  
Record Time ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The World

Many in the worldwide Diptera taxonomic community were surprised to see the recent publication of the “World Catalog of Dolichopodidae (Insecta: Diptera)” by Yang, Zhu, Wang & Zhang (2006) and the “World Catalog of Empididae (Insecta: Diptera)” by Yang, Zhang, Yao & Zhang (2007). The rapid completion of both catalogs that together report to cover all of the world’s empidoid diversity, the apparent lack of peer review, and the higher classification schemes adopted in these works, appear to have created considerable scepticism and discussion on the extent of their usefulness by empidoid workers. As O’Hara (2008) recently stated “modern technological advances make it possible for just about anyone to compile names from the Zoological Record, to scan catalogues, and to gather information from secondary sources to produce an unimpressive world catalogue in record time”. In order to accurately assess the value of these two catalogs, especially for current and future users, we provide a critical review that touches on all aspects of these contributions. It is not our intention to give a page by page critique, but instead to provide a summary of the types of errors and omissions (illustrated with examples) we have encountered and to point out the limitations of these catalogs while also indicating which parts are useful in a general sense.

Metaphors of Temporality: Revisiting the “Timeless Hinduism” versus “Historical Christianity” Antithesis

2011 ◽  
Vol 104 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-169
Author(s):  
Ankur Barua
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
British India ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
European Context ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
The World ◽  
Greek Historiography ◽  
Clear Statement

One of the most frequently-made statements about Christianity concerns its “historical” character—its grounding in a set of episodes in the life of the Israelite people that culminated in the climactic Christ-event, an event that brought into sharper focus than before a redemptive process that has been going on since the beginning of times and will last till the end of times. The assertion of this central aspect of Christian self-understanding has often gone hand in hand with a statement of what the Hindu philosophical-religious traditions are alleged to have lacked, namely, a historical sense. It is charged that Hindu thinkers believed that individuals are chained to never-ending cycles that do not lead anywhere, with all sense of meaning or purpose thus drained from temporal existence.1 A clear statement of such a demarcation comes from Alan Richardson, who states, specifically in the European context, that “ ‘Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him’ (Rom 6:9) … is the text which changed the outlook of European man upon history…. The European mind was freed by the proclamation of God's saving act in history from the fatalistic theory of cyclical recurrence which had condemned Greek historiography to sterility.”2 The Christian faith is believed to have liberated humanity from the tortuous cosmological circles of eternal recurrence, once in the world of late antiquity when it was still a fledgling in the milieu of Hellenistic mystery cults and much later in colonial British India when it came into contact with the patterns of classical Hindu thought. It is almost as if as an appendix to Saint Augustine's famous remark, “God did not create the world in time, but with time,”3 Christian theologians in his wake had added, “Therefore, Christianity did not come into the world in history, but with history.”

The mobility transition revisited, 1500–1900: what the case of Europe can offer to global history

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Lucassen ◽  
Leo Lucassen
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Sharp Increase ◽  
Seasonal Migration ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Global History ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
The World ◽  
Great Divergence

AbstractHistorians of migration have increasingly criticized the idea of a ‘mobility transition’, which assumed that pre-modern societies in Europe were geographically fairly immobile, and that people only started to move in unprecedented ways with the onset of modernization in the nineteenth century. In line with this critique, this article attempts to apply thorough quantitative tests to the available data. The focus is on ‘cross-community migration’, following Patrick Manning's argument that migrants moving over a cultural border are most likely to accelerate the rate of innovation. Six forms of migration are considered: emigration out of Europe, immigration from other continents, rural colonization of ‘empty spaces’, movements to large cities, seasonal migration, and the movement of sailors and soldiers. To illustrate regional variations, the examples of the Netherlands and Russia are contrasted. The reconstruction presented here is partial and preliminary, but it unequivocally shows that early modern Europe was much more mobile than modernization scholars allowed for. There was indeed a sharp increase in the level of migration after 1850, but it was due to improvements in transport rather than to modernization in a more general sense. This model has been elaborated for Europe but it can also be applied to other parts of the world and can hopefully contribute to the debate on the ‘Great Divergence’ between Europe and Asia.

scholarly journals A Inconstância do Mundo. Brevíssimos Apontamentos sobre Identificações Socioculturais e seus Eixos

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin B. Reesink
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Social Construction Of Reality ◽  
Social Classification ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Classification ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
Synoptic Table

O artigo parte do princípio de que a literatura já acumulada abrange tantos materiais etnográficos e propostos teóricas que seja preciso um esforço para sistematizar esse conhecimento. Desse modo, a chamada “construção social da realidade” é bastante conhecida, no entanto, suas implicações não são suficientemente levadas em conta nos nossos esforços antropológicos. Portanto, se discute aqui alguns aspectos da ‘sociocriação da realidade sociocultural’, em particular, alguns aspectos selecionados da “inconstância do mundo”, para em seguida discutir a classificação social, no sentido geral, e oferecer um quadro sinóptico da “identificação e seus eixos de contínuos”. O quadro sinóptico resume uma grande literatura (impossível de ser citada toda), ensejando abstrair a complexidade real de um processo afeto-cognitivo fundamental e contribuir para a metodologia e teoria de análises futuras. Nesse sentido, essa contribuição visa oferecer uma sistematização, no nível bem abstrata e teórica e bem limitada, do processo da classificação sociocultural humana.   The Inconstancy of the World. Brief Notes on Socio-Cultural Identifications and their AxesAbstract: The article assumes that the literature already accumulated encompasses so many ethnographic materials and theoretical proposals that an effort is needed to systematize this knowledge. In this way, the so-called “social construction of reality” is well known, however, its implications are not sufficiently taken into account in our anthropological efforts. Therefore, it discusses here some aspects of the “socio-cultural creation of the socio-cultural reality”, in particular, some selected aspects of the “inconstancy of the world”, to then discuss the social classification, in a general sense, and offer a synoptic picture of the “identification and their continuum axes ”. The synoptic table summarizes a great literature (impossible to be cited all), giving the opportunity to abstract the real complexity of a fundamental affective-cognitive process and to contribute to the methodology and theory of future analyzes. In this sense, this contribution aims to offer a systematization, at the very abstract and theoretical and very limited level, of the human socio-cultural classification process.Keywords: Reality; Partner-Creation; Classification; Identification Axes.

scholarly journals Central Asian Social Types as an Orientalism Pattern in Leonid Solovyov’s Prose

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-59
Author(s):  
Eleonora F. Shafranskaya ◽  
Tatyana V. Volokhova
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Research Focus ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Cultural Methods ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

The literary work of the Russian writer Leonid Solovyov (1906-1962) was widely known in the Soviet period of the twentieth century - but only by means of the novel dilogy about Khoja Nasreddin. His other stories and essays were not included in the readers repertoire or the research focus. One of the reasons for this is that the writer was repressed by Stalinist regime due to his allegedly anti-Soviet activities. In the light of modern post-Orientalist studies, Solovyovs prose is relevant as a subcomponent of Russian Orientalism both in general sense and as its Soviet version. The Oriental stories series, which is the subject of this article, has never been the object of scientific research before. The authors of the article are engaged, in a broad sense, in identifying the features of Solovyovs Oriental poetics, and, narrowly, in revealing some patterns of the Central Asian picture of the world. In particular, the portraits of social and professional types, met by Solovyov there in 1920-1930, are presented. Some of them have sunk into oblivion, others can be found today, in the XXI century. Comparative, typological and cultural methods are used in the interdisciplinary context of the article.

scholarly journals The meaning of meaning in biology and cognitive science: A semiotic reconstruction

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-213
Author(s):  
Göran Sonesson
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
General Sense ◽  
The Third ◽  
Evolution And Development ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The World ◽  
Semiotic Resources ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure

The present essay aims at integrating different concepts of meaning developed in semiotics, biology, and cognitive science, in a way that permits the formulation of issues involving evolution and development. The concept of sign in semiotics, just like the notion of representation in cognitive science, have either been used too broadly, or outright rejected. My earlier work on the notions of iconicity and pictoriality has forced me to spell out the taken-forgranted meaning of the sign concept, both in the Saussurean and the Peircean tradition. My work with the evolution and development of semiotic resources such as language, gesture, and pictures has proved the need of having recourse to a more specified concept of sign. To define the sign, I take as point of departure the notion of semiotic function (by Piaget), and the notion of appresentation (by Husserl). In the first part of this essay, I compare cognitive science and semiotics, in particular as far as the parallel concepts of representation and sign are concerned. The second part is concerned with what is probably the most important attempt to integrate cognitive science and semiotics that has been presented so far, The Symbolic Species, by Terrence Deacon. I criticize Deacon’s use of notions such as iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity. I choose to separate the sign concept from the notions of iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity, which only in combination with the sign give rise to icons, indices, and symbols, but which, beyond that, have other, more elemental, uses in the world of perception. In the third part, I discuss some ideas about meaning in biosemiotics, which I show not to involve signs in the sense characterised earlier in the essay. Instead, they use meaning in the general sense of selection and organisation, which is a more elementary sense of meaning. Although I admit that there is a possible interpretation of Peirce, which could be taken to correspond to Uexküll’s idea of functional circle, and to meaning as function described by Emmeche and Hoffmeyer, I claim that this is a different sense of meaning than the one embodied in the sign concept. Finally, I suggest that more thresholds of meaning than proposed, for instance by Kull, are necessary to accommodate the differences between meaning (in the broad sense) and sign (as specified in the Piaget–Husserl tradition).

The Quest for Pure Language

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-50
Author(s):  
Samuel Morris Brown
Keyword(s):  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
The World

Modern philosophical positions have restricted or eliminated the power and scope of the “language beyond language” once thought to have existed at the origins of the world. In this view, mortal language is the only language—either there is no primordial sacred language, or it exists but humans have no access to it. Joseph Smith saw these postures as capitulation to the curse of language at Babel (Genesis 11), which haunted him. The quest for pure language was a central aspect of his religious career and is a direct rejection of modernist assumptions about the potential of language. This quest for pure language—focused especially on the power of the hieroglyph—extended across Smith’s career, including extensive explorations of the Edenic language and traditions about powerful, nonordinary language.

Populism and Worldwide Turbulence

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 152-164
Author(s):  
Roland Robertson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Global South ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
The World ◽  
Entire World

This contribution consists in an attempt to make sense of one central aspect of the present worldwide turbulence, one which might well be called the contemporary, perfect, global storm. A pivotal problem that will be interrogated is the issue of the circumstances that have produced this phenomenon in most parts of the world, although it should be emphasized that the term populism is, more often than not, applied to the Western world rather than the East or, for the most part, the global South. However, this reservation does not amount to a severe caveat, since all the contemporary signs are that what is here called populism is sweeping across the entire world as a whole, even though it is not necessarily given this name in non-Western regions. To this generalization it should be added that there are, rather obviously, parallels to what has become known as populism in the West. Examples of this are anarchism in nineteenth century Russia and the movement known as the Long March under the leadership of Mao Zedong in the years 1934 and 1935 particularly, as well as al Qaeda and its various offshoots.

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