An Anthropological Discourse to Christian Views on Polygamy and Plural Relationships in Uganda

Marriage and family are prominent institutions in society because they define a person’s essence of life and identity, through providing means and conditions for survival, participation and sustenance. Marriage thus has forms that are inclusive, given the social realities in an area. However, as society changes, we realise that the institution is also changing to respond to new anthropological demands. This paper deals with the polygamous form of marriage and the accruing transitions as well as tensions in this institution. The paper gives a cross sectional analysis of the phenomenon, discussing its continuities and discontinuities. The paper is aimed at highlighting the anthropological basis of marriage so that society may not judge people at the periphery, but support and understand them as well as regulate the institution of marriage to be inclusive. In order to discuss the surrounding tensions, the discussion will concern polygamy and Plural relationships based on situation analysis in Uganda, personal reflections, literature and field data.

Gods and Things: Is “Animism” an Operable Concept in Korea?

Shamanship is a thing-ish practice. Early missionary observers in Korea noted that features of the landscape, quotidian objects, and specialized paraphernalia figure in the work of shamans (mansin) and in popular religious practice more generally. Subsequent ethnographers observed similar engagements with numinous things, from mountains to painted images, things vested with the presence of soul stuff (yŏng). Should this be considered “animism” as the term is being rethought in anthropological discourse today? Should we consider shamanic materiality in Korea as one more ontological challenge to the nature/culture divide? Drawing on existing ethnography and her own fieldwork, the author examines the (far from uniform) premises that govern the deployment of material things in Korean shaman practice. She argues that while the question of “animism” opens a deeper inquiry into things that have been described but not well-analyzed, the term must be used with clarity, precision, and caution. Most of the material she describes becomes sacred through acts of human agency, revealing an ontology of mobile, mutable spirits who are inducted into or appropriate objects. Some of these things are quotidian, some produced for religious use, and even the presence of gods in landscapes can be affected by human agency. These qualities enable the adaptability of shaman practices in a much transformed and highly commercialized South Korea.

Co-evolution of Human Corporeality and the Technosphere: a Philosophical-Anthropological Discourse

This study reflects the development and transformation strategies of the anthropological situation in the context of technological progress. The change of the natural way of human existence to the technogenic method of communication leads to the formation of the image of «a virtual personality». The process of assimilation of natural and artificial takes place. Ethical alternatives of the human existence as a species within the Technosphere and the preservation of their humanistic imperative through the bodily projections of the personality are considered. Co-evolution of man and the Technosphere leads to a new way of their interaction and generates Technogenic Anthropology. The study of corporeality in various areas of human life is reflected in its ontological disclosure through the nominal classification: «biological body», «social body», «cultural body», and «virtual body». Plasticity is revealed as the main value and quality, which provides self-reflection in various forms of communication of modern man.

HUMAN SITUATION AND MODERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL DISCOURSE

The paper proposes the author's vision of a person's situation and a version of building a modern anthro-pological discourse in this situation. Within the framework of this discourse, concepts such as event ontol-ogy, anthropological navigation, life trajectory, anthropoid cartoid, etc. are introduced. It is proposed to consider the role of the dictionary of this discourse not as a system of definitions and terms, but as a map of landmarks and regulators. In this regard, the way of conceptual work is changing in the direction of building concept-guidelines. Within the framework of anthropological navigation, it is proposed to con-sider the types and genres of anthropological practitioners, such as the practices of taking care of oneself, anthropological practices of mapping personality, life trajectories and anthropoid cartoids. The modern human situation through the eyes of this discourse is seen as a situation of ontological disorientation, in which a person loses his basic guidelines, the norm to be. In this regard, the author proposes to consider the key task - the renormalization of a person, his own restoration of the norm to be in new conditions.

The Fable of Arachne

This chapter explores the experimental and precarious character of the sense of touch in philosophy (Aristotle, the mystics, enlightenment philosophers), in artistic practice (Diego Velázquez) and in the physiological–anthropological discourse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Lotze, Katz). It argues for a praxeological and media–ecological re-evaluation of the European philosophical discourse on tactility and against essentializing understandings of the sense of touch in order to rediscover one of its classic roots: the sense of touch as a medium of subtlety, as the basis of the capacity for aesthetic differentiation that bridges cognition and sensuousness and opens the psyche for new experiences.