Review of Meaning in Communication, Cognition, and Reality: Outline of a Theory from Semiotics, Philosophy, and Sociology, by Martin Staude. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2012.

Culture in humans connotes tradition, norms, ritual, technology, and social learning, but also cultural events like operas or gallery openings. Culture is in part about what we do, but also sometimes about what we ought to do. Human culture is inextricably intertwined with language and much of what we learn and transmit to others comes through written or spoken language. Given the complexities of human culture, it might seem that we are the only species that exhibits culture. How, then, are (...) we to make sense of culture in animals? The study of animal culture is a booming research area. Culture is said to occur in a wide range of vertebrates from our close kin, chimpanzees and orangutans, to more distant relatives like rats and whales. Could these studies be misleading in that they are not actually studying culture but simply misapplying the term ‘culture’? Or is what is labeled culture in animals at the core of human culture, so that although human culture is more elaborate than animal culture, it is different in degree, not kind? While it is certainly easy to intentionally define culture in a way that makes it unique to humans, because of the growing field of animal culture, it would be most useful to attempt to offer a definition of culture that makes sense of how it is used by psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, and others who use the term culture in studies of animal behavior. The challenge is to produce a concept that is broad enough to be able to apply across humans and animals, but not be so anemic that it cannot do justice to human culture. Because of this, I will here construct a definition of animal culture and draw out some of its implications. (shrink)

In this article, I reconsider bio-essentialism in the study of kinship, centering on David Schneider’s influential critique that concluded that kinship was “a non-subject” (1972:51). Schneider’s critique is often taken to have shown the limitations of and problems with past views of kinship based on biology, genealogy, and reproduction, a critique that subsequently led those reworking kinship as relatedness in the new kinship studies to view their enterprise as divorced from such bio-essentialist studies. Beginning with an alternative narrative connecting kinship (...) past and present and concluding by introducing a novel way of thinking about kinship, I have three constituent aims in this research article: (1) to reconceptualize the relationship between kinship past and kinship present; (2) to reevaluate Schneider’s critique of bio-essentialism and what this implies for the contemporary study of kinship; and (3) subsequently to redirect theoretical discussion of what kinship is. This concluding discussion introduces a general view, the homeostatic property cluster (HPC) view of kinds, into anthropology, providing a theoretical framework that facilitates realization of the often-touted desideratum of the integration of biological and social features of kinship. [bio-essentialism, kinship studies, homeostatic property cluster kinds, Schneider, genealogy]. (shrink)

This study addresses the question of the nature of indigenous people's connection to the land, and the implications of this for articulating these connections in legal arenas where questions of Aboriginal title and land claims are at issue. The idea of 'place' is developed, based in a phenomenology of dwelling which takes profound attachments to home places as shaping and being shaped by ontological orientation and social organization. In this theory of the 'senses of place', the author emphasizes the relationships (...) between meaning and power experienced and embodied in place, and the social systems of property and territory that forms indigenous land tenure systems. To explore this theoretical notion of senses of place, the study develops a detailed ethnography of a Coast Salish Aboriginal community on southeast Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Through this ethnography of dwelling, the ways in which places become richly imbued with meanings and how they shape social organization and generate social action are examined. Narratives with Coast Salish community members, set in a broad context of discussing land claims, provide context for understanding senses of place imbued with ancestors, myth, spirit, power, language, history, property, territory and boundaries. The author concludes in arguing that by attending to a theorized understanding of highly local senses of place, nuanced conceptions of indigenous relationships to land which appreciate indigenous relations to land in their own terms can be articulated. (shrink)

Ethnobiology has become increasingly concerned with applied and normative questions about biocultural diversity and the livelihoods of local communities. While this development has created new opportunities for connecting ethnobiological research with ecological and social sciences, it also raises questions about the role of cognitive perspectives in current ethnobiology. In fact, there are clear signs of institutional separation as research on folkbiological cognition has increasingly found its home in the cognitive science community, weakening its ties to institutionalized ethnobiology. Rather than accepting (...) this separation as inevitable disciplinary specialization, this short perspective article argues for a systemic perspective that addresses mutual influences and causal entanglement of cognitive and non-cognitive factors in socio-ecological dynamics. Such an integrative perspective requires a new conversation about cognition in ethnobiology beyond traditional polarization around issues of cognitive universals and cultural relativity. (shrink)

This is a book review of "The Ethics of War and Peace" by Nigel Dower.

In this paper, I present an analysis of the “windows into reality” that are used in theories of global justice with a focus on issues of epistemic injustice and the powerlessness of the global poor. I argue that we should aim for a better understanding of global poverty through acknowledging people living in poverty as epistemic subjects. To achieve this, we need to deepen and broaden the knowledge base of theories of global justice and approach the subject through methodologies of (...) “thinking small” and “thick descriptions”, which are ways to give people living in poverty sufficient room to express themselves and have their voices heard, leading to “small” and “thick” knowledge claims. (shrink)

Using the theory of Michael White, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Charles Gerkin, this thesis discusses how and why narrative therapy techniques work and how they could be applied in group or parish settings. It further explores using theory developed by Charles Gerkin regarding how spiritual reflective practice could be utilised in the narrative process to help people process their life experiences for hope and resilience. In examining similar and difference theoretic framings in Gadamer and White, the thesis discusses and develops a (...) process for purposeful listening. This method of listening, unlike listening-to someone or listening-for information, involves an immediate “presentness” with others. It creates a context of openness for new insights to come and be explored openly. A special kind of questioning enables horizons to expand and new learning to be experienced either within a group or in pastoral care settings. This listening recognises biases and people’s historic realities and interpretations while fostering new interpretations that expand people’s horizons and bring new understandings. In Gadamer’s writing we find the theoretical understanding of human communication – what works and why it works. While in White we have practical applications of theory based on narratives and ways to use communication to bring healing and new interpretations of life experiences. Finally, Gerkin provides a spiritual component that assists people in connecting the bigger narrative of God to their individual faith to foster healing and hope. The thesis concludes with suggestions for training for pastoral care providers as facilitators of this process and ways in which this communication methodology could be utilised in a parish setting. (shrink)

In this thesis I explore how older people make use of, and interact with, their physical environment in home and near-by settings to manage cognitive situations, specifically prospective memory situations. Older adults have in past research been shown to perform better on prospective memory in real-life settings than what findings in laboratory-like settings predict. An explanation for this paradox is that older adults has a more developed skill of using the environment for prospective memory than younger adults. However, research investigating (...) this explanation has primarily been based on self-reports. I contribute to the understanding of this skill by doing two related things. First I introduce distributed cognition, a theoretical perspective that primarily has been used within professional and socio-technical environments, to the research field of prospective memory in everyday life. Second I present a cognitive ethnography conducted during two years across eight home, and near-by, environments and old-age retired persons, for which I have used theoretical concepts from distributed cognition to analyze observations. The analysis shows rich variations in how participants use common cultural cognitive tools, invent their own cognitive tools, deliberately and incidentally shape more or less functional spaces, make use of other physical features, orient themselves toward and make sense of cognitive resources. I complement both prospective memory and distributed cognition research by describing both the intelligent shaping and use of space. Furthermore, by taking a distributed cognitive perspective I show that prospective memory processes in home environments involve properties, and the management, of a multipurpose environment. Altogether this supports the understanding of distributed cognition as a perspective on all cognition. Distributed cognition is not a reflection of particular work practices, instead it is a formulation of the general features of human cognition. Prospective memory in everyday life can be understood as an ability persons have. However, in this thesis I show that prospective memory can also be understood as a process that takes place between persons, arrangements of space, and tools. (shrink)

Chapter 1 (To know in order to survive) & Chapter 2 (A critique of evolved reason) explain human knowledge and its limits from an evolutionary point of view. Chapter 3 (Captured in our Cockpits) explains the evolution of consciousness, using value driven decision theory. Chapter 4-6 (Chapter 4 Sociobiology, Chapter 5 Culture: the Human Arena), Chapter 6, Genes, Memes, and the Environment) show that to understand culture you have at least to deal with 4 levels: genes, brains, the environment, culture. (...) Chapter 7-8 (Why some apes became humans) give a model of human evolution in which Alexander's concept of 'ecological dominace' plays a crucial role. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions regarding the status of emotion as a scientific domain usually get framed in terms of the question whether emotion is a natural kind. That approach to the issues is wrongheaded for two reasons. First, it has led to an intractable philosophical impasse that ultimately misconstrues the character of the relevant debate in emotion science. Second, and most important, it entirely ignores valence, a central feature of emotion experience, and probably the most promising criterion for demarcating emotion from cognition (...) and other related domains. An alternate philosophical hypothesis for addressing the issues is pro- posed. It is that emotion is a naturally occurring valenced phenomenon that is.. (shrink)

Teresa believes in God. Maggie’s wife believes that the Earth is flat, and also that Maggie should be home from work by now. Anouk—a cat—believes it is dinner time. This dissertation is about what believing is: it concerns what, exactly, ordinary people are attributing to Teresa, Maggie’s wife, and Anouk when affirming that they are believers. Part I distinguishes the attitudes of belief that people attribute to each other (and other animals) in ordinary life from the cognitive states of belief (...) theoretically posited by (some) cognitive scientists. Part II defends the view that to have an attitude of belief is to live—to be disposed to act, react, think, and feel—in a pattern that an actual belief attributor identifies with taking the world to be some way. Drawing on scientific, scholarly, and literary sources of evidence, How Beliefs are like Colors provides a framework for research on belief across the humanities and sciences of the mind. (shrink)

In my thesis I argue for a philosophical-anthropological approach which enables investigations in empathy and care by opening up a window on the motivation of recognition. I show how biographies as narratives can help to understand the other within her or his own life-world, even if the life-world is the very part of our personality as a dividually conceived relational self. Therewith, personhood can be conceived in a new concept of personhood that is understood as a category of the human (...) being endowed with a stronger focus on culturally and historically founded dividuality and relationality, instead of relying exclusively on individuality and subjectivity. To show this relational movement in our life-world, I introduce ‘the Melanesian’ worldview on personhood. This worldview assumes that we are holistically relational. Thus, it lets the perception of an objective world shift into a world of animated entities which become parts of the human. Other people are also part of our life, and, in this way, take part in the life-world − and thus in life. In consequence, the life-world as the place where humans get in touch with each other builds up the social community: others have a particular role just as we take part in their lives. Our relationship with others is related to certain tasks in the social community and to definitions of personality and character. In academia, it is common ground that increasing individuality causes an increasing claim to recognition, especially since Honneth’s revival and actualization of Hegel’s concept of recognition. It is also Honneth who is inseparably linked with the recent philosophical discussion about recognition. We are recognized and we recognize others both on a personal as well as on a social level. The leading question, still unsolved and at the same time unsolvably linked with the relationship of individual and society, is: why are we relying on recognition? In other words: how do we recognize me, my self, and the other? My approach of a self-based model of mutual recognition follows two methodological paradigms: hermeneutics and phenomenology. Unsurprisingly, the hermeneutical investigation of our self in relation to mutual recognition has to start at the current state of the recognition debate, and takes its way to the anthropological state of personhood- and self-debate. The phenomenological approach constitutes the second main basis for an approach to a self-based concept of mutual recognition. Also the connection of philosophical and anthropological approaches to identity, personhood, and self-recognition is very fruitful in the way of developing a holistic approach of mutual recognition. To support this, I connect Western approaches in the phenomenological and hermeneutical traditions as well as theories of narrativity and human biography with non-Western approaches to elaborate and emphasize the intersection of both approaches. In consequence, the Cartesian Ego is rejected in favour of a decentral, cosmomorphic, and sociocentric approach to personhood. This anthropological approach is merged with a narrative concept of identity to emphasize the self-reflexive way of personal identity. Building on this set of philosophical and anthropological arguments, my purpose is to draw up a self-based model of mutual recognition which includes all stages of mutual recognition: recognition of one’s own identity, recognition of one’s own acting, recognition of others, and evaluative recognition. I begin this journey with preliminary remarks on recognition, person, and self by elaborating the state of the art in approaches to mutual recognition, the Anthropological notion of personhood, individual, and self, and their Philosophical notion. In the second part of my work, I show how these approaches compose a self-based model of mutual recognition. Here we receive the idea how we are recognized: through empathic understanding an act of knowledge is performed, in which the other is perceived and acknowledged as another human similar to ourselves. Therefore, empathic understanding, feelings of sympathy, care and solicitude, personal ethos, and theories of mind are related to mutual recognition. The definition of our being through empathy highlights our social wellbeing. By implication we refer to the recognition of others as constitutive of the community, since we recognize others and take care of them. (shrink)

The paper investigates the phenomenon of foreignness and its understanding in ethnographic and philosophical context. The role of a phenomenologicalhermeneutic conception of text and action in bridging the gap between the native’s and the observer’s points of view with respect to the description of cultural phenomena is elucidated by way of comparing the theories of anthropologist Clifford Geertz and philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Hidden links between the two authors, who make sparse references to one another, but should be connected more thoroughly, (...) are followed. The methods of “thick description” and of taking the “text as a model” for understanding social and cultural performances are analysed to attain a new notion of culture as context. (shrink)

In the context of this article and in the perspective of interpre - tational approach we have considered possibilities of sociological analysis of a religious conversion. Based on examples of Evangelical Protestantism communities functioning on the territory of Ukraine the author analyzes peculiarities of building and structuring conversion narratives, a strategy of representation of the religious experience, linguistic means and tools used in this process. A religious conversion is considered as a particular discursive practice or a religious communication related to (...) producing a narrative, which on the one hand reflects changes occurring to a person who passed through a conver - sion experience, and on the other hand the narrative itself preconditions such changes by means of adaptation of a canonic language of the religious group. Conversion cases considered by the author allow making a conclusion about existence of steady communi - cative conversion models at the level of Evangelical Protestantism which determinative distinction is reconstruction of the biographical experience in compliance with the “plot” predetermined by a canonic discourse of the considered communities. (shrink)

I would like to begin my thesis with a general overview of a book on African sage philosophy (1990) written by the prominent African philosopher Henry Odera Oruka (1944-1995), My reading of this book on philosophic sagacity needs to be equipped by two underlying backgrounds of philosophic sagacity. The first background is a perspective of the intercultural philosophy. The second one explains of philosophic sagacity in the African setting.

This thesis is about the content and concerns of each of four disciplines pertaining to the field of bioethics: medicine, philosophy, religion and law. Emphasis is put on the human values each reflects in patients' lives. A last chapter is dedicated to patients' narrative in order to bring a practical perspective to the discussions of the previous chapters. The four essential human values interconnecting among the four disciplines are: the patients' need for authority, the need for protection, the existential questioning (...) about the meaning of life, and the fear of death. (shrink)

I examine here Theory and Scholarship (taken to be formalized social scientific frameworks that seek to map out the real world and social actions in an objective fashion) via an autoethnographic lens. Chiefly, I ask how autoethnography as a research method reconfigures them: how may we extend knowledge using autoethnography? While much critique has centered on the "doing" (dispassionately?) versus "being" (going native?) of autoethnography, I argue that such a dichotomy is inherently false. Instead, doing is located within the ethnographer's (...) very being, so that a closer look at the autoethnographic research process is required, from conception to implementation to introspection. I attempt such a processual analysis here: drawing on an earlier social scientific project, I relate the intellectual and social process whereby it was translated into an autoethnography. Using a performative lens to illustrate the dialectical mode of doing and being in the research process, I intersperse portions of personal narrative with academic writing, to enable a disjunctural appreciation of the various layers of interpretation. While the epistemic framework I hold to here is indeed a poststructural one, privileging fragmentation and social situatedness, it also emphasizes continuity and interconnections in the research process. (shrink)

This paper sketches a brief account of multiculturalism in order to distinguish it from other positions that have been under attack recently. Following this, we address two prevalent and diametrically opposed criticisms of multiculturalism, namely, that multiculturalism is relativistic, on the one hand, and that it is absolutist, on the other. Both of these criticisms, we argue, simply mask liberal democratic theory's myth- begotten attempt to resolve the tension between the one and the many. Multiculturalism challenges the myths of meritocracy (...) and abstract individualism which underlie liberalism; properly understood, it evades the criticisms often hurled at it. (shrink)

Досліджуються проблеми становлення гуманістичного менеджменту як нової концепції управління суспільством в центрі якої не абстрактна людина, а чоловік і жінка з їх потребами і інтересами, різними можливостями для їх самовизначення і реалізації; обґрунтовується необхідність врахування гендерної складової при впровадженні принципів гуманістичного управління як необхідної умови демократизації, формування соціальної держави та громадянського суспільства.

The notions 'worldview' and 'social identity' are examined to consider whether they contribute substantively to causal sequences or networks or thought clusters that result in group acts executed intentionally. ... Three proposed explanaitons of sectarian conflict or ethnic violence are analysed as examples of theories that causally link intenitonal group behaivour to the worldviews and social identities of the individual agents directly involved. But as will be shown, it is not a priori features of worldivews and identities as such, but (...) historically specific facts and contingent circumstances that need to be examined in order to explain group-motivated behaviour. Reference to worldviews and identities detract from adequate explanation. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak spurred unplanned closures and transitions to online classes. Physical environments that once fostered social interaction and community were rendered inactive. We conducted interviews and administered surveys to examine undergraduate STEM students’ feelings of belonging and engagement while in physical isolation, and identified online teaching modes associated with these feelings. Surveys from a racially diverse group of 43 undergraduate students at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) revealed that interactive synchronous instruction was positively associated with feelings of interest and (...) belonging, particularly for students of color, while noninteractive instruction reduced social belonging, but was related to more cognitive engagement. Small group and one-on-one interviews with 23 of these students suggest that students derived feelings of connectedness from their instructors, peers, and prior experiences and relied on their sense of competency to motivate themselves in the course and feel a sense of belonging. Two embedded cases of students in physics classrooms are compared to highlight the range of student feelings of connectedness and competency during the lockdown. Findings reaffirm that social interaction tends to support belonging and engagement, particularly for under-represented (Black or African American and Hispanic) racial groups in STEM. STEM instructors who aim to support feelings of belonging and engagement in virtual learning environments should consider increasing opportunities for student–student and student–teacher interactions, as well as taking a flexible approach that validates and integrates student voice into instruction. Future research is needed to further explore the themes of relatedness and competency that emerged as aspects of course belonging. (shrink)

This dissertation centres on philosophical attitudes presented by North Indian classical musicians in relation to the concept and experience of rāga improvisation. In Hindustāni music, there is a dynamic tension ideology and pragmatism, devotion and entertainment, fixity and improvisational freedom, and cognition and visceral experience. On one hand, rāga is an embodied methodological template for the creation of music. On the other hand, rāga improvisation is conceptualised as a path to metaphysical experience and as an evocation of an ineffable divine (...) presence. A masterful rendition of rāga is both a re-enactment of a systematic prescribed formula and a spontaneous flow of consciousness. This study presents these apparent dichotomies to highlight ideological concerns, while simultaneously contextualising philosophical idealism in relation to pragmatic realities. A central paradigm is the manner in which pragmatic concerns are elevated in status and given spiritual significance. The dissertation begins with a view into historical and religious context. The discussion continues with a speculative investigation positing co-relations between Hindustāni music and central tenets of Indian philosophy, considering how rāga improvisation may manifest as a philosophy of sound. The study then explores the concept of rāga, a modal and conceptual construct that forms the heart of Indian classical music. The final three sections ground the subject of spiritual ideology within the life experience of Hindustāni musicians: ‘Transmission’ looks at the learning and enculturation process, which encapsulates values intrinsic to the ethos of Hindustāni music culture. ‘Practice’ explores the discipline, science and experience of musical practice, revealing core ideological concerns connecting spirituality to musical experience; and ‘Performance’ examines the live presentation of rāga improvisation, and the relationship between music as ‘entertainment’ and music as ‘devotion’. Both ethnographic and musicological, this research is the culmination of various fieldtrips to India, extensive interviews with Hindustāni musicians, fifteen year’s sitār training, and the study of relevant musicological and philosophical texts. (shrink)

This thesis arises out of a critique of the way language is decontextualized and presented from a reductively linguistic viewpoint in foreign language instruction. In particular, it focuses on the weaknesses of the broad approach known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and highlights the disparity between its theoretical assumptions and practical applications. With this in mind, the thesis identifies and explores three foundational premises that should be considered as part of an attempt to design a theoretically coherent framework for foreign (...) language instruction. By applying three sets of principles based on these premises, the thesis goes on to outline such a framework. After providing a background to the study, the first consideration is the nature of cultural and communicative performance. The study turns to sociological concepts regarding cultural organization and production, in order to better conceptualize how 'culture' can be understood in the context of foreign language learning. The second part of this area focuses on meaning and communication in order to undermine current treatments of 'language' in foreign language pedagogy. The second area of interest is that of learning and thus considers a number of theories of how people learn. The focus here is on learning-in-general rather than learning languages specifically. What emerges from this are a number of principles that should be borne in mind when creating conditions favorable to language learning. Finally, one largely overlooked area in foreign language learning and applied linguistics more broadly, is how the field of foreign language pedagogy constructs and legitimizes its practices, as well as suppresses its foundational theoretical assumptions in its activities (including research, methodology and teaching). A chapter is therefore devoted to this issue, and a set of principles is formulated in order to ensure that the design of any instructional framework is honest and ethical. Thus furnished with the triangulation of principles, an attempt is made to outline how a learner-focused, ethical pedagogical framework that stresses culture might look. This thesis is theoretical in nature and relies on arguments and positions from diverse and less commonly considered academic fields in foreign language instruction. Its main theoretical inspiration comes from concepts and claims generally considered 'poststructural' or 'postmodern'. However, there is no exclusive devotion to any particular author or theory. It is hoped that this thesis can make a genuine, if not controversial, contribution to the field of foreign language teaching by initiating a dialogue concerning the (lack of) philosophical and epistemological reflexivity in the field. (shrink)

This research proposes the comparative analysis of the symbolic representations of Maidan in the Ukrainian and Polish media outlets that comprise tabloid and quality publications. Different types of symbols are identified in the news analysis, reports, and feature stories on Maidan. The typology of symbols is worked out on the basis of the Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms and Langer’s symbol theory. The coded types of symbols include symbol-products, symbol-concepts, symbol-slogans, symbol-situations, symbol-processes, and symbolic actions. With the help of the (...) content analysis it is found that some most visible symbols in the media coverage of Maidan coincide in the Ukrainian and Polish print media. These are the symbol-concept “barricade”, the symbol-concept “Berkut”, and the symbol-process “dispersal of Maidan”. However, there are symbols that have either quantitative or qualitative significance in the Polish press and are absent in the Ukrainian media at all, namely, the symbol-product “blood”, the symbol-concept “solidarity”, the symbol-concept “freedom”. (shrink)

In the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a brief flourishing of practical and group phenomenological work, spurred by a renewed intention towards the things themselves. Despite a growing turn to phenomenology across the Humanities since the 1990’s, there is still much more written about phenomenology than phenomenology performed. This essay sketches a brief history of group phenomenological methods which have sought to remedy this situation and outlines a project nearing completion at the Department of Performance Studies at the University of (...) Sydney, Australia, using a small group of trained phenomenological researchers to study the phenomenon of being in audiences. (shrink)

Recent developments in the natural sciences make a renewed dialogue with the humanities possible. Previously, humanists resisted transferring scientific paradigms into fields like history, fearing materialism and determinism would deprive experience of its meaning and people of their freedom. At the same time, scientists were realizing that deterministic materialism made understanding phenomena like life virtually impossible. Scientists escaped the irony of describing a nature to which they did not belong by also discovering that their knowledge can never be complete and (...) that descriptions of nature at the subatomic level were essentially random. These developments, as Monod said, weakened the “Modern” paradigm sufficiently to make life scientifically possible. To understand how life might actually exist, however, scientists had to move beyond laments about observations losing information and concentrate on how nature creates information. Nature creates information in the process of reducing thermodynamic gradients and stores created information in self-organized systems. Nature thus becomes historical, for it is defined by qualitative changes accumulating over time because of unpredictable contingencies. This paper will explore the possibility that the patterned processes by which nature changes apply in the human realm, where interactions can change people and created information can be stored in self-organized societies. Values, Ethics and Morals are the qualitatively new information stored in social systems. VEMs script the actions structuring societies, demonstrating there is meaning in history and solving the problem of how sequences of events –“chronicles”–become narratives. Moreover, when societies compete, their system-structuring information is tested in the same way natural selection tests DNA. Thus, the succession of social systems suggests there is a meaning of history. The meaning of history need be no more transcendental or intended than Darwinian evolution. But if organs and traits can have biological value without implying design, socially constructed attributes like morality, consciousness, and freedom can be valued without supposing history has an ultimate or eternal purpose. Aspiring to show how the cacophony of historical events becomes a cosmos, a “well-ordered” context in which changes become meaningful, this sketch suggests a new understanding of nature may provide a basis for ethics. (shrink)

Appeals to practices are common the humanities and social sciences. They hold the potential to explain interesting or compelling similarities, insofar as similarities are distributed within a community or group. Why is it that people who fall under the same category, whether men, women, Americans, baseball players, Buddhists, feminists, white people, or others, have interesting similarities, such as similar beliefs, actions, thoughts, foibles, and failings? One attractive answer is that they engage in the same practices. They do the same things, (...) perhaps as a result of doing things at the same site or setting, or perhaps as a result of being raised in a similar way among members of the same group. In the humanities, appeals to practices often serve as a move to point out diversity among different communities or diversity within the same community. Communities are distinct from one another in part because their members do different things or do things in different ways. The distinct and varied ways in which different communities enact social norms or formulate law, state institutions, and public policy might be explicable in part by the different practices their members are socialized into. Appeals to practices hold the promise of explaining these differences in terms of the different background practices of the groups, cultivated through a kind of cultural isolation or sense of collective identity. In the social sciences, appeals to practices have played a central role in fundamental theorizing and theory building. Appeals to practices in the social sciences are often much more systematic and theoretical, forming the core of the systematic theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens in Anthropology and Sociology. Practice theory has thus become a growth industry in social scientific investigation, offering the promise of a central object of investigation that explains both unity and difference within and across communities and groups. But it is unclear just what practices are and what role, both ontological and explanatory, that practices are supposed to play. The term `practices' is used to pick out a wide range of things, and its relation to other terms, from `tradition' or `paradigm' to `framework' or `presupposition', is unclear. Practices are posited as ubiquitous, yet they are difficult to isolate and pin down. We are all said to participate in them, but they remain hidden. Their role, whether causal, logical, or hermeneutical, remains mysterious. After locating the historical origins of appeals to practices in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, my dissertation uses Stephen Turner's broad and systematic critique of appeals to practices to develop a new type of account. My account is a phenomenological account that treats practices as human doings that show up to people in material and social environments and make themselves available for specific responses in those environments. I argue that a phenomenological account is an effective alternative to accounts that treat practices as either shared objects with properties or shared and implicit presuppositions. I use a phenomenological account of practices to treat important debates in feminist philosophy and the philosophy of the social sciences, particularly debates over pornography's subordination of women and the classification of mental disorders in psychiatry. (shrink)

In all legal systems lawyers and judges appeal to general principles. These principles supposed to be taken from the very grounds of Justice. Accordingly they are presented as setting forth such an argument that it should defeat the opponent’s. In this paper I will be interested in the principle of legal certainty and in how it is is understood in Anglo-Saxon and a Continental legal cultures.

This article discusses the idea of globalization and its consequences for the religious field. In a methodological section, it critically introduces the terminology of globalization analysis, sketching the historical background of the topic. Than, it investigates the commonalities between the theory of globalization and Christian language, taking into account the differences among the Christian confessions. He proposes a geopolitical analysis of the relations between Catholics and Orthodox Christians that uses the model of “spiritual pairs”. Finally, a framework for inter-religious dialogue (...) in a unified Europe is proposed that would make use of the globalization localization dualism. (shrink)

Some forms of argumentation are best performed through words. However, there are also some forms of argumentation that benefit most from being presented visually. Thus, in this paper I will examine the virtues of visual argumentation. What makes visual argumentation distinct from verbal argumentation? What can be considered especially beneficial of visual argumentation, in relation to both effect and ethics?

This paper discusses an explanation, offered by Tim Ingold, for why social and cultural anthropologists have so far paid little attention to the materials from which artefacts are composed. The explanation is that these anthropologists accept a certain argument. According to the argument, what an anthropologist should focus on when examining an artefact is the quality that makes it part of a culture, and this is not the materials from which the artefact is composed. I show that Ingold has not (...) made a compelling case against this argument, but also that it is not sound. (shrink)

Thus declares Francis Hutcheson, expressing a view widespread during the Enlightenment, and throughout the history of philosophy. According to this tradition, we are by nature moral, and ourS concern for good and evil is as natural to us as our capacity to feel pleasure and pain. The link between morality and human nature has been a common theme since ancient times, and, with the rise of modern empirical moral psychology, it remains equally popular today. Evolutionary ethicists, ethologists, developmental psychologists, social (...) neuroscientists, and even some cultural anthropologists tend to agree that morality is part of the bioprogram (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; de Waal, 1996; Haidt & Joseph, 2004; Hauser, 2006; Ruse, 1991; Sober & Wilson, 1998; Turiel, 2002). Recently, researchers have begun to look for moral modules in the brain, and they have been increasingly tempted to speculate about the moral acquisition device, and innate faculty for norm acquisition akin to celebrated language acquisition device, promulgated by Chomsky (Dwyer, 1999; Mikhail, 2000; Hauser, this volume). All this talk of modules and mechanism may make some shudder, especially if they recall that eugenics emerged out of an effort to find the biological sources of evil. Yet the tendency to postulate an innate moral faculty is almost irresistible. For one thing, it makes us appear nobler as a species, and for another, it offers an explanation of the fact that people in every corner of the globe seem to have moral rules. Moral nativism is, in this respect, an optimistic doctrine—one that makes our great big world seem comfortingly smaller. I want to combat this alluring idea. I do not deny that morality is ecumenical, but I think it is not innate—at least that the current state of evidence is unpersuasive. Morality, like all human capacities, depends on having particular biological predispositions, but none of these, I submit, deserves to be called a moral faculty. Morality is a byproduct—accidental or invented—of faculties that evolved for other purposes.. (shrink)

La comunidad afrocolombiana de San Basilio de Palenque mantiene unas particularidades propias que son dignas de estudio. Por un lado, es una comunidad negra, habitada por descendientes de antiguos esclavos, con reconocimiento internacional, con una larga tradición de resistencia política y social. Por otro, esta comunidad sufrió la violencia política de manera marcada hasta nales del siglo XX. Este escrito presenta los procesos de protesta presentes en San Basilio de Palenque, cómo están directamente vinculados a la idea de identidad colectiva (...) defendida por la comunidad y cómo estos procesos se generan y se de enden en entornos de violencia. Para ello se recurre a la teoría de movimientos sociales y de identidad cultural. Finalmente, se presentan propuestas de cómo vincular de manera satisfactoria estos procesos en el actual momento de construcción de paz en Colombia. (shrink)

The Mahdi is the eschatological figure of Islam who will rule over the world at the end of time after having rid humanity of evil. During the whole Islamic history, many rulers have claimed to be the long-awaited Mahdi, thus creating the conditions for political revolutions based on prophetic statements. The present paper will study this subject as it occurs in contemporary history, first outlining such messianic character in the light of Muhammad’s revelation, then finding the different meanings of Mahdist (...) claims (the man-oriented and the message-oriented inclinations, the Mahdi as a renewal and the Mahdi as an apocalyptic personality), finally studying different self-proclaimed Mahdis in recent history, in Africa as well as in the Middle East. The last paragraph will be dedicated to the messianic dispositions of the terroristic organization Islamic State which has deeply affected the political-revolutionary strategy adopted by the group. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel research model - Contextual Constructs Model and the theory that underpins it - Contextual Constructs Theory. First developed as part of a complex project investigating user perceptions of information quality during Web-based information re-trieval, the CCM is not a single research method per se, but is a modelled research framework providing an over-arching perspective of scientific inquiry, by which a researcher is able to iden-tify multiple possible methods of study and analysis according to the identified (...) research con-structs and their contexts. Central to CCM/CCT is that all research involves the fusion of two key elements: 1) context; and 2) cognitively-driven constructs; and that the co-dependent nature of the relationship between these two research components inform the research process and eventual outcomes. The resulting CCM is one that frames research as a contextual process of phases, in-dentifying the conceptual, philosophical, implementation, and evaluation tasks associated with a research investigation. The value of framing research within a CCM comes from its capacity to frame complex, real world phenomena since its epistemology is a blend of a critical-real world view - where reality can be both constructed and constant; within a systems-science paradigm - where constructs are not reduced to isolated parts, but investigated in terms of multiple co-constructions and the contextual relationships between them. (shrink)

This article considers a novel approach to researching sporting embodiment via what has been termed ‘autophenomenography’. Whilst having some similarities with autoethnography, autophenomenography provides a distinctive research form, located within phenomenology as theoretical and methodological tradition. Its focus is upon the researcher’s own lived experience of a phenomenon or phenomena. This article examines some of the key elements of a sociological phenomenological approach to studying sporting embodiment in general before portraying how autophenomenography was utilised specifically within two recent research projects (...) on distance running. The thorny issues of epoche and bracketing within phenomenological and autophenomenographical research are addressed and some practical suggestions tentatively posited. (shrink)

Seen in terms of culture, the theme of religion and politics in Japan, as everywhere else, is complicated, the more so because religion in this country is highly complicated. This essay—the aim of which is descriptive, not analytic—is an attempt at drawing a concrete picture of Shinto and Buddhism, both of which incorporate multiple strands of traditional religion. It is these that have shaped Japanese religiosity and culture. Politically prominent features are put up in front so to speak: that is, (...) impressions of a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and a note on Yasukuni as a religious institution. An account of religious pluralism and the ‘religious division of labor’ constitute the central part, followed by a section on the characteristics of religion in Japan. Further, because religiously and politically momentous, an additional note is included about the popular image of Japan’s imperial throne. Finally, to emphasize the significance of religion, the essay ends with a word of hope for the future of religion. (shrink)

Within Critical Management Theory as well as Critical Theory the possibility of individuals resisting taken for granted power asymmetries remains a highly debated subject. Intensified corporate culture programs seem to imply that within the sphere of labor, worker dissent is loosing ground. Based on a large interview material of critical cases, this notion is challenged. The interviewees mainly represent white-collar employees who spend more than half of their working hours on private activities. Studying the objectives and political ambitions behind their (...) extensive recalcitrance reveals a range of intentional structures that result in the same activity: time appropriation. First, time appropriation may be the effect of framed dissent ; a dissent intertwined with politically framed indignation. Second, the recalcitrance may spring from direct dissent in which personal indignation is the driving force whereas political formulations are not as prominent. Third, the activity of not doing your work while at work can be the effect of withdrawal in which case there is no motive other than avoiding work. Fourth, time appropriation may also be a (sometimes involuntary) consequence of adjustment : This occurs when the employee does not receive enough work assignments to fill the working day. I conclude by suggesting that the processes and leaps between these layers of dissent should be further studied. (shrink)

This article contains critical reflections of a multidisciplinary research group studying the human and technological dynamics around some newly offered electronic services in a specific rural area of Finland. For their research, the group adopted ethnography. On facing the challenges of doing ethnographic research in a multidisciplinary setting, the group evolved its own breed of research practice based on multiple forms of triangulation. This implied the use of multiple data sources, methods, theories, and researchers, in different combinations. One of the (...) outcomes of the work is a model for collaborative research. It highlights, among others, the importance of creating a climate for collaboration within the research group and following a process of individual and collaborative writing to achieve the potential benefits of such research. The article also identifies a set of remaining challenges relevant to collaborative research. (shrink)