Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.

Los ensayos aquí reunidos buscan ampliar el marco teórico de los estudios sobre Simone de Beauvoir en lengua castellana. Además, tienen como propósito fundamental ofrecer a sus posibles lectores algunas ideas para pensar problemas diversos en contextos muy específicos. Algunos de estos trabajos simplemente quieren acercar una mirada general sobre la figura de Beauvoir y sus principales preocupaciones teóricas, otros se sumergen en campos novedosos donde el análisis conceptual busca dar respuesta a problemas urgentes en medio de preocupaciones académicas. Esperamos (...) que la recepción de esta contribución pueda aportar de manera rigurosa a las exploraciones de quienes encuentran en Beauvoir una fuente de comprensión para elaborar sus propias inquietudes. (shrink)

Guthrie contends that religion can best be understood as systematic anthropomorphism - the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things and events. Religion, he says, consists of seeing the world as human like. He offers a fascinating array of examples to show how this strategy pervades secular life and how it characterizes religious experience.

This thesis seeks to understand the nature of and relation between science and philosophy articulated in the early work of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. It seeks to challenge the view that Deleuze’s metaphysical and metaphilosophical position is in important part an attempt to respond to twentieth century developments in the natural sciences, claiming that this is not a plausible interpretation of Deleuze’s early thought. The central problem identified with such readings is that they provide an insufficient explanation of the (...) nature of philosophy’s contribution to the encounter between philosophy and science that they discern in Deleuze’s work. The philosophical, as opposed to scientific, dimension of the position attributed to Deleuze remains obscure. In chapter 1, it is demonstrated that this question of philosophy’s contribution to intellectual life and of how to differentiate philosophy from the sciences is a live one in Deleuze’s early thought. An alternative, less anachronistic interpretation of the parameters of Deleuze’s early project is offered. The remaining chapters of the thesis examine the early Deleuze’s understanding of the divergence between philosophy and science. Chapter 2 gives an account of Deleuze’s metaphilosophy, alongside a reconstruction of his largely implicit early understanding of science. The divergent intellectual processes and motivating concerns that account for Deleuze’s understanding of the differentiation of science and philosophy are thus clarified. In chapter 3, Deleuze’s use of mathematical and physical concepts is examined. It is argued that these concepts are used metaphorically. In chapter 4, the association between modern science and the Deleuzian concept of immanence that has been proposed by some Deleuze scholars is examined and ultimately challenged. The thesis concludes with some reflections on the significance of Deleuze’s early work for contemporary debates concerning the future of continental philosophy and the nature of philosophy more generally. (shrink)

Al tratar de disolver la neta separación entre una mente racional y la materia inerte abogada por el dualismo Cartesiano, el monismo lucha por reunificar estas distintas realidades ontológicas. Tal como para Claude Lévi-Strauss y Baruch Spinoza, esa dicha unificación no puede prescindir de la trascendencia de la mente humana como locus del pensamiento y conocimiento de la naturaleza externa. A través de una discusión entre las abstracciones de la etnología Amerindia (animismo-perspectivismo), las teorizaciones del estructuralismo y las relaciones que (...) estos tienen con algunas especulaciones filosóficas occidentales, este artículo trata de analizar las intricadas interacciones humano-naturaleza entre los Shuar de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana. De esta forma, se argumenta que las realidades metafísicas de las experiencias oníricas y visionarias están ontológicamente determinadas por el grado de intensidad de contacto que los humanos establecen con las subjetividades materiales del ecosistema. (shrink)

John Locke is known within anthropology primarily for his empiricism, his views of natural laws, and his discussion of the state of nature and the social contract. Marilyn Strathern and Marshall Sahlins, however, have offered distinctive, novel, and broad reflections on the nature of anthropological knowledge that appeal explicitly to a lesser-known aspect of Locke’s work: his metaphysical views of relations. This paper examines their distinctive conclusions – Sahlins’ about cultural relativism, Strathern’s about relatives and kinship – both of which (...) concern the objectivity of anthropological knowledge. Although Locke’s own views of relations have been neglected by historians of philosophy in the past, recent and ongoing philosophical discussions of Locke on relations create a productive trading zone between philosophy and anthropology on the objectivity of anthropological knowledge that goes beyond engagement with the particular claims made by Sahlins and Strathern. (shrink)

In the past two decades, integrated water resources management has come to represent a dominant policy narrative in the field of water policy and governance. However, IWRM has come under strong criticism in recent years for what critics see as a poor record of implementation and heavy emphasis on technocratic solutions. We outline how the present debate around IWRM has become narrowly construed by focusing exclusively on IWRM as an analytical and prescriptive concept. We argue that this narrow conceptualization of (...) IWRM, or the prescriptive epistemic form, which sets forth a set of guidelines for implementation in accordance with the logic of instrumentality, has in part resulted in a stalemate manifested in less research on the subject and scarcer attention of policy makers. To help advance beyond the stalemate, we propose two additional epistemic forms: discursive, as a point of reference for the discussion of power and values in water management and practical, or experiential and context-based understanding of water management. Recognizing this diversity of epistemic forms of IWRM to include the discursive and practical can create a shared space for multiple conflicting epistemologies and allow ways of knowing of non-expert stakeholders, thereby lessening the polarized nature of the discourse. Our typology of three epistemic forms—prescriptive, discursive and practical—offers public policy scholars a heuristic tool to approach policy concepts from multiple dimensions. Recognizing multiple epistemic forms requires new skills from policy workers and analysts, as well as institutional arrangements for articulating and translating across these forms. (shrink)

The issue discussed in this paper, although controversial, is cognitively nontrivial. Namely, we shall be interested in the matter of possibility to use certain semiotic conceptions in research conducted in the area of a certain group of specific sciences, that is humanities. The aim of this work is to show the possibility of adopting in humanities ready-made conceptions of symbol created on the grounds of the analytical philosophy of language and logical semiotics. Also, we wish to outline the actual state (...) of assimilating and using the mentioned philosophical conceptions by scientists who represent the sciences under consideration. (shrink)

Este artículo intenta desvelar el complejo proceso de construcción identitaria que subyace en la manera en que mexicanos, mexicanos-americanos, afro-americanos y anglos se perciben unos a los otros en el ámbito multicultural de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México, específicamente en el área de El Paso / Ciudad Juárez. Por motivos de espacio, sólo me concentraré en analizar el uso de metáforas por parte de los actores fronterizos en su proceso de construcción identitaria.

What do we mean when we refer to world? How does the world relate to the human person? Are the two interdependent and, if so, in what way? What does world mean for an ethnographer or an anthropologist? Much has been said of worlds and worldviews, but do we really know what we mean by these words? Asking these questions and many more, this book explores the conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture, and how these shed light on the (...) relationship between humans and the world in the midst of which they find themselves. As Pina-Cabral shows, recent decades have seen important shifts in the way we relate human thought to human embodiment—the relation between how we think and what we are. The book proposes a novel approach to the human condition: an anthropological outlook that is centered around the notions of personhood and sociality. Through a rich confrontation with ethnographic and historical material, this work contributes to the ongoing task of overcoming the theoretical constraints that have hindered anthropological thinking over the past century. (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)

There is a certain allure to the idea that cities allow a person to both feel at home and like a stranger in the same place. That one can know the streets and shops, avenues and alleys, while also going days without being recognized. But as elites fill cities with “smart” technologies—turning them into platforms for the “Internet of Things” : sensors and computation embedded within physical objects that then connect, communicate, and/or transmit information with or between each other through (...) the Internet—there is little escape from a seamless web of surveillance and power. This paper will outline a social theory of the “smart city” by developing our Deleuzian concept of the “spectrum of control.” We present two illustrative examples: biometric surveillance as a form of monitoring, and automated policing as a particularly brutal and exacting form of manipulation. We conclude by offering normative guidelines for governance of the pervasive surveillance and control mechanisms that constitute an emerging critical infrastructure of the “smart city.”. (shrink)

This study focuses on Vilém Flusser’s seminal essay on the diverse aspects that permeate life in Brazil, Fenomenologia do brasileiro: em busca de um novo homem. Despite the fact that it presents a lucid analysis of Brazilian society, the text still has not been as extensively studied as other important works from the philosopher. Through qualitative content analysis, I stress the role attributed by Flusser to the media in the genesis of a new human. Flusser argued that a new form (...) of sociability could result from the peculiarities of Brazilian society, such as a synthesis of diverse influences in the creation of original cultural manifestations, and a unique form of mutual responsibility. And he called attention to the predominance of broadcast media as constitutive of public discourse in that country, due to the high level of illiteracy among the general population until recently. I hope this article contributes to the scholarship on Flusser by providing context to the interpretation of an essay that remains up-to-date and useful for reflection on Brazil’s past, present and future. (shrink)

Multilayered outcomes were found in the results of a follow-up study for an action research project conducted in East Greenland. The project was based on a community psychology approach that stresses the interdependent relations of change, structure, people, and community and emphasized the fundamental issue of grounding an intervention in local utilization. The project focused on mobilizing the resilience of vulnerable schoolchildren by advocating the students’ perspectives in a collaborative intervention process with the teachers of a local school. The research (...) question for the follow-up study was: What were the outcomes of the intervention project conducted with teachers of vulnerable students? In the intervention process, ideas for developing and changing practice were devised and articulated by the teachers themselves; however, implementation and change in practice did not happen linear to this process. The follow- up result of multilayered outcomes was analyzed in three main directional levels of implementation: a constructive externalization and implementation level, a generalized in-between level named forgetting-but-not-denying, and a resistance/rejection level. The community psychology analysis and discussion of the results is supplemented with a cultural-historical theoretical dimension that focuses on individual processes of internalization and externalization and the different levels of integrating new knowledge. The paper summarizes crucial issues to consider in psychosocial intervention practice in order to implement change. (shrink)