Centred on 'Foams', the third volume of his Spheres trilogy, this article questions the privilege granted by Peter Sloterdijk to motifs of inclusion and exclusion, contending that whilst his prioritization of dwelling as a central aspect of human existence provides a promising counterpoint to the dislocative and isolative effects of post-industrial capitalism, it is compromised by its dependence upon an anti-cosmopolitan outlook that views cultural distantiation as a natural and preferable state of human affairs, and valorizes a purported ontological security (...) attained through defensive postures with respect to perceived foreigners or externalities. Sloterdijk’s conceptualization of culture as a kind of immune system, it is argued, although posited as a rebuke to models of essentialism and ethno-nationalism, provides ontological support to the xenophobic critiques of immigration that are today finding increasing currency. (shrink)

This article analyses visitor articulations used by managers and key documents of three Estonian public knowledge institutions. Three visitor articulations were identified in the analysed material, namely visitors as the people, as target groups, and as stakeholders, each related in this article to a specific body of literature. These articulations are co-existent semantic tools, used by public knowledge institutions to make sense of the complex relationships with people that cross the boundaries protecting the institutions from the outside world. They show (...) how Estonian museum and library culture has sought to balance the more traditional educational paradigm with marketing-driven and democratic paradigms. Despite these changes, the article also argues that all three articulations have a significant role to play in organising the institutional governance of the visitors, enabling visitors to, and disabling them from, performing specific practices. Although the third visitor articulation holds the promise of a more democratised relationship between visitors and institutions, even in this case, we can still see the logics of governmentality at work. (shrink)

Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism amongst conservative politicians and journalists, there is a near-consensus amongst scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to possibly disastrous effect. Like the hole in the ozone layer as described by Bruno Latour, global warming is a ‘hybrid’ natural-social-discursive phenomenon. And science fiction seems to occupy a critical location within this nature/culture nexus. This paper takes as its subject matter what Daniel Bloom dubs ‘cli-fi’. (...) It seeks to describe how a genre defined in relation to science finds itself obliged to produce fictional responses to problems actually thrown up by contemporary scientific research. It argues against the view that ‘catastrophic’ SF is best understood as a variant of the kind of ‘apocalyptic’ fiction inspired by the Christian Book of Revelation, or Apokalypsis, on the grounds that this tends to downplay the historical novelty of SF as a genre defined primarily in relation to modern science and technology. And it examines the narrative strategies pursued in both print and audio-visual SF texts that deal with anthropogenic climate change. (shrink)

This introduction to a special issue of Thesis Eleven devoted to science fiction begins by exploring the way the genre has been handled by German and French critical theory and their Anglophone equivalents. It proceeds to a discussion of the historical sociology of the genre and, thence, to an account of what it terms the dialectic of science fiction endangerment. Finally, it concludes with a brief overview of the various contributions to the issue.

Annotation A challenge to our perception of how cultures and ideals are formed, this book shows that while structural ideals allow people to co-operate as they work toward goals - their own or those of their community - these images of perfection, so easily accepted as the unalterable structure of our society, can be changed, and are changed by individuals.

It took a long time for humanity to know about biogenetics. And yet its role as a determinant in the living system was not proven until the twentieth century when DNA was discovered. Similarly, it took a long time for humanity to know about culture and civilization. And yet until now there is neither definite standards for differentiating them nor a definition that is commonly acceptable. By taking an evolutionary pluralism as ontology framework and the transdisciplinary research method of the (...) systems science, we have in the new social system model discovered the central rules that govern the social?cultural heredity: Culture?Production?Civilization. The relationship between culture and civilization is exactly that of genotype and phenotype. Culture is the S-cDNA within the social system while civilization is the social phenotype. Culture is a determinant that ultimately determines the existence, stagnation, change, and evolution of the social system. (shrink)

Curiously, while the efficacy of the arts for the development of multicultural understandings has long been theorized, empirical studies of this effect have been lacking. This essay recounts our combined empirical and philosophical study of this issue. We explicate the philosophical considerations that shaped the development of the arts course we studied, which was grounded in rather traditional humanist educational thought, informed by Deweyan considerations for pedagogy and multiculturalism. We also provide an overview of the course and of the study (...) design: the ways in which the course worked to teach aesthetic theory through a combination of popular and canonical works, and the ways in which it sought to instill a sense of cross-cultural appreciation and solidarity among students through the inclusion of art from different cultures and generations. We then share our research findings and our return to the realm of philosophy to interpret them. Our postcolonial analysis incorporates emerging discussions of the arts as a tool for resistance and dialogue within the system of public education, and revisit and reconsider the very concept of education for pluralistic democracy. This approach problematizes traditional conceptions of pluralism, in which an attempt is made to dissolve difference in a common understanding, and instead advocates that works from among the contemporary popular arts and works drawn from the artistic “canon” alike must be considered and employed for their instrumental value to the educational process—especially for their ability to prompt an intersubjectivity that is accompanied by a heightened awareness of difference. (shrink)

This paper argues that the dichotomy between individuals, as bearers of unique and freely chosen identities, and the masses, as the large numbers of others who are conforming and uncritical, should be understood as a constructed dichotomy. This dichotomy is both supported and dismantled in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Michel Foucault. Each of these thinkers reinforced the idea that there exist conforming and threatening masses from which individuals should separate themselves. And yet by theorizing the limitations (...) and contextual nature of individual identity, they have also provided the foundations for revealing the dichotomy as illusory as well as problematic for reasoned thought and politics. The significance of this argument is that the fear of sameness and conformity within modern mass society creates a serious obstacle to broad based and democratic political engagement among people. (shrink)

I have been teaching qualitative research in education at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem for some years now. I have a sense that dealing with the issues of research methodology is of importance if we do indeed consider anthropology and qualitative methods to have something to contribute to improve the world in which we live. I write this rather short note out of a commitment to empirical research in the social sciences, emphasizing that which is observed and experienced, and recognizing (...) the complexity of studying that which is human. I reflect on my experience as a learner looking for ways to understand educational practice through methods able to capture its complexity. I then reflect on my experience as a teacher of anthropology and education, and consider the problems I encounter when trying to share my trade with my students. I hint at the potential connection between the political organizations within which we evolve and the paradigmtic perspectives which seem to become an obstacle in overcoming traditional empirical perspectives in the social sciences in general and in education in particular. Last, I consider multiple literacies as tools which might help us realize the problems mentioned and emphasize that these do not belong only in the world outside but also inside our immediate academic settings. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of the notion “the quest for identity.” The discussion emphasizes the importance of communal belonging, but rejects the view that one ought to belong to the community one was born to. It suggests that the quest for identity may lead individuals to follow many avenues: while some individuals might affirm their “inherent” affiliations and traditions, others may remain within their community of origin and strive to change its ways, or chose to leave their social group (...) and opt for membership in a new one. This analysis suggests that choice, characteristic of the liberal conception of the person, and rootedness, characteristic of the communitarian conception of the person, both play an important role in the formation of personal identity. (shrink)

The body of philosophical knowledge concerning the relations among language, the senses, and deafness, interpreted as a canon of key ideas which have found their way into folk metaphysics, constitutes one of the historically sustained conditions of the oppression of deaf people. Jonathan Rée, with his book I see a voice, makes the point that a philosophical history, grounded in a phenomenological and causal concern with philosophical thought and social life, can offer an archaeology of philosophy's contribution to the social (...) oppression of deaf people.This article offers support for such a project while being critical of Rée's philosophical phenomenology, since it presumes, àpriori, two ideas about deafness and sign language: firstly, that deaf experience is like hearing experience but without hearing; and secondly, that the iconic qualities of sign languages are strictly superficial phenomena. Both presumptions, it is argued here, derive from the same philosophical knowledge which has linked deafness to the sense of hearing and the voice, and in doing so secured an intellectual basis for the oppression of deaf people in social life. (shrink)

The period of social change from the 1960s to the 1980s saw a flowering of utopian novels, from Huxley's Island (1962) and Le Guin's The Dispossessed (1964) through to Callenbach's Ecotopia (1975) and Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). These works were infused with a vision of an ideal world structured as a decentralised network of small villages or precincts. In each novel, local, participatory decision-making was the key to a utopian "good place" both for people and for (...) ecological communities as a whole. The need to reharmonise with ecological systems saw a rejection of wasteful technologies which cater to consumerism. Instead, these utopias explored "high-tech, low-tech" societies. "High technology" (in the sense of sophisticated technology) was particularly encouraged for certain utopian purposes, such as biotechnology to improve ecology and agriculture. Technologies or sciences that might ravage the natural world were excluded, leading to a return to "low technology" (in the sense of simple, low-impact technology), such as bicycles for transport and manual labour for food production. Each of these utopian works was environmentally thoughtful, if not radical, in its suggested path to a better world. But did these communalist visions sufficiently challenge both the oppositions (nature/society) and the hierarchies (man's interests before others) that have proven so destructive in the current age, or is a further radical shift needed in our vision of a reharmonised planet? (shrink)

This thesis explores how we might think the relation between psychoanalysis and the cultural field through Donald Winnicott’s concept of the environment, seeking to bring the concept into dialogue with more “classical” strands of psychoanalytic theorizing. A substantial introduction sets out the rationale behind the thesis by reading Freud and Winnicott in relation to the “classic” and the “romantic”, or the “negative” and “positive”, in psychoanalytic thought. It goes on to outline the value of bringing these tendencies together in order (...) to think the relationship between psychoanalysis, culture and change. The chapters which follow move from psychoanalysis as a “cultural cure” – a method and discourse drawing on and feeding into a broad conception of cultural life – towards a notion of “culture as cure” informed by Winnicott’s theory of the environment. Chapter one examines Freud’s refusal of the “culture”/ “civilization” distinction and considers what it means for the idea of a cultural cure. Chapter two considers whether Winnicott’s thinking about “culture” ultimately prioritises the aesthetic over the political. Chapter three uses Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to explore an analogy between totalitarianism, technology and maternal care. Chapter four turns to the series In Treatment to think about the intersections of therapy and technology in terms of reflection and recognition. Chapter five employs Ian McEwan’s Saturday as a means to reflect on the capacity of culture to cure. Ultimately, I suggest that social “cure” may require more than “good-enough” cultural forms and objects, but Winnicott’s “romantic” theorization of the aesthetic, coupled with a “classic” attention to structures of power and oppression may offer a means of thinking the relationship between psychoanalysis and culture in potentially transformative ways. (shrink)

This inclusive cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering education and context. In so doing the book offers a reflection on contextual boundaries with an overall boundary crossing ambition and juxtaposes important cases of critical participation within engineering education with sophisticated scholarly reflection on both opportunities and discontents. -/- Whether and in what way engineering education is or ought to be contextualized or de-contextualized is an object of heated debate among engineering educators. The uniqueness of this study is that this (...) debate is given comprehensive coverage – presenting both instrumentally inclined as well as radical positions on transforming engineering education. -/- In contextualizing engineering education, this book offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary, meta- and interdisciplinary perspectives on how cultural, professional, institutional and educational systems contexts shape histories, structural dynamics, ideologies and challenges as well as new pathways in engineering education. Topics addressed include examining engineering education in countries ranging from India to America, to racial and gender equity in engineering education and incorporating social awareness into the area. -/- Using context as “bridge” this book confronts engineering education head on. Contending engineering ideologies and corresponding views on context are juxtaposed with contending discourses of reform. The uniqueness of the book is that it brings together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and engineering from Europe – both East and West – with the United States, China, Brazil, India and Australia. (shrink)

Renewed interest in the relationship between music education and cultural identity draws its vigor from strongly divergent sources. Globalized education and globalized musical culture supply new paradigms for understanding the central tasks of music education and their responsibility to a multicultural ethic of diversity, hybridity and difference. Yet recent anthropological studies of musical cognition and development emphasise both the centrality of ethnic and cultural particularism to the formation of musical awareness and the transcultural, factors in which such particularism is embedded. (...) These seemingly contrasting perspectives on the relationship of music to culture and identity offer a fertile context for redefining the place of music education in the curriculum. (shrink)

Others consider them as conditions, positions, or roles assumed in society. Such theoretical uncertainty is followed by a similarly uncertain empirical classification. This confusion probably exists because classes are not ostensible objects but concepts, that is, culturally and mutually constructed cognitive schemas. In order to see classes, scientists have to agree about the culturally framed discourse to use. This has not yet happened. This seems to be the main cause of the endless conflict in the debate on social stratification. This (...) article documents that "class," before becoming a scientific construct, was a "folk category." From ordinary language, "class" reached the social sciences, passing through the natural sciences. (shrink)

Renewed interest in the relationship between music education and cultural identity draws its vigor from strongly divergent sources. Globalized education and globalized musical culture supply new paradigms for understanding the central tasks of music education and their responsibility to a multicultural ethic of diversity, hybridity and difference. Yet recent anthropological studies of musical cognition and development emphasise both the centrality of ethnic and cultural particularism to the formation of musical awareness and the transcultural, factors in which such particularism is embedded. (...) These seemingly contrasting perspectives on the relationship of music to culture and identity offer a fertile context for redefining the place of music education in the curriculum. (shrink)

This paper considers and evaluates Jeffrey Alexander’s strong program in cultural sociology, which represents an exercise in paradigm formation and an ambitious attempt to refound American sociology along interpretive lines. Cultural sociology is assessed according to four axes, namely its social constructivist epistemology, culturalizing methodology, analytical realism, and internal and external positioning. In addition to discussing the accomplishments and limitations of cultural sociology in all these areas, the paper indicates ways to strengthen it by setting it in conversation with other (...) and more explicitly critical currents of thought. (shrink)

The nature of culture as the symbolic expression of inarticulate matter is explored from a range of different cultural perspectives. Raymond Williams's work on culture, especially his ideas on material and symbolic production, serves to introduce an analysis of matter and its place in cultural production. The mutable nature of matter is explored through the modern physics of quantum theory as well as modern art, especially the work of Jasper Johns. Late‐modern culture is viewed in terms of a mutable space (...) of matter that resists meaning and location. The implications of this resistance for understanding the cultivation of knowledge and subject‐object relations are then pursued in the contexts of art history, the ‘social body’, the society of generalized communication, multi‐media culture, and computerization. (shrink)

Of all sociology's `strange others', cultural studies is perhaps the least unfamiliar to many sociologists. Yet cultural studies exists in one of the most ambiguous relationships with sociology of any academic discipline. In this article, it is argued that the complicated nature of the relationship is compelled by the very closeness of the two participants in it. What often seems to be an ongoing state of ritualized antagonism between them flows not from their ostensible differences but in fact from their (...) striking underlying similarities. Their symbiotic bond both compels, and is hidden by, the rhetorical displays of selfhood in which they both often engage. The article reviews and assesses this state of affairs, and argues that the similarities between the two disciplines are actually based on a number of shared epistemological assumptions, a priori ways of thinking that in fact are very much open to question. A critique of these assumptions is outlined, and it is suggested that by recognizing their shared nature, both sociology and cultural studies, and the relationship between them, would enter into a greater state of intellectual maturity. (shrink)

This paper uncovers the problem of the sociological understanding of culture and the concept of representative culture by German sociologist Frederick Tenbruck. The paper focuses on the conceptual underdevelopment of the concept of “culture” in sociology as compared with the concept of “structure", or “society”, which is the central concept of structural functionalism. Turning to intellectual history, Tenbruck traces the trajectory of these concepts, defining the various functions in the social dictionary of the 19th–20th centuries. The dictionary also fixes notions (...) of culture as developed in the approaches of Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, demonstrating the use of the reduced concept of culture in Parsons’ sociology as a universal normative sphere. The paper justifies the role of representative culture in the structuring and innovation of actual socio-cultural processes, achieved by the relative autonomy of culture. The paper develops the thesis that an adequate study of the sociology of culture requires a return to the notion of ‘representative culture’ that had been lost during the process of segmentation of this discipline, as well as the segmentation of the history of culture. Cultural sociology is presented as a self-reflexive, meta-paradigmatic approach to the analysis of the institution of science and its critical and constructive role in modern society. (shrink)

E. P. Thompson's poetry and poetics are rarely considered by commentators on his work, but they are central to his thought. Thompson, who for a long time identified as a poet rather than a historian, struggled to find an alternative to both the Bloomsburian modernism he associated with decadent British capitalism and the chilly philistinism of Stalinist socialist realism. Thompson's unique and ingenious poetics emphasizes the political nature of poetry, yet denies that poets ought to subordinate their work to political (...) concerns. By understanding Thompson's poetics, we can understand his critique of the 'positivism and utilitarianism' which he came to believe were inherent in most forms of Marxism. Thompson's poetics also helps us to understand the peculiar forms that some of his most famous political polemics take. (shrink)