In 1996, Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at New York University, wrote a paper for the cultural-studies journal Social Text, entitled: 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity'. It was reviewed, accepted and published. Sokal immediately confessed that the whole article was a hoax - a cunningly worded paper designed to expose and parody the style of extreme postmodernist criticism of science. The story became front-page news around the world and triggered fierce and wide-ranging controversy. (...) -/- Sokal is one of the most powerful voices in the continuing debate about the status of evidence-based knowledge. In Beyond the Hoax he turns his attention to a new set of targets - pseudo-science, religion, and misinformation in public life. 'Whether my targets are the postmodernists of the left, the fundamentalists of the right, or the muddle-headed of all political and apolitical stripes, the bottom line is that clear thinking, combined with a respect for evidence, are of the utmost importance to the survival of the human race in the twenty-first century.' The book also includes a hugely illuminating annotated text of the Hoax itself, and a reflection on the furore it provoked. (shrink)

Liberal approaches to multiculturalism and cultural nationalism have met with severe criticism in recent years. This article makes the case for an alternative, Aristotelian approach developed in the work of the ‘founding father’ of culture, J. G. Herder. According to Herder, culture is worthy of political recognition because it contributes to the realization of our common but contradictory human telos. Only a plurality of cultures, each realizing a unique balance of our contradictory needs, can bring wholeness to our common (...) nature. In conclusion, I argue for the merits of this Aristotelian approach in resolving some recurring problems of multiculturalism. (shrink)

This essay explores our nuclear entanglement through culture and the environment. It does so through a quilted self-reflexive narrative. The narrator is positioned as a critical human rights activist, and follows the subjective, imaginative and suicidal implications of the nuclear in their life. A key argument is that we are living within the confines of the nuclear algorithm, which has wrought irreversible changes to the psychological, social, and ethical life of Homo sapiens within the Anthropocene. The essay calls attention to (...) the tools of conviviality and love required for co-existence and co-survival beyond our nuclear entanglement. (shrink)

_Beyond Reason_ relates Wagner’s works to the philosophical and cultural ideas of his time, centering on the four music dramas he created in the second half of his career:_ Der Ring des Nibelungen_, _Tristan und Isolde_, _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg_, and _Parsifal_. Karol Berger seeks to penetrate the “secret” of large-scale form in Wagner’s music dramas and to answer those critics, most prominently Nietzsche, who condemned Wagner for his putative inability to weld small expressive gestures into larger wholes. (...) Organized by individual opera, this is essential reading for both musicologists and Wagner experts. (shrink)

The concept of non-domination is an important contribution to the study of freedom but it does not comprehend the whole of freedom. Insofar as domination requires a conscious capacity for control on the part of the dominant party, it fails to capture important threats to individual freedom that permeate many contemporary liberal democracies today. Much of the racism, sexism and other cultural biases that currently constrain the life-chances of members of subordinate groups in the USA are largely unconscious and (...) unintentional, and they do not always involve control. Although they constitute real barriers to freedom, these forms of influence are not accurately characterized as domination, and they will require different mechanisms to overcome them. To achieve the more capacious freedoms that liberal democracy promises, we will need to go beyond non-domination and to come to terms with the non-sovereign, socially distributed character of human agency. (shrink)

Although Nietzsche's greatness is recognized more universally now than ever before, the nature of that greatness is still widely misunderstood, and that unfortunately means that before I discuss any of Beyond Good and Evil (henceforth BGE) in any detail, I must make some general remarks about his work, his development and the kind of way in which I think that it is best to read him. Unlike any of the other philosophers that this series includes, except Marx and Engels, (...) Nietzsche is very much concerned to address his contemporaries, because he was aware of a specific historical predicament, one which he would only see as having worsened in ways which he predicted with astonishing precision in the century since he wrote his great series of works. For he was above all a philosopher of culture, which is to say that his primary concern was always with the forces that determine the nature of a particular civilization, and with the possibilities of achievement which that civilization consequently had open to it. One of the reasons that The Birth of Tragedy, his first book, published when he was twenty-eight, created such a surge of hostility in the world of classical scholarship was that in it, whilst undertaking an investigation of what made possible the achievements of fifth century BC Greece in tragic drama, he felt it necessary to elicit the whole set of fundamental beliefs which the Greeks shared, and also to draw metaphysical conclusions from the fact that they were able to experience life in such a way that they needed great tragedies in order to endure it. (shrink)

Although Nietzsche's greatness is recognized more universally now than ever before, the nature of that greatness is still widely misunderstood, and that unfortunately means that before I discuss any of Beyond Good and Evil (henceforth BGE) in any detail, I must make some general remarks about his work, his development and the kind of way in which I think that it is best to read him. Unlike any of the other philosophers that this series includes, except Marx and Engels, (...) Nietzsche is very much concerned to address his contemporaries, because he was aware of a specific historical predicament, one which he would only see as having worsened in ways which he predicted with astonishing precision in the century since he wrote his great series of works. For he was above all a philosopher of culture, which is to say that his primary concern was always with the forces that determine the nature of a particular civilization, and with the possibilities of achievement which that civilization consequently had open to it. One of the reasons that The Birth of Tragedy, his first book, published when he was twenty-eight, created such a surge of hostility in the world of classical scholarship was that in it, whilst undertaking an investigation of what made possible the achievements of fifth century BC Greece in tragic drama, he felt it necessary to elicit the whole set of fundamental beliefs which the Greeks shared, and also to draw metaphysical conclusions from the fact that they were able to experience life in such a way that they needed great tragedies in order to endure it. (shrink)

How has the concept of democracy been understood, manifested, reimagined and represented through the ages? In a work that spans 2,500 years these fundamental questions are addressed by 66 experts, each contributing their overview of a theme applied to a period in history. With the help of a broad range of case material they illustrate the physical, social and cultural contexts of democracy in Western culture from antiquity to the present. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, (...) and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter themes are identical across each of the volumes. Superbly illustrated, the full six-volume set combines to present the most comprehensive and authoritative survey available on democracy throughout history. The six volumes cover: 1 - Antiquity (500 BCE-565 CE); 2 - Medieval Age (565-1450); 3 - Renaissance (1450-1650); 4 - Age of Enlightenment (1650-1800); 5 - Age of Empire (1800-1920); 6 Modern Age (1920-present) The ten themes are: Sovereignty; Liberty and the Rule of Law; The 'Common Good'; Economic and Social Democracy; Religion and the Principles of Political Obligation; Citizenship and Gender; Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism; Democratic Crises, Revolutions and Civil Resistance; International Relations; Beyond the Polis. The page extent for the pack is approximately 2016pp. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors and an Introduction and concludes with Notes, Bibliography, and an Index. The Cultural Histories Series A Cultural History of Democracy is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com). (shrink)

Croatian literary culture of the 18th century is marked by stylistic pluralism, considering that its Enlightenment character and its didactic and utilitaristic dimensions are emphasized the most. Austrian catechism was the fundamental book of school religious education from 1777 until 1847 in the whole Habsburg Monarchy, and it played an important role in the upbringing of children, but also of the entire family and social community in the spirit of Josephine politics. This topic is viewed from the perspective of Immanuel (...) Kant who found it important to emphasise the dangers to which the fetishisation of ecclesiastical norms can lead to, i.e. to hinder the development of critical moments of liberty and upbringing. The absence of Enlightenment period in Croatian countries of the Habsburg Monarchy is complexly conditioned: from religious resistance and changes in a social and political sense to stagnancy and lack of education of a large part of the population, altogether favourable to the Croatian nobility and clergy. (shrink)

_Screen, Culture, Psyche_ illuminates recent developments in Jungian modes of media analysis, and illustrates how psychoanalytic theories have been adapted to allow for the interpretation of films and television programmes, employing Post-Jungian methods in the deep reading of a whole range of films. Readings of this kind can demonstrate the way that some films bear the psychological projections not only of their makers but of their audience, and assess the manner in which films engage the writer’s own psyche. Seeking to (...) go beyond existing theories, John Izod explores the question of whether Jungian screen analysis can work for ordinary filmgoers - can what functions for the scholar be said to be true for people without a background in Jung’s ideas? Through detailed readings of a number of films and programmes, John Izod builds on the work previously done by Jungian film analysts, and moves on to contemplate the level of audience engagement. Offering deep readings of films directed by Kubrick and Bernardo Bertolucci, as well as satirical comedy, documentaries and twenty-first century Westerns, the book explores the extent to which they manage to make the psychological impact on spectators that films of a similar kind have done on Jungian writers. The author concludes that the screen texts with the best likelihood of impacting the culture of the audience through their collective psychological force fall at opposite ends of the size and budget range: highly personal documentaries, and the most affecting of mainstream genre movies. This innovative text will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and therapists, as well as students and scholars of film with an interest in understanding how screen products work psychologically to engage the viewer. (shrink)

For some time, historians and anthropologists have been collaborating on the excavation of Africa's history through the analysis of transcriptions of unwritten sources. A major obstacle has been the forms, the generic structures of African historical discourse, which constitute a style of historiography culturally contrasting with our own. This paper examines two central vehicles of this historiography: the temporal, situational, and generic elaboration of historical "master metaphors," and the performative contexts and processes in which they are necessarily expressed. Here, the (...) formal and semantic resources and procedures of African historical narrative are analyzed in certain performance genres of the Basotho of southern Africa . In revealing how Africans' experience of events is rhetorically encoded and interpreted, the discussion emphasizes the importance of performance as the constitutive context of African historical discourse, militating against the separation of history from the aesthetic of its representation. More important, it demonstrates how historians working in an empirical, positivist narrative framework can go beyond attempts to glean isolated "facts" and referential content from African texts, and use what I have termed "auriture"--performative realizations--to draw out the ideological and structural context that informs African constructions of history. (shrink)

What can philosophy contribute to African culture? What can it draw from it? Could there be a truly African philosophy that goes beyond traditional folk thought? Kwasi Wiredu tries in these essays to define and demonstrate a role for contemporary African philosophers which is distinctive but by no means parochial. He shows how they can assimilate the advances of analytical philosophy and apply them to the general social and intellectual changes associated with 'modernisation' and the transition to new national (...) identities. But we see too how they can exploit traditional resources and test the assumptions of Western philosophy against the intimations of their own language and culture. The volume as a whole presents some of the best non-technical work of a distinguished African philosopher, of importance equally to professional philosophers and to those with a more general interest in contemporary African thought and culture. (shrink)

Two opposite statements must be rejected with the same rigor. First (1) is that a few countries have identified themselves with modernity by their scientific, technical and economic achievement and that the rest of the world, which is lagging behind the ‘advanced countries’, must follow in their footsteps and imitate their example. The article first of all sets out the falsity of such a statement, because there is not one but many western paths of modernization, and indicates that it is (...) nothing but a colonialist ideology, which spread from European and American societies and cultures and destroyed all independent efforts of modernization in other countries, in particular China. The hegemony of the western capitalist model is more than challenged by other ways of modernization, for though the soviet model has failed, other countries are ‘emerging’ or have already emerged. Second (2) the opposite representation defends the idea of a complete multiculturalism including political regimes and human rights. It fights against the previous colonialist model and supports a total relativism. But this view makes impossible the communication between completely different countries and cultures and reciprocal fear leads to an extreme conflict between ‘civilizations’, such as S. Huntington has described. This view leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable if each civilization has a complete internal unity and a complete control on all its activities. But the world is not divided into various theocratic states: no single theocratic state commands the whole or the majority of Muslim population. The central problem remains real and difficult: how to combine unity and diversity, the difference between cultures and the capacity for them to communicate with each other? The most useful idea is to elaborate one general definition of modernity, as a culture which is based on universalistic principles. The western mode of modernization is not the only possible one; nor is it at all sure that the western process of separation of temporal and spiritual powers is the only possibility. We cannot assert that universalism must penetrate social life only through political institutions and citizenship. It is beyond any reasonable doubt that modernity, with its universalistic components, cannot be identified with only one type of social organization and cultural values. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cancel Culture and the Trope of the ScapegoatA Girardian Defense of the Importance of Contemplative ReadingJoakim Wrethed (bio)What unfolds in this article encompasses violence, language/reading, and ethics. René Girard addresses these topics primarily in terms of mimesis, its potential violence, and the trope of the scapegoat. Still, toward the end of his career and life, he relentlessly pointed out the dangers implicated in the dynamism of these forces. He (...) addressed it clearly in his "apocalyptic book" Battling to the End (2010):I have been accused of repeating myself too often, of turning my theory into a fetish, of using it to explain everything. Yet it has described mechanisms that recent discoveries in neuroscience confirm: imitation is the initial and essential means of learning; it is not something acquired later on. We can escape mimetism only by understanding the laws that govern it. Only by understanding the dangers of imitation can we conceive of authentic identification with the Other. However, we are becoming aware of the primacy of moral relationship at the very time when the atomization of humanity is being realized, and when violence has increased in intensity and unpredictability.1[End Page 15] It is this thin line between necessary/harmless imitation and its dangerous versions that will be the central theme in the analysis. As Girard states, a vast amount of established research confirms that the mimetic impulse is innate.2 We should pay specific attention to "the atomization of humanity," since it zooms in on our contemporary epoch's paradoxical "mass-individualism," evidently tremendously enhanced by information and communication technology (ICT). In order to contribute to Girard's lifework and to extend it beyond his own writing, we outline a few contemporary phenomena that clearly exhibit the primordial dangers of human violence that Girard draws attention to. These phenomena are initially only roughly sketched, but subsequent sections give them sharper relief. The central phenomena are cancel culture, speed, and the reading of literature. Just to be clear, the intended mode of reading should be construed in a broad sense, thus potentially including philosophy and theology, if one is inclined to emphasize the differences between these disciplines and the reading of literature.3Cancel culture in certain ways makes manifest a social welfare society version of escalating violence, indicating that "violence has increased in intensity and unpredictability."4 A succinct definition of cancel culture will initially suffice:Cancel culture refers to ending (or attempting to end) an individual's career or prominence to hold them accountable for immoral behavior. Driven primarily by young progressives, often through social media, cancel culture has attracted controversy since it swept into the national conversation.5This definition can easily be extended into larger historical patterns in which, for instance, colonial crimes are highlighted and demands are raised for contemporary acts of atonement. As Rob Henderson points out, the obvious flip side is that "the swift and decisive nature of cancel culture can stifle debate, and some believe that dialogue is a more productive way to foster change."6 The "swiftness" and the immediate collectable consequences are decisive in their functions as social punishment and exclusion; in other words, digitalized speed accomplishes verdict and punishment in a very short time span, which is a reflection of desire pure and simple. The rapidity from intention to anticipated effect rather resembles an instinctive and violent action more than the forwarding of a carefully thought through argument or statement. The present becomes an invincible ivory tower bristling with power to finally mete out the justice that the erroneous ethics of earlier times were incapable of conceiving and achieving. An always already accelerating modernity speeded up immensely through [End Page 16] the fast growth of information and communication technology (ICT). To be sure, the whole evolution of computer technology is defined primarily in terms of processing speed, together with the quantity of information that can be contained in as small a spatial entity as possible. The present-day reality of having almost everything only one or a few clicks away on a screen—as a modern day realization of the library in Alexandria—enhances the relevance of a phenomenon historians have referred to... (shrink)

"Based on field research data collected and analyzed over the past seventeen years, the Maryknoll Institute of African Studies has categorized cultural knowledge into fifteen themes and thirty-five domains. The themes are the major values, symbols and ideas that bring wholeness and coherence to a culture. The themes explain the nature of life, the nature of creation, the nature of evil, etc. Underneath and within these themes are thirty-five cultural domains, that is, specific activities, rituals, attitudes and happenings (...) that make up the ordinary events in the lives of human beings, from birth to death and beyond ... The book is divided into fifteen chapters, one for each foundational theme"--Intro., p. [1]. (shrink)

The idea that the self is inextricably intertwined with the rest of the world—the “oneness hypothesis”—can be found in many of the world’s philosophical and religious traditions. Oneness provides ways to imagine and achieve a more expansive conception of the self as fundamentally connected with other people, creatures, and things. Such views present profound challenges to Western hyperindividualism and its excessive concern with self-interest and tendency toward self-centered behavior. This anthology presents a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary exploration of the nature and implications (...) of the oneness hypothesis. While fundamentally inspired by East and South Asian traditions, in which such a view often is critical to philosophical approach, this collection draws upon religion, psychology, and Western philosophy, as well as sociology, evolutionary theory, and cognitive neuroscience. Contributors trace the oneness hypothesis through the works of East Asian and Western thinkers and traditions, including Confucianism. Mohism, Daoism, Buddhism, Platonism, Zhuangzi, Kant, James, and Dewey. They intervene in debates over ethics, cultural difference, identity, group solidarity, and the positive and negative implications of metaphors of organic unity. Challenging dominant traditional views that presume the proper scope of the mind stops at the boundaries of the skin and skull, The Oneness Hypothesis shows that a more relational conception of the self is not only consistent with contemporary science but has the potential to lead to greater happiness and well-being for both individuals and the larger wholes of which they are parts. (shrink)

Two opposite statements must be rejected with the same rigor. First (1) is that a few countries have identified themselves with modernity by their scientific, technical and economic achievement and that the rest of the world, which is lagging behind the ‘advanced countries’, must follow in their footsteps and imitate their example. The article first of all sets out the falsity of such a statement, because there is not one but many western paths of modernization, and indicates that it is (...) nothing but a colonialist ideology, which spread from European and American societies and cultures and destroyed all independent efforts of modernization in other countries, in particular China. The hegemony of the western capitalist model is more than challenged by other ways of modernization, for though the soviet model has failed, other countries are ‘emerging’ or have already emerged. Second (2) the opposite representation defends the idea of a complete multiculturalism including political regimes and human rights. It fights against the previous colonialist model and supports a total relativism. But this view makes impossible the communication between completely different countries and cultures and reciprocal fear leads to an extreme conflict between ‘civilizations’, such as S. Huntington has described. This view leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable if each civilization has a complete internal unity and a complete control on all its activities. But the world is not divided into various theocratic states: no single theocratic state commands the whole or the majority of Muslim population. The central problem remains real and difficult: how to combine unity and diversity, the difference between cultures and the capacity for them to communicate with each other? The most useful idea is to elaborate one general definition of modernity, as a culture which is based on universalistic principles. The western mode of modernization is not the only possible one; nor is it at all sure that the western process of separation of temporal and spiritual powers is the only possibility. We cannot assert that universalism must penetrate social life only through political institutions and citizenship. It is beyond any reasonable doubt that modernity, with its universalistic components, cannot be identified with only one type of social organization and cultural values. (shrink)

The rise of modernity in the 19th century can, among other things, be vividly illustrated by the phenomenal advance of medical profession and, in particular, surgery as its most radical form. In the 20th century, the doctor has already been steadily associated with the phenomenon of power. Medical experiments on human subjects are generally recognized as one of the most extreme manifestations of this discursive nexus. Despite considerable amount of historical research, predominantly dealing with the experiences of Nazi medicine and (...) its patients in concentration camps and some other disciplinary institutions, as well as somewhat gloomy attraction providing for unabated fascination on the part of trivial literature, such experiments have not yet become an established literary topos. The elusive nature of this phenomenon which belongs to the kern of post-war anxiety, but is rarely addressed to, allows me to attest to the fact that human experiments, especially those conducted in Nazi concentration camps, have become a cultural «exclusion zone». Nonetheless, there is a whole range of texts in which attempts has been made to overcome the cultural taboo and to give voice to the victims of human vivisection. Two of them – Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Suspicion and Marcel Beyers The Flying Foxes – are analyzed in this paper against the backdrop of the so called «intellectual witness» – a concept proposed by Geoffrey Hartman and meaning a distanced witnessing, mostly on behalf of younger generations or, as in case with Dürrenmatt, of those who stayed aside of the World War II. In both novels, the narrative structures of intellectual witnessing serve to surmount the metaphorizing tendency which turns the reality of human experiments into tropes corroborating the author’s idea or concept. Combining documentary elements with the elements of trivial fiction, Dürrenmatt and Beyer make significant strides in deconstructing the naïve «over-identifying» with the victims, as well as their overt fictionalization. As a result, they manage to open the possibility of witness beyond the perspective of eyewitnesses, and at the same time subjugate this rearticulation of the past to the demands of the present situation that facilitates it. This perilous duality reveals the ethical double bind which seems to be inherent to the most reactualizations of utterly traumatic historical experiences, such as human experimentation, transformed into «exclusion zones» and then voiced through intellectual witness and other forms of «secondary witness». In order to become an object of witnessing, those traumatic experiences must correspond to the anxieties of the present originating from them. While triggering the reactualization process, such anxieties, however, also subject the experience of concrete victims to the desiderata of a traumatized «(intellectual) witness» and, in such a way, misuse the tragedy as a means of the witness’s coming to terms with his or her own trauma. (shrink)

As William Hart notes, we live in a deconstructive age. Whether we read Derrida or not, many of us in and outside of the academy are invested in destabilizing established narratives, ideas, and categories. Similarly, we are eager to show how dominant narratives and categories tend to cover over more promising ways of imagining and interpreting the world. Recently, this deconstructive spirit has been directed toward discourses about the black church, black religion, and black cultures more generally. Authors like Curtis (...) Evans, Eddie Glaude, Anthony Pinn, and Barbara Savage, for instance, have challenged hoary tendencies to imagine the black church as a monolithic whole, to assume that black folk are naturally .. (shrink)

Beginning with a widespread definition of Decadence as when individual parts flourish at the expense of the whole, Regenia Gagnier - a leading cultural historian of late nineteenth-century Britain - shows the full range of meanings of individualism at the height of its promise. From Darwin and Mill to the Fin de Siècle and beyond, Gagnier establishes the individual in relation to its theoretical and practical contexts: the couple and parent/child dyad; the workshop and community; the nation and (...) state; cosmopolis and world-citizenship. She concludes that the relation of individual to social or part to whole is better understood in terms of dynamic functions than fixed identities. Some highlights in this richly detailed study include: the evolutionary and developmental sciences of the individual; Herbert Spencer and the Individualists; Matthew Arnold and the Culturalists; the New Women, Female Aesthetes, and Socialist Individualists; poetry and the Philosophy of the Will; Gypsy Lorists and Cultural Philanthropy; Nietzsche’s Good Europeans and Late Victorian Cosmopolitans; the doctrine of mystical substitution of the one for the many. No one gives a fuller picture of the individual in modernity. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Mark Halstead's communitarian argument for a curriculum which includes education for cultural attachment. In particular it explores the difficulty of combining education for cultural attachment with education for democratic citizenship and cross-cultural understanding wherever the cultural attachment excludes the culture of liberalism. Halstead bases his proposals on a view of minority communities as separate and distinct cultural entities each determining the way of life of its members. This paper concludes (...) by offering a different view of culture and identity, one which suggests a curriculum for going beyond culture. (shrink)

End-of-life decision making constitutes a major challenge for bioethical deliberation and political governance in modern democracies: On the one hand, it touches upon fundamental convictions about life, death, and the human condition. On the other, it is deeply rooted in religious traditions and historical experiences and thus shows great socio-cultural diversity. The bioethical discussion of such cultural issues oscillates between liberal individualism and cultural stereotyping. Our paper confronts the bioethical expert discourse with public moral attitudes. The paper (...) is based on a qualitative study comprising 12 focus group discussions with religious and secular persons in the USA, Germany, and Israel. Considering the respective socio-political and legal frameworks, the thematic analysis focuses on moral attitudes towards end-of-life decision making and explores the complex interplay between individual preferences, culture, and religion. Our findings draw attention to the variety and complexity of cultural and religious aspects of end-of-life decision making. Although there is local consensus that goes beyond radical individualism, positions are not neatly matched with national cultures or religious denominations. Instead, the relevance of the specific situatedness of religious beliefs and cultural communities becomes visible: Their status and role in individual situations, for example, as consensual or conflicting on the level of personal perspectives, family relationships, or broader social contexts, e.g., as a majority or minority culture within a political system. As the group discussions indicate, there are no clear-cut positions anchored in “nationality,” “culture,” or “religion.” Instead, attitudes are personally decided on as part of a negotiated context representing the political, social and existential situatedness of the individual. Therefore, more complex theoretical and practical approaches to cultural diversity have to be developed. (shrink)

Though capturing powerful analytical principles, this excellent article misses ways in which psychology and neuroscience bear on reciprocity and decision-making. I suggest more explicit consideration of scale. We may go further beyond gene-culture dualism by articulating how varieties of living systems, while ultimately drawing from both genetic and cultural streams, evolve sufficiently as unitary targets of selection to mediate higher-level complex systems. (Published Online April 27 2007).

Discussions on the impact and future directions of technology often proceed from an empirical point of view that seems to presume that the ebb and flow of technological developments is beyond the control of humankind, so that all that humanity can do is adjust to it. However, such an approach easily neglects several crucial normative considerations that could enhance the standing of individual human beings and whole communities as rational users of technology rather than its slaves. Besides, more often (...) than not, technological products are designed in ways that neglect the needs of persons with disabilities, thereby perpetuating their exclusion from society. Consequently, this article proposes four normative considerations to guide the initiatives of African societies in their deployment of the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, namely, inclusiveness to meet the needs of all human beings, affordability to bridge the digital divide, respect for cultural identity to guard against cultural imperialism, and an ethical orientation as the overarching guide to building a truly human society. (shrink)

Posing a powerful challenge to dominant trends in cultural analysis, this book covers the whole history of the concept of culture, providing the broadest study of this notion to date. Johnson and Michaelsen examine the principal methodological strategies or metaphors of anthropology in the past two decades (embodied in works by Edward Said, James Clifford, George Marcus, V. Y. Mudimbe, and others) and argues that they do not manage to escape anthropology's grounding in representational practices. To the extent that (...) it remains a practice of representation, anthropology, however complex, critical, or self-reflexive, cannot avoid objectifying its others. Extending beyond a critique of anthropology, the book reads the twinned notions of the human and culture across the long history of the human sciences broadly conceived, including anthropology, cultural studies, history, literature, and philosophy. Although there is no chance, they argue, for a "new" anthropology that would not repeat the old anthropology's problem of disciplining the other, they also recognize that there may be no way out of anthropology. We are always writing, thinking, and living in anthropology's wake, within its specific compass or horizon. Moreover, they demonstrate, we have been doing so for a very long time, since at least the beginning of the institution of philosophy in Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

Despite being largely overlooked in the literature, Israel provides a rare example of what a full decade of twenty-first century populism in power looks like. Based on an examination of rhetoric and policymaking between 2009 and 2019, this article brings the writing on the subject up to date and highlights the unique traits of Israeli populism. In so doing it establishes that Israeli populism has been mainstreamed to a remarkable extent and currently encompasses almost all right-wing parties in the country’s (...) legislature. Moreover, it shows that the Israeli case embodies a variety of populism which has yet to be acknowledged in the literature – neither economic nor cultural in character, but rather based on national security issues. The concept of ‘security-driven populism’, introduced here, could prove useful to researchers studying other populist regimes that do not fit neatly into the ‘culture versus economy’ debate, which has dominated the field for years. (shrink)

Recent anthropological studies consider the corporal experience as an indispensable attribute of a person’s life world. They declare to go beyond the dichotomy of body and mind and present a modern person as a complex integrity of all systems and characteristics of a living organism. Body and mind are a union of vitality with different forms of their manifestation. The corporal is not regarded as an essential complement to the mental, the corporal is the mental, just in a different (...) form of its manifestation. The implementation of a methodological turn from a rationalcognitive approach to a holistic understanding of human nature and the peculiarities of cognitive processes outlines the problem of education transformation in both theoretical and practical terms. Taking into account the complexity and multiplicity of tasks in solving this problem, the guideline in defining conceptual ideas is the understanding of a person as a multi-temporal being who lives simultaneously in multiple hierarchical levels, ontological time and the scale of processes. It is a question of necessity to construct educational activity in semantic planes: mindbody- culture, mind-body-activity, body-consciousness-reaction and others. (shrink)

In this paper I draw some distinctions between the terms “cultural diversity” and “plurality” and argue that a radical conception of plurality is needed in order both to re-imagine the boundaries of democratic education and to address more fully the political aspects of conflict that plurality gives rise to. This paper begins with a brief exploration of the usages of the term diversity in European documents that promote intercultural education as a democratic vehicle for overcoming social conflict between different (...) cultural groups. In contradistinction to these usages, this paper calls for a more robust conception of plurality, one that does not simply denote membership in different cultural groupings but is rooted in the human condition and based on a conception of uniqueness. Following the work of Hannah Arendt and feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, I explore how the appearance of unique beings in specific contexts can be understood as an eminently political act and I contend that such a view leads to a better educational understanding of conflict and contestation. The paper sketches the contours of democratic plurality along this line of thought and discusses how these new boundaries have implications for education’s relation to democracy. (shrink)

Muslim women often come to mind when we think of women and their lives between the sharp borders of sun and shadow, male/female, private/public, veiled/naked, imprisoned/liberated. However, women exposed to patriarchal patterns within different faith traditions, and within many secular contexts, have some similarities even if no group is monolithic or can be compared with other groups as if there were easy analogies. In recent years there have been strong forces in Europe, and elsewhere, that seem to have as their (...) goal to antagonize groups against each other. Jews are set up against Muslims, Christians against Muslims and vice versa. In such a situation, secularism seems to be the only positive alternative. However, the sharp border between secularism and religious traditions has also been criticized for being simplistic. The notion of intersectionality has created an awareness of the interrelatedness of multiple layers of oppression and the need to be whole as a person. This article warns against falling into simplistic categories such as those used by neo-nationalists as well as of ultraliberal neo-atheists. Secularism, culture and religion, and thus multiculturalism, need be seen in nonessential terms that honour fluidity, process, ambivalence and hybridity. In this article I want to argue that women’s religious agency intersects with education, health, economy and moral autonomy based on an affirmation of multi-layered, fluid identities. (shrink)

Systems thinking is a general worldview concerning the nature of reality. It sees the world as composed of systems, and all particular entities populating reality as linked with other entities – the emergence of new properties denies the flatland of plain materiality, and generates entities of a higher order. Spirituality in historical and modern traditions has minimally amounted to relating oneself to a larger or higher systemic whole, which confers meaning to particular cases of existence. In some religious traditions this (...) larger systemic whole has been understood as a transcendental sphere of existence, whereas in other religious and spiritual traditions it has been seen as an immanent thatness. The search for spirituality and wisdom has never been confined to religious traditions, but has inspired other systems thinkers as well, for example in philosophy, the New Age movement, in developmental psychology, biology, or futures research. The American philosopher and theoretical psychologist Ken Wilber has discussed, re-interpreted and synthesized various views on spiritual development as well as systems thinking and has provided input for the New Age movement, comparative religion, developmental psychology, and world philosophy. In this article we will discuss the relationship between systems thinking and spirituality and will assess Ken Wilber’s contribution to their conceptualization. (shrink)

[About the book] In this book the editors brought together outstanding articles concerning intercultural aesthetics. The concept ‘Intercultural aesthetics’ creates a home space for an artistic cross-fertilization between cultures, and for heterogeneity, but it is also firmly linked with the intercultural turn within Western and non-Western philosophy. The book is divided into two parts, yet one can sense a clear unity throughout the whole book. This unity is related to the underlying subject that the different authors, each in their own (...) way and from their own background, try to reveal. They use related, and overlapping terms such as ‘the suchness of things’, ‘dancing and shaping lives’, ‘presenting a meaning beyond words, presenting the unpresentable, experiencing’, in order to bring to our awareness the genuine importance of the non-conceptual, next to the conceptual. Several authors moreover take on a reflective, and at times even a self-reflective stance, pointing to the intrinsic relation between cultural aesthetics and ethics, making this book unique in its kind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in QuestionG. Felicitas MunzelRichard L. Velkley. Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. x + 192. Cloth, $40.00. Paper, $18.00.In this collection of essays Velkley realizes a dual achievement: a penetrating scholarly analysis of a familiar topic, modern philosophy's on-going criticism of rational Enlightenment as a "project aiming at progressive rational mastery of nature (...) and the human situation" (60, 3), and an exemplary presentation of philosophizing as a self-reflexive activity in which the "know thyself" is posed to philosophy itself. The focus is on the German Idealist tradition, taking its origins from Rousseau and Kant to "reform, not simply to reject," but still to "overcome earlier modern accounts of scientific reason as abstract, mechanistic, and narrow, and as failing to do justice to the concrete wholeness or richness of nature and human experience, thus impoverishing our conceptions of morality, political life, and human aspirations toward the noble, the sacred, and the beautiful" (93). Velkley's scholarly interpretation identifies Rousseau as the pivotal figure who is the source both of the modern philosophical effort to achieve "human wholeness" by recovering an "original prediscursive or prerational unity" (an account that is the further source of the distinction between culture and civilization [12]) and of the "bifurcation in the ways to reach such wholeness," the ways of "citizenship" and "natural freedom" (13-14). The essays argue for an "important connection between Rousseau and Heidegger, through Kant and Schelling" (6). [End Page 345]While other thinkers are treated (for example, Pufendorf and Nietzsche), the essays primarily examine the writings of these four thinkers to elucidate "the persistence of a set of problems and a way of questioning" particular to modern philosophy (8).Velkley points out that Rousseau's critique of modern rationality is far more subtle than it is usually read. Granted, "through its introduction of self-reflectiveness into the previously 'innocent' and prereflective human situation," reason is perceived as the "true origin" and not the means for overcoming human ills (53). However, the "prereflective origin is nowhere to be found," it is an "imaginative construction," and it is a "mistake to take at face value any apparent assertion that natural man was merely an animal with only instinct and sensation" (37, 41). Because of his distinctively human awareness of time, natural man, "far from being mere animal," is "the only being whose openness to being exposes him to the nonbeing of death" (48). In short, "some 'bondage' to reason" is inescapable and "Rousseau's various plans for the reform of politics, education, the family, and the philosophical life" should be read as "ways of making the most of that bondage" (33).In the case of Kant, Velkley's emphasis is on the critical effort to resolve the dialectic, to correct the rational self-ignorance "so that the striving of reason for totality will not turn into a nihilistic rejection of reason" (112); or put another way, Rousseau inspires Kant's quid juris question, the issue of the "justification of reason as a whole," specifically the legitimacy of the categories (50-61, 101). Schelling, together with Kant's other Idealist successors, seeks a "greater unity, integration, wholeness, and concreteness than Kant provides" (113). The two main aspects of Schelling's project that Velkley discusses are (1) the discovery of the true human self in nature, the "hidden infinite unconscious self beneath the apparent finite conscious self," a "self whose objectification by the finite categories of discursive reason is quite impossible" and which thus discloses an "infinite contradiction" (115); and (2) the affirmation of the error of earlier philosophizing as belonging "essentially to philosophical inquiry" and being the very "precondition for finding truth" (125). From the philosophical attempt to correct reason's fundamental error, to its reading of "being in error" as an ineliminable step in the historical progress of reason and philosophy, Velkley turns to Heidegger's effort to step behind traditional metaphysics altogether and to move "forward into a new thinking beyond metaphysics" (142), from speech about Being to language as a power of disclosure of Being that overpowers the... (shrink)

This article goes beyond the debate over whether culture competes with politics in the women's movement to explore the complex relationship between cultural and political action. A case study of the local women's movement in Bloomington, Indiana, provides little evidence that cultural feminism led to a decline in political activity in the women's movement. Rather, the attractiveness of cultural and political activities changes with shifts in political opportunities. During periods of opportunity or threat that stimulate extensive (...) action, activists are energized for both cultural and political projects. During “slow” periods when there are few opportunities to make political gains, cultural projects are particularly attractive to feminists and may compete with political activities. However, cultural activities also help to maintain a feminist collective identity and provide networks to political groups. Ongoing political action is provoked by countermovement actions and other critical events and supported by “outsiders” who bring new ideas to a local community, national feminist organizations, and feminists within local institutions. (shrink)

The connection between Chinese sexism and Confucianism has been a subject of study on the condition of Chinese women in the West since the rise of feminist consciousness in the 1970s. However Confucianism in feminist scholarship is inescapably construed as a misogynous ideology that is incapable of self-rectification in regards to the issue of gender parity. Hence, conceptually the eradication of Confucianism becomes the necessary condition for the liberation of Chinese women, and the adoption of Western ideology let it be (...) Marxist-socialism, Liberalism, or Existentialism is then a logical next step for Chinese women. Yet, such a dichotomization of the West as a superior moral subject and the East as a passive object victimized by their "sexist" tradition is nevertheless an oversimplification of the condition and the liberation of women in the developing world. In the end, it is essentially a neo-colonial discourse in a feminist disguise. This dissertation sets itself up to accomplish two tasks: first, it is to obtain a conceptual clarity of what constitutes Confucianism and its connection with dominant sexist, social practices; second, it is to go beyond a mere critique of Confucianism and feminism as an ally of Chinese patriarchal family structure and Western imperialism respectively, and to lay a foundation for a future construction of a gender theory based on Confucianism as a theoretical ground to explain the cultural construct of Chinese women and to conceive an alternative ethical ground for women's liberation. Eventually, the whole project can be seen as an act of self-affirmation of my ethnic identity as a Chinese and an act of reconciliation with my feminist identity in the modern world. (shrink)

From a largely Western phenomenon, the “animal turn” has, in recent years, gone global. Animals and Human Society in Asia: Historical, Cultural and Ethical Perspectives is just such a timely product that testifies to this trend.But why Asia? The editors, in their very helpful overview essay, have from the outset justified the volume's focus on Asia and ensured that this is not simply a matter of lacuna filling. The reasons they set out include: the fact that Asia is the (...) cradle of early human settlement and animal domestication; Asia encompasses an extreme diversity of closely connected ecosystems and human cultures; Asia is the place where the world's major religions originated; and, as in other parts of the world, Asia's use of animals for food and other utilitarian purposes constitutes a prominent feature of its culture. All of these factors, they argue, made Asia a unique lab for the exploration of major developments in human civilization and the complexities of human-animal interactions.Based on these premises, the book is divided into four parts, each concentrating on areas that the editors consider to have paramount significance in world history: Part I, “Hunting and Domestication”; Part II “Animals as Food”; Part III “Animals at War”; and Part IV “Animals in Culture and Religion.” As many good works on animal studies do, the volume adopts a truly cross-disciplinary approach, uniting scholars from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, history, anthropology, art, religion, literature, and cultural studies. It too takes an interregional approach and covers a vast geographical area, stretching from the western edge of Asia in the Levant to Central Asia, where once roamed the horses of the nomadic pastoral tribes, to the other end of Asia, including India, China, and Japan. Temporally impressive as well, the work takes us from the deep history of the Paleolithic period up to the contemporary world, exploring the diverse roles that a wide range of animals—horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, tigers, and so forth—have played in Asia's rich and unique past and present.Strong in archaeology, Part I, “Hunting and Domestication,” responds to the much-called for “deep” or “coevolutionary” history of human-animal relations in recent years. The three chapters discuss, respectively, the roles that proboscideans have played in the diet and culture of early societies in Paleolithic China and beyond; the ways in which animals of all sizes have been increasingly integrated into the diet, daily uses, trade, and warfare in Holocene Negev; and the diversifying roles played by donkeys in the early Bronze Age in Southern Levant as a food source, a means of transport and in ritual sacrifices. Together, they demonstrate, with reference to telling archaeological evidence how the early societies in this region have been highly dependent upon the increasingly sophisticated interactions with and uses of mega-herbivores in the protracted and by no means clear-cut transition from hunting and herding towards the agricultural way of life, affirming the co-existing and co-constituting relations between humans and other animals in the deep past of Asia.The chapters in the section on “Animals at War” equally reveal the crucial roles that animals have played in the military sphere, as either a practical war technology or a show of military power. “Elephants in Mongol History” revisits the thesis of elephant-mounted troops in South and Southeast Asia as a barrier to Mongol expansion. Through its lively account of the pivotal battles in Mongolian history, especially that against India and China, it illustrates with great success the complex interactions between animals (especially elephants, horses, and humans), technology, and the geographical environment, which jointly exercised their influence on the outcome of warfare and degree of success of political rule. Turning away from the dynamic of warfare, the following two chapters explore the biopolitical question of the management of the horse as a bio-resource in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517) and early Ming Dynasty China, respectively. The first one places its focus on the breeding, procurement, and feeding of the horse subjects in question, while the latter concentrates on the human organization of various resources for the upkeep of government horses—a conventional area of study called “horse administration” in the institutional history of the government in China.The last section, “Animals in Culture and Religion,” examines the changing images of apex predators, such as lions and tigers, in Buddhist perceptions from South Asia to East Asia; the cult of the Horse King in late Imperial China; and the significance of animal signs in Mongolian historiography. They represent an established approach in animal studies that seeks to understand different aspects of human culture through symbolic or metaphorical animals. Instead of treating the animals discussed as mere abstractions, which has been a frequent criticism of works that adopt this approach, the relations between the symbolic animals and their prototype in the natural world were attentively explored. The essay on the cult of the Horse King, for example, closely links the wax and wane of the cult since late imperial China with the changing use and subsequent disuse of the actual horses in agriculture, transportation, commerce, and quotidian life. Yet, classic as these essays on symbolic animals are, one does feel slightly unsatiated when coming to the end of this section, which also marks the end of this volume. Having been reminded early in the introductory essay that Asia was “a major site for the emergence of moral teachings and ethical guidance on the treatment of animals” and how this legacy “still affects the lives of billions of humans to this very day,” one feels naturally rather let down that no article in this volume directly addresses this vital ethical dimension, especially since it belongs to a series on “animal ethics.”Indeed, regarding the task of placing either the nonhuman animals or the ethical relations between humans and other animals center stage, the essays in this volume achieve only varying levels of success. Some authors exhibit a more acute awareness of what “animal studies” or “animal ethics” might entail epistemically and methodically and experiment by paying closer attention to the species-specific characteristics, experience, and agency of nonhuman animals in order to cast off the deified anthropocentrism previously ruled in humanist scholarship. However, others have made no such attempt. For example, in Part II of “Animals as Food,” an essay on the production and consumption of milk in contemporary China, albeit alert to the issue of health hazards to consumers, omits any consideration of the subject from the dairy cows’ perspective under the modern intensive farming system. Moreover, otherwise superb research on the tuna-fishing industry in Japan, with its insightful discussion of the nexus between knowledge economies and imperial politics, too passes over any discussion of the fate of the tuna, whether collectively as a group of living organisms containing 15 species or individually as animals with an embodied experience. One does ponder whether these essays would fit better in a volume on the cultural history of food or on the entwining history of knowledge production, economics, and politics, which conventionally position human interests at the center of research.Taken as a whole, this is an impressive volume that directs our attention to the hitherto understudied world of Asia in animal studies. The long durée, with its interdisciplinary and interregional approach, also most powerfully presents a past in Asia that could not have been the same without the participation of animals at every level, from everyday life to the shaping of cultural values, the construction of belief systems, the building of a national identity, and even the rise and fall of regimes. Scholars and students interested in expanding the frontier of our understanding of the world with a more inclusive “we” should find a wealth of interesting subjects on which to build further research. Finally, the volume also presents a fitting occasion for all scholars committed to animal studies to consider the grave challenge confronting the field that arose alongside its growing respectability and rapid expansion: Should it be oriented toward the destabilization of our previously anthropocentric conception of the world? Or should no such perimeter be imposed, as in this volume? The overall breadth and limitations of this volume leave one pondering this issue. (shrink)

: As Val Plumwood argues, the Christian otherworldly is ecologically problematic. In relation to time, space, being and agency, this article considers the tendency to dualism in Christian appeals to the otherworldly. In the context of Plumwood's critique of nature-skepticism, I ask whether we should also critique an otherworldly skepticism. I then set out five possibilities for understanding the Christian otherworldly in relation to nature and culture. I argue that the otherworldly can be understood not only as a problematic (...) class='Hi'>cultural notion that participates in the devaluation of nature, but as a way of understanding the otherness of nature, as having purposes and agencies beyond the cultural construction of earth as world. An understanding of nature as other-worldly presents challenges for both Christian theologies and environmental ethics. (shrink)

“Cultural imperialism” has been an influential concept in the representation of the modern Christian missionary movement. This essay calls its usefulness into question and draws on recent work on the cultural dynamics of globalization to propose alternative ways of looking at the role of missions in modern history. The first section of the essay surveys the ways in which the term “cultural imperialism” has been employed in different disciplines, and some of the criticisms made of the term (...) within those disciplines. The second section discusses the application of the cultural imperialism framework to the missionary enterprise, and the related term “colonization of consciousness” used by Jean and John Comaroff in their influential work on British missionaries and the Tswana of southern Africa. The third section looks at the historiography of missions in modern China, showing how deeply the teleological narratives of nationalism and development have marked that historiography. The concluding section argues that the missionary movement must be seen as one element in a globalizing modernity that has altered Western societies as well as non-Western ones in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that a comparative global approach to the missionary movement can help to illuminate the process of modern cultural globalization. (shrink)

This article is an assessment of the moral problems that beset cultural relativism, that is, the belief that the nature of human existence and value is strictly dependent on, and therefore autonomously proper to, each particular culture. According to this view, the human experience never transcends its native ground. It is, hence, no use judging one form of the human experience against another since no universal non-local yardstick exists to measure them by. After exposing the flaws and contradictions inherent (...) in this view, the author draws a picture of the consequences of upholding cultural relativism, particularly as it shapes the moral self-understanding of its followers in this instance and, for illustrative purpose, Richard Rorty. Finally, the article sketches an argument for a humanistic understanding of culture, a theory that allows us to hold that human existence does vary according to local and historical communities, and yet holds to a moral centre valid across all human culture. (shrink)

The consolidation of the interdisciplinary field of bioethics in Europe and in the United States was accompanied by harsh criticisms by the social sciences; criticisms that have endured and been reshaped from the late twentieth century until the present. This article begins with a critical discussion of the myopia detected in a bioethical thought that has systematically disregarded its origins, both cultural and social. I claim that this deficit could be rectified if social scientists, in general, and sociologists, in (...) particular, were to move away from the periphery, which they still occupy today, and take up a central position in the area of bioethics. In order to analyze the distant and controversial relationship between the social sciences and bioethics, I proceed to an analysis of their various approaches, respectively guided by descriptive and normative ethics. The specific intersection of sociologists with bioethical thought will be scrutinized, in accordance with an analytical continuum that illustrates an evolution from a collaborative position to a free and independent position adopted by the social scientists. The article concludes by presenting a suggestion regarding the integration of the sociological imagination in the processes of ethical deliberation on the moral problems that emerge in biomedical research and clinical practice. In this context, further epistemological reflection is invited regarding the influence of socio-cultural sources of morality relating to the manner in which such problems have been challenged by the bioethical imagination. (shrink)

Confucius is finally rehabilitated. Party dignitaries kneel at his ancestral shrine. The benevolent Confucian is a new image of China for the outside, and for Chinese dealing with the collapse of ideology and the moral fabric of their society. The word tianxia is usually translated “all under Heaven.” It has a complicated history and a complicated contemporary appropriation in a desperate ideology-cum-PR campaign. The tianxia-idea is that China has for millennia been a government of all under heaven. It was such (...) a government in the past, is one today, and offers the whole world its benevolent alternative to liberalism and democracy. More than one contributor to this strong collection of interesting essays suspects that the Confucian revival is an act of desperation. As soft power, Confucianism may be no match for global capitalism. Soft power is not readily synthesized by official campaign. Its genuine source is in everyday life, and the life of ordinary Chinese is without much resonance beyond its borders. The whole world uses Chinese electronics, though almost none but the Chinese read their books, watch their television, or listen to their music. The world’s love affair with China is fixated on the economic numbers and is no less capricious. It has never been clear whether tianxia means a cultural realm without political boundaries, as is urged by modern ideologists, or is just another word for China, which is how modern Chinese dictionaries explain it. On the official account, membership in “all under Heaven” is a matter of shared culture, sustained by affective ties rather than coercion, but it is a culture that values order over freedom, ethics over law, and authority over democracy and human rights. Outsiders worry that tianxia is the cloak of a rising hegemon. However, the important audience for lofty talk of tianxia may be internal. Whether foreigners really trust it may be less urgent than for the Chinese to believe it about themselves. Postsocialist China has no unifying vision and has yet to honestly scrutinize official socialism. The new discourse of tianxia speaks to their need for a vision of their place in the world. The image of a tianxia government of benevolent authority may be more useful for identity within China than for offering the world a viable alternative to democracy and human rights. (shrink)

Without question, UFOs are part of popular culture; indeed, one might even talk of them as a popular culture. Without question, Roswell is part of the UFO scene; but it is far from the whole thing, nor is it even the central issue. Still less did the Roswell “culture” spawn humankind's preoccupation with possible alien visitors from outer space or the literary genre of science fiction. Yet if this book is to be believed, Roswell has been the center from which (...) these and yet more matters arose: “through the early years, the single event of Roswell, even without a crumb of proof, augmented every image, word, and sound produced by the mass media” . To call this an enormous overstatement would be a large understatement.Little Gray Men is unfortunately full of such sweeping assertions, so broad as to be implausible on their face and yet unsupported by argument or evidence. Toby Smith even defines popular culture as “communication that may be informative but that principally provides pleasure for the participants” , a description that many scholars of culture or communication might find arguable. Some assertions are not only sweeping but puzzling as well—for example, reference to “the Pavlovian nature of popular culture” or a “rhomboidal, zinc‐tinted” television set . Many more examples can be found without venturing beyond the book's introduction.Chapter 1 asserts that Roswell is “a touchstone for our times.” Chapter 2 is about the rocket pioneer Robert Goddard, who does have a connection to Roswell “the Place” but a most tenuous connection to Roswell “the Incident,” which is supposedly the theme of the book. The UFO Encounter gathering at Roswell in 1997 is described in Chapter 3, and the allegation that Roswellian aliens were transported to Wright‐Patterson Air Force Base constitutes Chapter 4. Books about the Incident are mentioned in Chapter 5, films in Chapter 7, science fiction on television in Chapter 8; in between, Chapter 6 is about the science fiction writer Jack Williamson, whose connection to the Incident is less than noteworthy.The book has no formal bibliography or specific notes, though there is a short chapter entitled “Sources.” Thus, when one reads on page 2 “A book came out, in 1980,” there is no quick or easy way to find out what that book is. So Little Gray Men is not a scholarly book. It is in fact a grab bag of trivia connected, not substantively, but only semantically, through the name “Roswell.”As a piece of journalism, one might describe the book as impressionistic, were it not so misleading. No one could gather from Little Gray Men that the popular culture of ufology has a serious side to it, that competent scientists and social scientists have concerned themselves with issues arising from claims about UFOs in general and, in some small part, from claims about the Roswell incident. It is as though one chose to write about the popular culture of cancer by gathering trivia about cranks, quacks, and survivors while saying nothing about mainstream treatments or the underlying scientific knowledge.Ufology has a vast literature, some of it the give‐and‐take of quite disciplined controversy among competent and informed people. That this book has been entirely ignored by ufologists illustrates that it is, in Wolfgang Pauli's phrase, “not even wrong.”. (shrink)

Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger encapsulates the complexities of identity formation in a milieu effected by neo-capitalism. The novel, for many, is about a new identity made available to the hitherto marginalized in the form of opportunities unveiled by market forces. It is also perceived as a registration of the frustration and anger of the deprived that has become conscious of the new possibilities. Understandably, interpreting the novel on these lines leads to the identification of the protagonist Balram as (...) a champion of the marginalized, settling scores with the oppressive system. However, there are far subtler notes in the protagonist’s attitude to these sweeping changes than the simple and one dimensional approach of an achiever who is able to break the “rooster coop” and revel at the reversal of fortune. Neither is it a representative voice of the suppressed class turning the table on its oppressor by using the opportunities offered by the global market. The “notes” of the voices that emerge as Balram, the boy from darkness, moves up the ladder to become Ashok Sharma, the entrepreneur hiding in light, not only lack symphony but also create a distinct dissonance. Clearly, the discord in the changing notes is brought about by the forces that changed the world he lives in-a neo-capitalist world. The whole process of Balram turning into Ashok Sharma is a neocapitalist coup. (shrink)

In Anerkennung der für Gegenwartsgesellschaften konstitutiven Diversität ihrer Bevölkerungen diskutieren Bioethik und Medizin verstärkt die kulturelle Relativität ihrer eigenen Voraussetzungen, die Kulturspezifik „anderer“ Positionen und die Möglichkeiten kulturübergreifender Orientierungen. Dabei kommt häufig ein Kulturbegriff zum Einsatz, der aus der Perspektive der aktuellen Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie zu statisch, zu homogenisierend und zu sehr auf Differenz und Abgrenzung hin orientiert ist. Der Beitrag diskutiert zunächst Konzepte von Kultur, die solche Verkürzungen zu vermeiden suchen. Sie betonen hingegen Verflechtungszusammenhänge unter dem Vorzeichen intensivierter Globalisierung (...) und deuten Kultur aktiv und reflexiv, als Ressource menschlichen Tuns, und nicht deterministisch als Kausalfaktor. Anschließend wird der ethnographische Forschungsstand zu Patientenverfügungen in westlichen Gesundheitssystemen zusammengefasst. Zeitintensive, qualitative Forschung verdeutlicht die Gefahr einer Kulturalisierung sozialer Ungleichheiten, die spezifische Positionalität bioethischer Prämissen und die Vielfalt und Komplexität im Umgang mit Patientenverfügungen. Der Beitrag schließt mit Hinweisen darauf, wie Diversität in Entscheidungsprozessen am Ende des Lebens jenseits von Kultur analysiert werden kann. (shrink)