This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to (...) engage in “reflective” thinking. (shrink)

This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong-Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to engage (...) in “reflective” thinking. (shrink)

Se trata de mostrar y analizar algunas de las lecturas que se han hecho de la obra de Mohandas Gandhi en América Latina en las últimas décadas, a través de un escrito que se balancea entre una investigación empírica y el estudio de un caso que permite presentar dos problemas teóricos. Para esto se abordan autores y autoras de diversos países de la región, que permiten aludir a dos problemas teóricos que se formulan en este trabajo: la circulación de las (...) ideas entre regiones Sur-Sur, la reelaboración de las ideas en la región receptora. Estos problemas son claves en el desarrollo de los estudios eidéticos como disciplina. Se realiza una introducción respecto a la recepción de las ideas de Gandhi en la región hacia 1930, estudiando las articulaciones del pensamiento de éste con otros autores y tendencias de pensamiento y señalando algunas recepciones y cruzamientos posteriores. Luego el trabajo se focaliza en estudiosos de Argentina, Brasil, Chile, México, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico y Venezuela, tratando de presentar varios casos diferentes y que cubran numerosos países de la región, apuntando a un muestreo válido, aunque sin suficiente afirmación metodológica. The intention of this work is to show and analyze some of the readings that have been done about Mohandas Gandhi’s work in Latin America in the last decades, by means of a writing that swings between an empirical research and the study of a case that allows to present two theoretical problems. For this there are approached authors and authoresses of diverse countries of the region, who allow to allude to two theoretical problems that are formulated in this work: the flow of the ideas between South-South regions, the reformulation of the ideas in the receiving region. These issues are key to the development of the eidéticos studies as a discipline. An introduction is made regarding the reception of the ideas of Gandhi in the region by 1930, studying the joints of his thought and of those of other authors and trends of thought, pointing out some receptions and later crosses. Then the work focuses in experts of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, trying to present several different cases covering numerous countries of the region, pointing at a valid sampling, though without sufficient methodological affirmation. (shrink)

In 2000, the world of anthropology was rocked by a high-profile debate over the fieldwork performed by two prominent anthropologists, Napoleon Chagnon and James V. Neel, among the Yanamamo tribe of South America. The controversy was fueled by the publication of Patrick Tierney's incendiary Darkness in El Dorado which accused Chagnon of not only misinterpreting but actually inciting some of the violence he perceived among these "fierce people". Tierney also pointed the finger at Neel as the unwitting agent (...) of a deadly measles outbreak. Attracting a firestorm of attention, Tierney's book went straight to the heart of anthropology's most pressing questions: What are the right ways to study a tribal people? How can scientists avoid unduly influencing those among whom they live? What guidelines should govern the interactions - economic, social, medical, and sexual - between a scientist in the field and the people being studied? This volume represents anthropology's thoughtful, measured reply to the issues raised by this heated controversy. Placing the dispute within the context of ongoing debates over the ethics of biomedical research among human populations, the contributors to this volume discuss how the interaction between investigators and their subjects can most sensibly be governed. They consider the responsibility of the media in disseminating anti-scientific and pseudo-scientific views, and how scientists might best educate journalists to enable them to effectively educate others. In the wake of what was widely construed as a major scientific scandal, this landmark volume lays out in detail the principles and ground rules of anthropological and scientific fieldwork. (shrink)

During the mid-18th century, when electricity was coming into its own, natural philosophers began to entertain the possibility that electricity is the mysterious nerve force. Their attention was first drawn to several species of strongly electric fish, namely torpedoes, a type of African catfish, and a South American "eels." This was because their effects felt like those of discharging Leyden jars and could be transmitted along known conductors of electricity. Moreover, their actions could not be adequately explained by popular (...) mechanical theories. Many of the early documents supportive of the hypothesis of animal electricity were associated with the Dutch colonies in South America. This article presents and examines those documents, and shows how Dutch scientists on both sides of the Atlantic conducted experiments and communicated with each other in the 1750s and 1760s. It reveals the important roles played by inquisitive physicians and lovers of nature in South America, and by natural philosophers and collectors of exotic specimens in the Netherlands—learned men who began to make a credible case for animal electricity in some exciting places at a pivotal moment in time. (shrink)

This volume explores the Pre-Columbian Andean concepts of time, space, and the human body through objects, skeletal remains, and language. This interdisciplinary approach to conceptualizing what the Andean concepts of being may have been brings contemporary approaches to past notions of the sacred, with each discipline adding its own unique perspective to the Andean ontology. A particular strength of this volume is that most of the contributors are South American researchers, offering North American scholars entry into scholarship that has (...) been confined to Spanish language publications. (shrink)

Andean philosophy of nature or pachasophy results from topography and mode of production that, merged together, have produced an integrated and interacting worldview that blurs the line between culture and nature. Respecting Pacha, or the interconnectedness of life and geography, maintaining complementarity and equilibrium through symbolic interactions, and caring for Pachamama, the feminine presence of Pacha manifested mainly as cultivable soil are the basis of Andean environmental and social ethics. Reciprocity or ayni is the glue that holds everything together. This (...) weaving of traditional beliefs, customs, and ecologi­cal knowledge is rooted in the landscape and has sustained Quechua and Aymara societies during many millennia of knowing, using, and transforming the varied environments of the central Andes of South America. Any environmental ethics that influences people’s lives and promotes respectful and sustainable relationships with nature will be framed by already held worldviews. In Bolivia indigenous intellectuals are drawing on the ancient tradition of Pacha to trace an environmental ethics of pacha qamaña or the harmonious and integral well-being of life, the Earth, and the cosmos, and the ethics of suma qamaña as an all em­bracing ethical framework for the “good life” or “living well.” Although pacha qamaña and suma qamaña are rooted in the Andean mythological worldview, they will interest Western philosophers because the values they promote can be correctives for Western cultural traits that see little more than instrumental value in nature. In this sense, pacha qamaña and suma qamaña contribute to the broader discussion of environmental ethics. (shrink)

During the mid-18th century, when electricity was coming into its own, natural philosophers began to entertain the possibility that electricity is the mysterious nerve force. Their attention was first drawn to several species of strongly electric fish, namely torpedoes, a type of African catfish, and a South American "eels." This was because their effects felt like those of discharging Leyden jars and could be transmitted along known conductors of electricity. Moreover, their actions could not be adequately explained by popular (...) mechanical theories. Many of the early documents supportive of the hypothesis of animal electricity were associated with the Dutch colonies in South America. This article presents and examines those documents, and shows how Dutch scientists on both sides of the Atlantic conducted experiments and communicated with each other in the 1750s and 1760s. It reveals the important roles played by inquisitive physicians and lovers of nature in South America, and by natural philosophers and collectors of exotic specimens in the Netherlands—learned men who began to make a credible case for animal electricity in some exciting places at a pivotal moment in time. (shrink)

What is the relevance of the Indian case for South Africa? And what should South Africans, and the rest of the world, make of the claim in Madhav Khosla’s India’s Founding Moment that we should recognize India as ‘the’ paradigm case for modern constitutional democracy? The constitutional projects of India and South Africa are naturally connected, but Khosla’s book helps to bring out what is perhaps the most important of the connections. Both are founded on an insistently (...) democratic constitutionalism, in places where most inhabitants had long been told they were not suited or ready for democracy. Both display the conviction that boldly giving the vote to all, in these circumstances, is a powerful way to construct a democracy. This idea is crucial for understanding many aspects of both constitutions. This makes India a natural paradigm case for South Africa and many others. The stronger claim, that it is ‘the’ paradigm case and should succeed the United States to this status, can become more complicated once one tests it out globally. Finland and Ireland are especially strong and earlier examples of what Khosla sees as ground-breaking in India. Latin America’s somewhat different post-colonial trajectory makes India a more imperfect paradigm there. But that said, treating India and its founding as paradigmatic may well be the single best step to take for a more balanced view of the constitutional world, and this book’s elegant erudition makes it a real scholarly pleasure to do so. (shrink)

El artículo a partir de fuentes iconográficas, estudia la sustitución de los símbolos imperiales españoles por nuevos símbolos republicanos a principios del siglo XIX, destacando obras como las alegorías de la libertad y la patria para el caso colombiano. Estos emblemas tuvieron su origen en las representaciones de América del siglo XVI, pero con las autonomías y las posteriores independencias se convierten en los primeros símbolos de identidad de las nacientes repúblicas. The article, based on iconographic sources, studies the substitution (...) of imperial Spanish symbols by new republican symbols at the beginning of the 19th century, emphasizing some works as the allegories of Freedom and the Mother land in the case of Colombia. These emblems had their origin in the representations of America of the 16th century, however, initially, with their autonomies and later independences they turn into the first symbols of identity of the blossoming republics. (shrink)

El artículo examina la obra teatral de fray Camilo Henríquez, específicamente La Camila o la Patriota de Sudamérica, a partir del supuesto de que en esta los principios estéticos quedan subordinados al ideario ilustrado y republicano, a cuya defensa y difusión fray Camilo dedicó su vida. A partir del análisis de la obra se develan las diferentes marcas textuales por las que el autor publicita las ideas republicanas e instala -en un modelo de asimilación- a un sujeto indio moderno. Operación (...) que se da en un contexto de recepción en que colonialidad y modernidad son fenómenos simultáneos, lo que deviene a la postre en un pensamiento republicano utópico. This article approaches the work of Friar Camilo Henríquez, specifically the play The Camila or the Patriot of South America, from the assumption that aesthetic principles are subordinate to the illustrated modern and republican ideas, who Fray Camilo devoted most of his life to defend and disseminate. From the analysis of La Camila, the article unveils the different textual marks through which the author disseminated republican ideas and established, in an assimilation fashion, a modern Indian subject. This happens in a reception context in which colonialism and modernity appear to be simultaneous, and therefore republican thought becomes utopian. (shrink)

This review should properly be prefaced with two caveats. First, I am not a specialist in the field of human origins. I am not an archaeologist or anthropologist, but a geologist who is generally unfamiliar with the literature covered and reviewed in this book as well as the issues and controversies. Second, I did not read the entire book. This review is based on a reading of the introduction and conclusion while skimming the rest of the text. For those who (...) find it unsettling that a reviewer has not read a book in its entirety, I can only tell you that it is very difficult to find people who are willing to donate the time necessary to read and review long technical books. (I’m still waiting on JSE to find reviewers for books I published in 2010). Anyone who is offended by my failure to peruse this volume from front to back covers may satisfy themselves with one-hundred percent of nothing by stopping their reading at this point. Ancient Ocean Crossings examines the evidence and arguments that human cultures in the Western Hemisphere were influenced by occasional contacts with ocean voyagers before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492. As the author notes, it’s now conceded that Vikings established a few settlements in North America hundreds of years before Columbus, yet these colonies were short-lived and apparently had little to no influence on American Indians. The ocean crossings referred to in the text are hypothetical voyages that may have occurred in the ten thousand years before Europeans first set foot in the Americas. There are some striking and unexplained cultural similarities between native peoples of the Old World and the Americas. These include “technical complexities of weaving and dyeing that are shared between southern Asia and the Central Andean region of South America, “stepped temple pyramids that are oriented to the cardinal directions in both Mesoamerica and Cambodia, and the belief “in both China and Mesoamerica, that raw jade can be discovered in nature owing to ‘exhalations’ coming from the stone” (p. 5). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 425-446 [Access article in PDF] Giving Orders: Theory and Practice in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina Vicki Hsueh Indians. Of Edisto Ashapo and Combohe to the South our friends. Of Wando Ituan Sewee and Sehey to the north came to our assistance and were zealous and resolute in it 1000 bowmen In our want supplied us. Q. Spaniards. What (...) we shall doe to the Spaniards if we invade them we brake the peace, if we sit still we loose our reputation with the Indians our friends. Westoes. Inland man eaters. Country. To the northward more sickly, about Ashley River fertile and of a wonderful growth. Tatchequea. A very fruitfull Country 8. days jorney by the North west the Emperor our friend and enemy to the Westoes and to hard for them. Q. Settlem't. 500 people will secure the settlement 1000 perfect it. desires supplys of necessarys till that time Excerpt from Carolina Memoranda in the handwriting of John Locke, Esq., 15 September 1670 Within the last decade, scholars such as James Tully, Barbara Arneil, and Bhikhu Parekh have performed a crucial intervention on modern constitu-tionalism's behalf. 1 Not only has constitutionalism in the modern age been [End Page 425] plagued by assumptions of cultural uniformity and an on-going inability to adjudicate between competing cultural claims, but it has been unable effectively to diagnose those limitations and dilemmas. The root of the problem, James Tully suggests, is ultimately a matter of historical perspective. "[T]he tendency," he writes, "is not to notice the philosophical and ideological debates over the last three hundred years... only the result of these debates is seen—the victorious modern language of constitutional uniformity—and claims for recognition are viewed through its framework as if it were impartial and universal." 2 In response Tully and others have sought to tackle this predicament at its historical root. Identifying modern constitutionalism's colonial origins as a significant part of the problem, their studies address the development of constitutionalism and colonialism as an entwined phenomenon in the early modern period, focusing particularly on the British-American context. In this sense, Locke's Two Treatises of Government stands as an exemplary illustration of the period's entangled colonial and constitutional temperaments. Well-known for its influential articulation of compact and resistance, the Two Treatises, Barbara Arneil argues "were written as a defence of England's colonial policy in the new world against the sceptics in England and the counter-claims of both the aboriginal nations and other European powers in America." 3 Accordingly, present-day constitutionalism continues to bear the weighty legacy of those colonial rationales. "[T]he language of modern constitutionalism," Tully further explains, "which has come to be authoritative was designed to exclude or assimilate cultural diversity and justify uniformity. The design is difficult to see because this 'modern' language has become the customary way of thinking about, reflecting on and envisioning a just constitutional order." Ultimately, Tully submits, citing Wittgenstein, "A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably." 4This much-needed thickening of constitutionalism's historical context has enriched our awareness of constitutionalism's vexed origins, as it has proffered potent tools for interrogating current cultural adjudication. Yet, a troubling predicament persists. As if caught within the tenacious grip of the language of modern constitutionalism, Tully, Arneil, and Parekh insistently portray seventeenth-century British-American colonialism solely as a straightforward process of appropriation and assimilation without addressing or incorporating the [End Page 426] complex and contingent elements of that history in its emergence. Lacking the various negotiations and accommodations between settler and indigene in ambition and actualization, their portrayals crucially underplay the dynamic relationship between theories of constitutionalism and practices of colonialism—an approach that ultimately serves to reinscribe the narrative of triumphalist progress within their critiques. 5This problematic is the context for my reading of the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina,1669... (shrink)

Who has the power to institutionalize culture? How is it that cultural forms become legitimated and appropriated by certain groups? And what are the organizational forms that guarantee the continuity of the interlocks among classifications, etiquette, and resources in the long run? This article explores these questions by observing the struggle over the institutionalization of opera as high culture during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in Buenos Aires, a region of the world understudied by cultural sociologists. It (...) contends that to answer these questions we need to observe the contested dynamics though which the process of institutionalization happens. It also shows how this contestation affects, in the long-term, the processes of evaluation and legitimation of the classification upheld, and the consequences it has in terms of audience stratification. In the Discussion section, I present a novel framework for the study of pathways to high culture institutionalization that highlights how the role of the state and competing stakeholders can introduce variable relationships among the elites, the arts, and social closure. (shrink)

The problems and the history of contacts between distant continents in bygone ages and long before the age of fast and easy travel, have always fascinated both professional scholars and the interested public. Was ancient history really nothing but the history of co-existing and isolated geographic, cultural and political “islands?” Already at school we learned too much about migrations of peoples, economic contacts, influences on art styles, conquests, and the rise, expansion and fall of empires to believe that. The (highly (...) improbable) theory that certain archaeological finds in America suggest, or even prove, Mediterranean influence (e.g., the arrival of Phoenician ships), or the alleged Viking discovery of America centuries before Columbus, or Thor Heyerdahl's adventurous journey to prove South American influence on remote Pacific islands did not fail to cause widespread interest and even excitement (although many scholars still feel that Heyerdahl's epic adventure, thrilling as it is, failed to prove what it set out to prove). The island of Madagascar is pretty close to the African continent, but its language exhibits more points of contact with Polynesian than with African tongues. And the blow-bellows used by Malagache smiths are similar to those used in Malaysia and unlike those known to African metalworkers. Clearly the Polynesians, those great ancient mariners, sailed further than originally seemed likely. Musicologists studying the cantillation of the Hebrew Bible in the liturgy of the ancient Jewish communities on the Malabar coast in India discovered to their surprise that it was similar to the cantillation not of the Babylonian but of the Yemenite Jews! This surprise was, of course, no surprise to those who knew anything about trade-winds and shipping routes between South Arabia and the Indian coast. Historians of religion, even more than general historians, studying the spread and expansion of religious ideas and movements have realised long ago that the beginning of all wisdom is a basic knowledge of economic geography. (shrink)

As European colonies in Asia and Africa became independent nations, as the United States engaged in war in Southeast Asia and in covert operations in South America, anthropologists questioned their interactions with their subjects and worried about the political consequences of government-supported research. By 1970, some spoke of anthropology as “the child of Western imperialism” and as “scientific colonialism.” Ironically, as the link between anthropology and colonialism became more widely accepted within the discipline, serious interest in examining the (...) history of anthropology in colonial contexts diminished. This volume is an effort to initiate a critical historical consideration of the varying “colonial situations” in which (and out of which) ethnographic knowledge essential to anthropology has been produced. The essays comment on ethnographic work from the middle of the nineteenth century to nearly the end of the twentieth, in regions from Oceania through southeast Asia, the Andaman Islands, and southern Africa to North and South America. The “colonial situations” also cover a broad range, from first contact through the establishment of colonial power, from District Officer administrations through white settler regimes, from internal colonialism to international mandates, from early “pacification” to wars of colonial liberation, from the expropriation of land to the defense of ecology. The motivations and responses of the anthropologists discussed are equally varied: the romantic resistance of Maclay and the complicity of Kubary in early colonialism; Malinowski’s salesmanship of academic anthropology; Speck’s advocacy of Indian land rights; Schneider’s grappling with the ambiguities of rapport; and Turner’s facilitation of Kaiapo cinematic activism. “Provides fresh insights for those who care about the history of science in general and that of anthropology in particular, and a valuable reference for professionals and graduate students.”—Choice “Among the most distinguished publications in anthropology, as well as in the history of social sciences.”—George Marcus, Anthropologica. (shrink)

The former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died even as leaders of South American nations concluded a two-day summit meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, hosted by President Evo Morales, at which the participants and the agenda represented the antithesis of Pinochet and his era.

Introduction: "I chose therefore my party & am a whigg": the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury as political icons / Patrick Muller, Dresden -- Part I. The First Earl of Shaftesbury -- Whig wit: Andrew Marvell and the Earls of Shaftesbury / Nigel Smith, Princeton University -- Trade for peace: a complete account of the First Earl of Shaftesbury: interest in Carolina's Indian trade / Andrew Agha, University of South Carolina, Columbia -- John Locke and the reputation of (...) the First Earl of Shaftesbury / Mark Goldie, University of Cambridge -- Part II. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury in his time -- Shaftesbury, an early voice of the radical enlightenment / Jonathan Israel, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University -- Shaftesbury and Locke: a tale of three letters / Daniel Carey, National University of Ireland, Galway -- "An equal commonwealth": Lord Ashley and the republican project of the late 1690s / Patrick Muller, Dresden -- Party politics in characteristicks / Jacob Sider Jost, Dickinson College, Carlisle -- Psychological and political balances: the Third Earl of Shaftesbury's reading of James Harrington / Laurent Jaffro -- (Re)defining the commonwealth: Shaftesbury's concept of political freedom / Angela Taraborrelli, St. John's University of Rome -- Shaftesbury's non-secular cosmopolitanism / David Alvarez, DePauw University, Greencastle -- Taste, the people and the public according to the Third Earl of Shaftesbury / Lawrence E. Klein, University of Cambridge -- Part III. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury: afterlife -- Art, morality and choice: the Third Earl of Shaftesbury and John Molesworth / William Molesworth, Dublin -- "Moral painting, by way of dialogue": Shaftesbury in the cry / Rebecca Anne Barr, National University of Ireland, Galway -- "Virtue pointing to her rugged mountain": Shaftesbury in America / James Pratt, University of Toronto -- Radicalizing sympathy: William Godwin's reading of Shaftesbury / Roman A. Barton, Humboldt-Universitat, Berlin. (shrink)

In this text, I consider two examples in the history of emancipation and manumission of enslaved, Black populations in the Caribbean and South America in order to theorize a colonial mode of conceiving of freedom at play in the first half of the nineteenth century. This mode is marked by the figure of the promise, enacting a notion of freedom as a constantly deferred, external compensation. Indeed, instead of an immediate decision deeming the practice of enslavement and trade (...) of human beings unacceptable, and an effective liberation of the enslaved Black populations in these different emancipation proclamations, the various histories of manumission in Latin America and the Caribbean show a long series of political and legal attempts to reduce and limit the extent of the slave trade that deferred the process of liberation for decades. Moreover, in many of these territories the practice did not end with the official proclamation of emancipation but was continued by illegal practices and mutations into legal forms of exploitation and oppression that are still operative today. After outlining this first trajectory, reconstructing the promise of manumission in the historical examples of Martinique (as read by Édouard Glissant) and La Gran Colombia and the Republic of Nueva Granada (contemporary Panamá, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador), I analyze a second mode of investigation in examples of individual and collective strategies of liberation coming from the enslaved themselves, as reconstructed by contemporary feminist scholars in South America. These strategies appropriate liberation not as a promise, but as a negotiation and calculation that begins with the enslaved’s resistance to their oppressive conditions and that ultimately depends on the external concession by juridical authorities. In the third section of the chapter, I read these practices not as marronage, as they are sometimes approached, but as a different mode of turning back to these glimpses of freedom that more effectively challenge the narrative of emancipation and, with it, the promise of manumission in our present. -/- . (shrink)

This paper attempts to test to what level the distinction can be made between Maoism, Mao Tse-Sung’s theory of revolutionary communism, as it functioned in China during the People’s Revolution and in South America. This paper will compare the Maoist ideology of two Maoist leaders and their revolutionary movements: Mexico’s Florencio Medrano and Peru’s Abimael Guzman.

This paper attempts to test to what level the distinction can be made between Maoism, Mao Tse-Sung’s theory of revolutionary communism, as it functioned in China during the People’s Revolution and in South America. This paper will compare the Maoist ideology of two Maoist leaders and their revolutionary movements: Mexico’s Florencio Medrano and Peru’s Abimael Guzman.

The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh Throughout the years 1768–1783 looked to the outside world like a flourishing and important body. By 1771 it had sponsored the publication of five volumes of papers which had gone through several printings and translations. It had a distinguished foreign membership which assured its recognition abroad as one of the important academic bodies in the cosmopolitan Republic of Letters. From its foundation in 1737 until his death in 1768, its President had been the Earl of (...) Morton, better known as the President of the Royal Society of London and as an astronomer who had been active in the practical work of the London society. Another member, Sir John Pringle, became President of the Royal Society in 1772. It was also known abroad that among the Edinburgh philosophers were to be found the most important professors of the town's university, not only those of its distinguished medical faculty but also men like William Robertson, Adam Ferguson and later John Robison. David Hume had been at one time a Secretary of the Society and probably remained a member to the end of his life in 1776. In the British colonies, the Society could point to members in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Jamaica and other West Indian islands and it had contacts in a far-flung network reaching from China and Siberia in the east to places less remote in Europe and America. Within Britain, the Society had members in London and in provincial towns of whom William Brownrigg was the most important. From these men and from others scattered in Scotland, the Society drew information and projected its image as a successful learned society. These appearances, however, are far clearer than the Society's record of accomplishment during its last years. It is not accidental that so little pertaining to its work survives. The Society in reality had a career far from brilliant and by 1778 hardly deserved the reputation it had acquired. During its last five years it revived but even then it probably did not reach the level of activity seen in the early and mid 1750s. (shrink)

Shortly before and during World War II many European psychoanalysts found refuge in South America, concentrated in Buenos Aires. Here, together with local professionals, they created a strong, creative and productive psychoanalytic movement that in turn gave birth to theoretical and clinical contributions that transformed psychoanalysis, psychology, medicine and culture in South America. _The Pioneers of Psychoanalysis in South America_ is a collection of those pioneers’ papers, and introduces the reader to a body of ideas (...) and advancements, many of which have had limited and piecemeal exposure within the psychoanalytic community in the rest of the world until now. The editors Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski and Alberto Pieczanski present original papers and essays, many of which have never before been published in English; those that have been translated were rarely presented in context. Each one of the chapters is accompanied by a scholarly introduction written by psychoanalysts, many of whom personally knew the pioneers and their oeuvres in depth, tracing the roots of their ideas in the European analytic schools. _The Pioneers of Psychoanalysis in South America _is divided into six main sections: Psychoanalytic process Psychoanalytic technique Metapsychology Psychoanalysis of children Culture and society Psychosomatic medicine. Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski and Alberto Pieczanski provide a coherent guide to the seminal ideas and practices of the South American psychoanalysts who have made major theoretical and clinical contributions to the advancement of the psychoanalytic discipline. The chapters present the material in a way that is accessible to psychoanalysts from across the globe and will enable them to incorporate the ideas and practices outlined here into their everyday psychoanalytic work. It will also be of interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists, academics interested in the history and development of psychoanalytic ideas and psychoanalysis, and advanced students. The following link leads to an video interview featuring Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski and Alberto Pieczanski by the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis for the History Project, where they open up about their stories, their marriage, and their new book: https://www.routledge.com/posts/8996. (shrink)

More attention needs to be given to Adam Smith's view of South America. Although scholars have elucidated Smith's view of colonization, these studies have not fully clarified how Smith was influenced by the depiction of societies in South America from travel books. Though he read travel books on South America, Smith does not necessarily follow their original description of the societies found there. Instead, he sometimes distorted the original in consideration of the effects of (...) colonization. To evaluate the impact of colonization, he supposed that societies in South America were not civilized, so colonized societies could be seen as part of the process of civilization. However, he did not belittle precolonial societies. He emphasized the moral quality of the so-called savage people. As I argue in this paper, he had at least two criteria in evaluating society. In addition to economic development, Smith also recognized moral degradation as part of social development. Smith evaluated s... (shrink)

This chapter is about the fate of a registration system designed for the exclusion of ‘undesirable’ Indian migrants to South Africa in the first decades of the twentieth century. It traces the bureaucracy's deployment of residence permits, but shows how these were transacted along the networks established by long-established Indian Ocean merchant houses. This illicit economy provoked important reforms in record-keeping. Yet South Africa's immigration offices remained in disarray for another 15–20 years. The gaps were filled by shrewd (...) criminal touting syndicates within the bureaucracy. More stringent record-keeping was finally in place by the mid-1920s due to help from migrant associations, although this hardly meant that insider subversion had been completely smothered. The chapter argues that South African border controls were not successfully coercive, and suggests that performative histories are important in the study of repressive registration regimes. (shrink)

Consecutive waves of paleolithic migrants crossing the Bering land bridge from Siberia to North America between 80,000 and 7,000 b.c. brought with them the shamanic way of harnessing supernatural powers. This way prevailed until the White intrusion 400 years ago, into the living space of the aboriginal peoples of North America. Wherever European political, religious, and economic dominance was established, shamanic institutions became the focus of negative attention. The shamanic practitioner was variously depicted by governmental and ecclesiastic authorities (...) as a charlatan and imposter or a purveyor of evil influence. Some well-known ethnological and medico-psychological experts have until very recently portrayed the shaman as a mentally deranged person whose “primitive” culture permits the acting-out of psychopathology in a prestigious role, a eurocentric and positivistic fallacy rooted in Western misinterpretations of learned behavior manifested during shamanic rituals involving altered states of consciousness. Legal measures to suppress shamanic ceremonials were taken in the United States, especially in the aftermath of the Ghost Dance. This shaman-inspired movement, originating in the Prophet Dance of the Pacific Northwest (Spier 1935), sent waves of hectic sacro-nativistic ceremonial activity through many Amerindian tribes, and finally culminated in the Sioux uprising of 1890 which ended in the tragedy of Wounded Knee (cf. Mooney 1896). (shrink)

This volume brings together chapters about aging in many non-Western cultures, from Africa and Asia to South America, from American Indians to Australian and Hawaii Aboriginals. It also includes articles on other issues of aging, such as falling, dementia, and elder abuse. It was thought that in Africa or Asia, elders were revered and taken care of. This certainly used to be the case. But the Western way has moved into these places, and we now find that (...) elders are often left on their own or in institutions, as younger people have migrated to other cities and even countries. Grandparents often find themselves being parents to their grandchildren, a far cry from the kind of life they believed they would have as they aged. This book will explore all these issues and will be of use to students and researchers in this relatively new field. (shrink)

This paper examines Andrew Feenberg’s radical democratic politics of technology in relation to the context of Ecuador’s free and open software movement. It considers the articulation of this movement via the government sponsored activist project FLOK Society. Based on an ethnographic study, which included interviews with FLOK Society coordinators, the paper discusses how such government-activist collaborations, may be useful in expanding Feenberg’s notion of technical politics and the nature of representation in the technical sphere. More specifically, the paper looks at (...) the political shaping of technology, in relation to concepts about ‘the Good Life’, or ‘Buen Vivir’ in the case of Ecuador, and its drive toward a knowledge economy, based on the concepts of ‘Buen Conocer’ and ‘Bioconocimiento’. The paper argues that certain premises held by Feenberg concerning technical politics, democracy and populism in particular may need to be reconsidered in light of developments in Ecuador. (shrink)

In recent years, mtDNA and Y chromosome studies involving human populations from South Asia and the rest of the world have revealed new insights about the peopling of the world by anatomically modern humans during the late Pleistocene, some 40,000–60,000 years ago, over the southern coastal route from Africa. Molecular studies and archaeological record are both largely consistent with autochthonous differentiation of the genetic structure of the caste and tribal populations in South Asia. High level of endogamy created (...) by numerous social boundaries within and between castes and tribes, along with the influence of several evolutionary forces such as genetic drift, fragmentation and long‐term isolation, has kept the Indian populations diverse and distant from each other as well as from other continental populations. This review attempts to summarize recent genetic studies on Indian caste and tribal populations with the focus on the information embedded in the socially defined structure of Indian populations. BioEssays 29: 91–100, 2007. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Tribal art , also termed ethnographic art or, in an expression seldom used today, primitive art , is the art of small-scale nonliterate societies. Some of the traditional artifacts to which the term refers may not be art in any obvious European sense, and many of the cultures where they occur may not strictly-speaking be tribal in social structure. The rubric nevertheless persists because the arts produced by small-scale cultures share significant elements in common. The tribal arts which have gained (...) the greatest attention in the West come from the Americas (such as the Inuit, Southwest and Plains Indians, and isolated areas of Central and South America), Oceania (including Melanesia and Australia, Polynesia and New Zealand), and Subsaharan Africa. The characteristics which define a small-scale, traditional society are (1) isolation, politically and economically, from civilizations of Europe, North Africa, or Asia, (2) oral traditions in the absence of literacy, (3) small, independent population groupings, usually in villages of no more than a few hundred souls who live a life of face-to-face social interaction and informal social control, (4) a low level of labor/craft specialization, (5) subsistence by hunting, fishing, and gathering and/or small-scale agriculture, (6) little technology beyond hand tools, and that often of stone rather than metal, and (7) slow rates of cultural change prior to European contact. Of this list, small size, lack of written language, and isolation from large civilizations are the essential features of societies whose art is discussed here. (shrink)

Between 1648 and 1652, Cyrano de Bergerac wrote a small satirical work entitled The Other World, a fictional account of his imaginary epic voyage to the Moon.* The story not only describes “The States and Empires of the Moon,” (its subtitle in the original edition), it provides a critical view of his own civilization as well. The narrator's position in his depiction of the radically different, “other” entity allows him to maintain opinions which, however whimsical, still include elements of social (...) and philosophical examination. In the early stages of world migration, Europe was beginning to see the Other as a place for the expression, if not the transposition, of its ancient dreams; Cyrano, however, takes a different approach. He looks at ways the Other might be used to gain perspective on the Self. Looking down at Earth from above, he proclaims: “People, I declare that this moon is not a moon, but a world, and that world over there is not a world, but a moon.”. (shrink)

_A look at the philosophical underpinnings of the hit TV show, _Mad Men__ With its swirling cigarette smoke, martini lunches, skinny ties, and tight pencil skirts, Mad Men is unquestionably one of the most stylish, sexy, and irresistible shows on television. But the series becomes even more absorbing once you dig deeper into its portrayal of the changing social and political mores of 1960s America and explore the philosophical complexities of its key characters and themes. From Socrates, Plato, and (...) Aristotle to John Kenneth Galbraith, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand, Mad Men and Philosophy brings the thinking of some of history's most powerful minds to bear on the world of Don Draper and the Sterling Cooper ad agency. You'll gain insights into a host of compelling Mad Men questions and issues, including happiness, freedom, authenticity, feminism, Don Draper's identity, and more. Takes an unprecedented look at the philosophical issues and themes behind AMC's Emmy Award-winning show, Mad Men Explores issues ranging from identity to authenticity to feminism, and more Offers new insights on your favorite Mad Men characters, themes, and storylines Mad Men and Philosophy will give _Mad Men_ fans everywhere something new to talk about around the water cooler. (shrink)