When pandemics hit communities, women are bound to suffer as most of the responsibilities of ensuring food security lie on them. This article assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the role that church-going women play in food provision. The qualitative study used interviews and focus group discussions to examine the toll of the pandemic-induced restrictions, especially with regard to their disruption of activities that ensure the provision of food for the family. They sought to identify how an environment (...) as restrictive as the one that was imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic affects those largely responsible for food provision in urban Marondera – the women, in this case. The focus was extended to factor in how disasters and pandemics affect women and detract from their normative food procurement and provision roles in marginal societies and how these effects can be mitigated to allow women to carry on with their roles even in restrictive environments. This research was motivated by the recent COVID-19-imposed regulations that restricted the movement of people, restrictions that have only recently been relaxed and (in some cases) removed. We also sought to establish how gender roles are played out, together with whether they are exacerbated by pandemics, and in what ways these pandemics result in higher workloads on women. By utilising the Africana womanist theory, the study analysed women roles in food provision and food security in their societies within the restrictive environments of the pandemics.Contribution: This study concluded that there are gender inequalities that are exacerbated by these pandemics that result in higher workloads for women. It foregrounded how existing gender inequalities were exacerbated by the pandemic, resulting in higher workloads on women. It therefore recommended that women should form empowerment groups to help focus attention on food provision to mitigate challenges women face in this role. Finally, we averred that there ought to be consultation and participation of women on issues to do with pandemics to allow for their full and productive participation in critical roles of providing food. (shrink)

Memory has long been a subject of fascination for poets, artists, philosophers and historians. The volume examines how past events are remembered, contested, forgotten, learned from and shared with others. Each author in The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies has been asked to reflect on his or her research companions as a scholar, who studies memory. The original studies presented in the volume are written by leading experts, who emphasize both the continuity of heritage and tradition, (...) as well as the memory of hostilities, traumas and painful events. Comprised of four thematic sections, The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies provides a comprehensive overview of the latest research within the discipline. The principal themes include: ¢ Memory, History and Time ¢ Social, Psychological and Cultural Frameworks of Memory ¢ Acts and Places of Memory ¢ Politics of Memory, Forgetting and Democracy. (shrink)

Projects in memory studies are best driven by topic not tradition, because the phenomena under investigation are usually interactive, not neatly compartmentalized. This imposes open-endedness not only in tracing diverse activities of remembering across the spread of relevant disciplines, but also in looking beyond memory altogether in order better to understand its diverse manifestations.

The memory wave in the humanities has contributed to the impressive revival of cultural history, but the success of memory studies has not been accompanied by significant conceptual and methodological advances in the research of collective memory processes. Most studies on memory focus on the representation of specific events within particular chronological, geographical, and media settings without reflecting on the audiences of the representations in question. As a result, the wealth of new insights into past and (...) present historical cultures cannot be linked conclusively to specific social collectives and their historical consciousness. This methodological problem is even enhanced by the metaphorical use of psychological and neurological terminology, which misrepresents the social dynamics of collective memory as an effect and extension of individual, autobiographical memory. Some of these shortcomings can be addressed through the extensive contextualization of specific strategies of representation, which links facts of representation with facts of reception. As a result, the history of collective memory would be recast as a complex process of cultural production and consumption that acknowledges the persistence of cultural traditions as well as the ingenuity of memory makers and the subversive interests of memory consumers. The negotiations among these three different historical agents create the rules of engagement in the competitive arena of memory politics, and the reconstruction of these negotiations helps us distinguish among the abundance of failed collective memory initiatives on the one hand and the few cases of successful collective memory construction on the other. For this purpose, collective memory studies should adopt the methods of communication and media studies, especially with regard to media reception, and continue to use a wide range of interpretive tools from traditional historiography to poststructural approaches. From the perspective of collective memory studies, these two traditions are closely related and mutually beneficial, rather than mutually exclusive, ways of analyzing historical cultures. (shrink)

Sven Bernecker presents an analysis of the concept of propositional (or factual) memory, and examines a number of metaphysical and epistemological issues crucial to the understanding of memory. -/- Bernecker argues that memory, unlike knowledge, implies neither belief nor justification. There are instances where memory, though hitting the mark of truth, succeeds in an epistemically defective way. This book shows that, contrary to received wisdom in epistemology, memory not only preserves epistemic features generated by other (...) epistemic sources but also functions as a source of justification and knowledge. According to the causal theory of memory argued for in this book, the dependence of memory states on past representations supports counterfactuals of the form: if the subject hadn't represented a given proposition in the past he wouldn't represent it in the present. The book argues for a version of content externalism whereupon the individuation of memory contents depends on relations the subject bears to his past physical or social environment. Moreover, Bernecker shows that memory doesn't require identity, but only similarity, of past and present attitudes and contents. The notion of content similarity is explicated in terms of the entailment relation. (shrink)

Experimental studies show that some corvids, apes, and rodents possess a common long-term memory system that allows them to take goal-directed actions on the basis of absent spatiotemporal contexts. In other words, evidence supports the hypothesis that Episodic Memory —far from being uniquely human— has evolved as a cross-species meaning making system. However, within this zoosemiotic breakthrough, neurocognitive studies now struggle characterizing the relations between teleological factors and phenomenological factors that would account for the episodic behavior displayed by (...) these living beings. Within such field, this paper identifies four epistemological gaps —the ‘Nagelian’, ‘de Waalian’, ‘Chomskyan’, and ‘semiotic’ gaps—, making a case for the need of a future biosemiotic model of Alloanimal Episodic Memory to come into the equation. As a whole, I conclude that experimental developments in AEM research, and philosophical advancements in biosemiotics could converge through the concept of semiosis. Introducing the latter would account for animal episodic agency as a causal influence and continuity between the above relations, outclassing the reductionist and Cartesian separation between ‘external’ bodily behavior and ‘internal’ computational operations. (shrink)

The volume contains ten historical theological studies tracing the significance of Luther for Protestant religious culture (mainly in the German-speaking world) since the Reformation. The approach taken is one of the history of reception: selected positions in modern Protestantism are identified as different forms of reception of Luther's theology. In the background is the view that at present a productive systematic theological approach to Luther's theology primarily requires a detailed consideration of a new Protestant religious culture.

Memory consolidation is the process in which memory traces are strengthened over time for later retrieval. Although some theories hold that consolidation can only occur during sleep, accumulating evidence suggests that brief periods of wakeful rest may also facilitate consolidation. Interestingly, however, Varma and colleagues reported that a demanding 2-back task following encoding produced a similar performance to a wakeful reset condition. We tested whether participants’ recall would be best following a wakeful rest condition as compared to other (...) distractor conditions, consistent with the extant wakeful rest literature, or whether we would replicate the finding by Varma and colleagues such that participants’ memory benefitted from both a rest and a 2-back task following encoding. Across two experiments, we used similar and the same encoding material as used the one by Varma and colleagues, employed a wakeful rest condition adapted for online testing, and compared participants’ recall across post-encoding conditions. In the first experiment, we used a between-subjects design and compared participants’ cued recall performance following a period of wakeful rest, a 2-back task, or a rest + sounds condition. The second experiment more closely replicated the experimental design used by Varma and colleagues using a within-subjects manipulation. Ultimately, our findings more consistently aligned with the canonical wakeful rest finding, such that recall was better following the rest condition than all other post-encoding conditions. These results support the notion that wakeful rest may allow for consolidation by protecting recently encoded information from interference, thereby improving memory performance. (shrink)

In the quest for the historical Jesus, memory studies are seen as an important breakthrough in the study of the historical Jesus and the way forward in establishing the historicity of the Gospel traditions. This article evaluates the claim made by memory studies by evaluating memory studies’ critique on the methodology of the criteria approach. In this evaluation attention is given to the methodological points of departure of memory studies, including an assessment of the few examples (...) memory studies thus far have produced in their investigation of the historicity of the Gospels and the historical Jesus. The conclusion reached is that memory studies are guilty of what they accuse the criteria approach, and thus far have not yet offered a viable methodological alternative to the current criteria approach used in historical Jesus research. (shrink)

In September 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that sparked controversy due to its equation of Nazism and Communism. The document made the USSR jointly responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War and accused the Russian government of whitewashing communist crimes and glorifying the Soviet totalitarian regime. This article presents the resolution as the latest expression of a broader discursive process that started with the accession process of the Central and Eastern European countries. To support this hypothesis, (...) I examine the genealogy of the resolution, namely the documents that originally outlined the stances expressed by the latter, as well as the debates at the EU Parliament that preceded its adoption. This analysis highlights in particular two fundamental tendencies, i.e. the entanglement of history and memory characterising the recent discourse on European integration and the frequent identification of the Central and Eastern European member states as victims. In the final paragraphs, I suggest that the construction of a shared ‘historical memory’ may represent a legitimising framework for the implementation of specific sets of political and economic ideas, but I also note that processes such as the one described in the article may ultimately damage the cohesion among the member states and the ability of the EU institutions to address relevant internal and external issues. (shrink)

Preschool children have been proven to possess nonsymbolic approximate arithmetic skills before learning how to manipulate symbolic math and thus before any formal math instruction. It has been assumed that nonsymbolic approximate math tasks necessitate the allocation of Working Memory (WM) resources. WM has been consistently shown to be an important predictor of children's math development and achievement. The aim of our study was to uncover the specific role of WM in nonsymbolic approximate math. For this purpose, we conducted (...) a dual-task study with preschoolers with active phonological, visual, spatial, and central executive interference during the completion of a nonsymbolic approximate addition dot task. With regard to the role of WM, we found a clear performance breakdown in the central executive interference condition. Our findings provide insight into the underlying cognitive processes involved in storing and manipulating nonsymbolic approximate numerosities during early arithmetic. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is a volume of original articles on all aspects of ancient philosophy. The articles may be of substantial length, and include critical notices of major books. OSAP is now published twice yearly, in both hardback and paperback.

리쾨르는 역사를 실증적 지식이 아니라 해석학적 관점에서 이해하고자 한다. 역사는 절대적으로 부재하는 과거와 그것의 흔적으로 남겨진 유산의 두 측면 사이를 진동하고 있다. 우리는 역사를 과거의 한때 존재했었던 것이라는 점에서 역사의 실재성을 말할 수 있지만, 결코 현재에는 존재하지 않는다는 점에서 부재성을 간과할 수 없다. 이런 역사의 부재성으로 인해 역사적 사실보다 역사적 사건과 그것을 수용하는 주체의 역할이 중요하다. 특히 역사 연구는 단지 사실의 차원에만 머무는 것이 아니라 최종적으로 과거 인간들의 행위와 그 결과에 대한 연구를 기반으로 하고 있다. 그러기에 역사 연구자는 역사적 사실을 (...) 통해 과거의 주체를 만나며, 이런 만남이 결국 연구자의 주관에게도 영향을 미친다. 이런 이유로 리쾨르는 역사 연구가 끊어놓은 기억과 역사의 고리를 다시금 복원하고자 한다. 이미 아리스토텔레스에게서 기억은 언제나 과거가 남겨 놓은 유산에 기반하면서 동시에 부재하는 과거로 향하는 통로가 된다. 이런 점에서 기억은 역사의 존재론적 위상과 유사성을 갖는다. 하지만 역사 혹은 역사 연구는 과거에 대한 객관적 지식을 추구하는 반면, 기억은 주관적이고 단편적인 지식을 추구한다. 기억이 과거에 대한 충실성과 확신에 기반한 반면, 역사 연구는 이런 충실성에 대해 의심하면서 객관성을 확보하고자 한다. 하지만 역사 연구가 주장하는 객관성 혹은 역사적 사실만을 추구할 경우 역사적 사태를 기억하는 주관을 상실할 위험을 갖고 있다. 이런 점에서 리쾨르는 역사 연구에서 주관의 위상을 고려하기 위해서 기억의 역할을 강조한다. 또한 역사 연구가 단순한 사실의 집합이 아니라 부재하는 과거에 대한 시적인 재형상화작업이라는 관점에서 그 의의를 찾는다. 여기서 역사 연구의 시적 형상화와 함께 우리는 역사 연구에 있어 설명의 한계를 살펴보고자 한다. 이처럼 역사 연구는 단지 객관적 설명으로만 해명할 수 없는 근원적 책임의 영역이 있다. 리쾨르는 역사 연구의 해석학적 근거를 따라서 기억의 의미와 역사 연구의 가능성을 확인하고자 한다. 우리는 이런 리쾨르의 사유를 통해 역사 속에서의 기억의 중요성과 실천적 의미를 살펴보고자 한다. (shrink)

A fruitful direction for research on the European cultural heritage is to adopt a transnational approach. Rather than see cultural heritage as predominantly expressed in national contexts, it could be seen as primarily transnational and as plural. Such a view would also suggest a conception of national histories as themselves products of transnational encounters. In this perspective, the European dimension is not then necessarily something over and above nations, but part of their heritage. Moreover, as fundamentally transnational, the European heritage (...) is not exclusively confined to Europe. Cultural heritage is not something that is fixed or based on an essence; it is produced and reinterpreted by social actors in different but overlapping contexts. This is also an interpretative approach that draws attention to the entangled nature of memories and especially the cultural logic by which new conceptions and narratives of heritage emerge from the encounter and entanglement of different memories. Such an approach offers new opportunities for comparative research on the European heritage as an entangled mosaic of histories and memories. This approach thus rejects not only particularistic but also universalistic ones such as alternative Eurocentric accounts. (shrink)

Speculative realism has, over the course of its rapid and controversial emergence in the past decade, been frequently criticized from the perspective of historical materialism, for its putative reliance on abstraction and eschewal of a sufficiently rigorous ideological alignment. This paper takes such critiques as a starting point for an examination of the contributions recent thought in the area of speculative realism has to offer the study of the humanities – specifically, the study of literature and literary history. In particular, (...) contemporary realist thought has the potential to enable scholars of literature to move beyond the anthropocentric and specialized notions of history as an exclusively cultural entity, which have dominated the discipline since the twentieth century. Paying especially close attention to the work of Graham Harman and Manuel DeLanda, it is my argument that emergent realist philosophy offers literary scholars a set of powerful conceptual tools which can be put toward the work of accounting for the hitherto neglected ontological status of the literary text – illuminating the status of the text as a particular variety of real and physical object that participates in a system of real and physical history and memory. (shrink)

Sven Bernecker’s contribution to the ongoing revival in the philosophy of memory offers a consistent vision and analysis of propositional remembering, and covers a range of topics in analytic metaphysics and epistemology. Bernecker defends a methodological externalism, by which memory ‘must be analyzed from a third-person point of view’ (34): so even though conceptual analysis remains the primary method, the ‘linguistic intuitions’ that guide it ‘are not a priori but empirical working hypotheses’ (31). Given the central role of (...) such intuitions in Bernecker’s treatment of many briefly described thought experiments throughout the book, it is strange that he does not defend their use more explicitly in this early section on method, instead leaving it to a later footnote (147, n. 11) to say that ‘trying to defend the use of intuitions in the philosophy of memory would . . . take us too far afield’. Bernecker’s subtitle signals a restricted target audience: this is a book for those analytic philosophers who will enjoy long exegeses on Twin Earth, slow switching or quasi-memory. Psychological results on memory are cited, but only piecemeal, and interactive dialogue with scientific theory is not Bernecker’s aim. (shrink)

This volume reflects the late Norman Calder's own interests and contributions. It includes articles by scholars who are already renowned, like Calder, for their sophisticated and challenging approaches to Arabic and Islamic texts. The papers are on a variety of topics of interest to people in the field of Middle Eastern cultures, and similar in nature to other collections, conference volumes and Festschriften. Also represented are his former students colleagues working in the field of Rabbinic Studies, which informed his own (...) work. Topics include: Transformations of Jewish Traditions in Early Islam: The case of Enoch/Idris, Narrative and Doctrine in the First Story of Rumi's Masnavi, Fiqh for beginners: an Anatolian text on jihad, Research Muslim Minorities: some reflections on fieldwork in Britain, Defective marriages in classical Hanafi law, and Can rights co-exist with religion? (shrink)

Studies on the Middle Kingdom: In Memory of Detlef Franke. Edited by Hans-Werner Fischer- Elfert and Richard B. Parkinson. Philippika, vol. 41. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2013. Pp. 268, 8 pls. €58.

This paper examines the emergence and trajectory of a vernacular femicide memorial tree at Mount Gravatt (Meanjin/Brisbane) which is juxtaposed with established and regulated official commemorative placemaking practices in this social geography. The paper explores the implicit rules about marking gender in official publics of commemoration, arguing that they perform or conversely risk a doubling of women’s invisibility through assimilation into symbols and aesthetic conventions of seemingly settled history and settled subjects. They can become barely noticeable for the kinds of (...) messages they may seek to publicly speak and breakthrough in encounter. Conventional commemoration of violence against women also risks positioning women as ‘victims’ by not unsettling that position through passive, familiar and assimilationist design forms and narrative tropes. Importantly, memorials that address violence against women and intimate femicide should contest ‘active forgetting’ by insisting that this is a public facing, collective issue of responsibility against resistant effacements, disavowal, and sequestration into the private sphere and personal life. (shrink)

The hypothesis that dreaming is involved in off-line memory processing is difficult to test because major methodological issues have to be addressed, such as dream recall and the effect of remembered dreams on memory. It would be fruitful to study the dreams of persons who use AAOM regularly.

This study provides insight into the human desire to return to important places of our past and to establish places of memory. Drawing upon philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, Janet Donohoe uses the idea of a palimpsest as a jumping-off point to explore how we make and preserve memories.