A ‘History of Discourse’ as a ‘Discourse of History’ - Communication Theory of Differentiation in Different Cultures

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fee-Alexandra Haase
Author(s):  
Laura Quick

This chapter argue that ritual behaviours might be just as good a source as literary texts for the diffusion of traditional cursing and treaty material across different cultures in the ancient Near East. In particular, the role of ad hoc oral Targum in the ritual process could have been an important means by which traditions were shared between different language communities. Recognition of the ritual context of this material also provides insights for the comparative method, the dating and authorship of Deuteronomy 28, and the subversive impetus thought to have stood behind its composition. Ultimately, the function of the written word in a largely oral world is shown to be fundamental to understanding the composition, function and the early history of the curses in the book of Deuteronomy.


Author(s):  
Anders Klostergaard Petersen

This essay - representing an elaborated version of the author's inaugural lecture as an associate professor at the Department of the Study of Religion - is a critical survey of the classical scholarly discussion of Hellenism that particularly focuses on the Judaism-Hellenism dichotomy. By an exposition of the intellectual history of the background to the debate (notably Droysen), the author argues that the discussion has to a great extent been subject to the influence of a perceptual filter, representing a Christian apologietic concern - the scope of which is not fully recognised. Hellenism has served as a significant flottant capable of being attributed almost any meaning, but ultimately the category itself stems from a Christian concern, i.e. to construct a period serving as a legitimising cultural and religio-historical foilage for the appearance of early Christianity.Although some important cultural changes do occur subsequent to Alexander the Great (an increased tendency towards urbanisation, important military innovation, for example), they do not constitute tendencies that may be extended to include a universal sultural watershed common to the entire Mediterranean and extra-Mediterranian world and uniting it across the centuries. In addition to that, the discussion is suffering from a deficient interpretation of culture and identity. tghe meeting of different cultures and the confusions of different cultural traditions are perceived in terms of 'pure cultures'. Culture is ontologised or naturalised to the exten that a meeting of cultures is conceived of in terms of separate and fundamentally different cultures that are simultaneously understood to be internally homogenous. Each person is thought to be a carrier or container of his or her culture, thus for instance the Jew incarnating or representing Judaism in its entirelt. From this perspective divergent, modes of dultures are perceived in  terms of cultural or religious contaminataion. Culture, however, does not exist - except as an abstraction - in such pure forms. It is per definition a messy affair.In conclusion I think that in future research we should refrain from using the category of Hellenism is the all-sweeping manner in which it has been used. In fact we should be very careful, when using Judaism, Hellenism or any other taxonomic abstraction, not to commit an 'ontological dumping', reifying concepts which exist only by virtue of scholarly categorisations. Rather than to continue to use a misunderstandable term and an ideologically biased category strongly dependent on a Christian perceptual filter, we should begin looking for the decisive innovations, the important cultural and religious changes, which at particular places and in specific periods may allow us to construe cultural watersheds.


Author(s):  
Halyna Syvachenko

A theory of cultural transfer was the branch of comparative literary criticism, although this theory declared its sharp opposition against the mentioned tradition of study. The comparative studies in humanities are based on the ideas of specificity of every culture, even when one deals with the influence of one culture on another. Instead of this approach, the theory of cultural transfer promotes not only a simultaneous study of several cultural and national spaces but also a research on disseminations and transformations that appear at any rapprochement between cultures both in an influential culture and in a perceiving one. Consequently, it is not the binary opposition that must be taken into account in cultural transfer but two cultures, one of which is necessarily comprehended as a culture-recipient, although the whole scheme is much more complicated. Any transition from one cultural space into another easily may cause some transformation. Other ‘new element’ in the theory of cultural transfer is positioning the study of a cultural space periphery, i. e. connections with alien cultural space that every culture necessarily supports, in a center. This approach demonstrates that any phenomenon, no matter how specifically national it may be, actually is a complicated alloy of different cultures and influences. The objects of cultural transfer include the history of translation. Another priority direction is a comparative study of the national forms of comparativism related to the history of intellectual and spiritual relations between different countries and nations. During the transfer from one cultural situation into another any object gets into another context and acquires a new meaning. As focus of attention of a theory and studies of translation was shifting to the context of creation, operation and perception of translations, the research on the translated texts increasingly crossed the boundaries of the related disciplines that enabled learning this context – sociology, comparative studies, economics, history, cultural studies. The scholars aim to indicate the ways of manipulating the readers via translation, to explicate interests and values brought with every translation, to show how it forms the culture-receiver and values of society. The most attention is paid to the issues of ideology, economy and politics, the problems of ethnic responsibility of the translator. The object of cultural translation studies is the text in the system of literary and extra-literary meanings within the initial and receiving cultures. Cultural theory of translation raises the question of cultural prestige of the selected texts and determines the basis of this selection, the principles of forming and changing their status. One may focus also on the role of the commentator as an intermediary between the translator of the text and the readers to whom the translator wants to make his way through.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Shepperd

Abstract Through detailed archival analysis of personal letters, this article examines how the “public interest” mandate of the Communications Act of 1934 inspired the formation of the Princeton Radio Research Project (PRRP), and influenced Paul Lazarsfeld’s development of two-step flows and media effects research. Buried in federal records, a post-Act Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Pursuant that mandated analysis of educational broadcasting additionally turns out to be the causative reason that Theodor Adorno was brought to America by the Rockefeller Foundation. Crucial to the intellectual history of media and communication theory, Lazarsfeld invited Adorno not only to develop techniques to inform educational music study, but to strategically formulate advocacy language for the media reform movement to help noncommercial media obtain frequency licenses. The limits and pressures exerted by the FCC Pursuant influenced the trajectory of the PRRP research, and consequently, the methodological investments of Communication Studies.


Author(s):  
Nilüfer Pembecioğlu ◽  
Uğur Gündüz

The women issue is important not only in Western but also in Eastern cultures. Positioned in between the East and West, Turkey always provides an interesting collection of cases and data. Apart from the daily consumption of the women images and realities, the image of the women is also mobile when it comes to the press, and thus, this mobility is extended worldwide through the new media possibilities in the age of information. However, the contradictory images of the different cultures were displayed in the history of media as well. This chapter aims to put forward how the positioning of women in the past took place specifically in the case of Titanic news on the press of the time. The chapter questions the similarities and differences of handling women in news comparing and contrasting the Western journalism of the time and Ottoman press coverage.


Antiquity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (369) ◽  
pp. 811-813
Author(s):  
Adil Hashim Ali

Located in the Fertile Crescent and at the head of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the city of Basra is steeped in history. Close to the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, the territory of modern Iraq was occupied variously by Achaemenids and Seleucids, Parthians, Romans and Sassanids, before the arrival of Islam in the early middle ages. In more recent history, the city's strategic position near the Gulf coast has made Basra a site of contestation and conflict. This exposure to so many different cultures and civilisations has contributed to the rich identity of Basra, a wealth of history that demands a cultural museum able to present all of the historical periods together in one place. The original Basra Museum was looted and destroyed in 1991, during the first Gulf War. The destruction and loss of so much of Iraq's history and material culture prompted official collaboration to build a new museum that would represent the city of Basrah and showcase its significance in the history of Iraq. The culmination of an eight-year collaborative project between the Iraq Ministry of Culture, the State Board of Antiquities and the Friends of Basrah Museum, the new museum was opened initially in September 2016. Already established as a cultural landmark in the city, with up to 200 visitors a day and rising, the museum was officially opened on 20 March 2019. The author was fortunate to be present for this event and able to explore the new galleries (Figure 1).


Author(s):  
J. L. Heilbron

How does today’s physics—highly professionalized; inextricably linked to government and industry—link back to its origins as a liberal art in ancient Greece? The History of Physics: A Very Short Introduction tells the 2,500-year story, exploring the changing place and purpose of physics in different cultures; highlighting the implications for humankind’s self-understanding. It introduces Islamic astronomers and mathematicians calculating the Earth’s size; medieval scholar-theologians investigating light; Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, measuring, and trying to explain, the universe. It visits: the House of Wisdom in 9th-century Baghdad; Europe’s first universities; the courts of the Renaissance; the Scientific Revolution and 18th-century academies; and the increasingly specialized world of 20th‒21st-century science.


2013 ◽  
Vol 357-360 ◽  
pp. 368-371
Author(s):  
Rui Bai ◽  
Jun Feng Yin

Different geographical environments and different cultures decide the diversity in the architectural building process. In the history of Shanxi Zhashui Fenghuang town, the history of immigration occupies a long time. This paper first introduces the unique immigration history of Fenghuang town. Under this background, we take two typical residences as example to do a comparative analysis of the architectural characters, which are presented between them and typical local-style dwelling houses of origin areas. We do these analyses from the plane layout, architecture function, elevation, adornment, and building structure aspects. Through these analyses, we try to find out these residences of generality and particularity in the process of formation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-97
Author(s):  
Eirini Goudarouli ◽  
Dimitris Petakos

The Philosophical Grammar: Being a View of the Present State of Experimented Physiology, or Natural Philosophy, In Four Parts (1735) by Benjamin Martin was translated into Greek by Anthimos Gazis in 1799. According to the history of concepts, no political, social, or intellectual activity can occur without the establishment of a common vocabulary of basic concepts. By interfering in the linguistic structure, the act of translation may affect crucially the encounter of different cultures. By bringing together the history of science and the history of concepts, this article treats the transfer of the concept of experiment from the seventeenth-century British philosophical context to the eighteenth-century Greek-speaking intellectual context. The article focuses mainly on the different ways Gazis’s translation contributed to the construction of a particular conceptual framework for the appropriation of new knowledge.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-234
Author(s):  
Gilbert K. M. Tietaah ◽  
Margaret I. Amoakohene ◽  
Marquita S. Smith

In this article, we assert and demonstrate a particular and enduring adaptability of radio in tandem with observable temporal shifts in development communication theory and practice in Africa. Specifically, we use the historical research method to explore and explain the ideological discourses, polity contours and social forces that have overlain the role of radio as both an index and an instrument of development in Ghana. The evidence reveals that radio has transitioned through three key milestones in how the technology has been appropriated and applied to national development efforts: from transplantation, through transmission, to transaction. Each of these phases coincides, incidentally, with paradigm shifts in development communication theorizing: from modernization through diffusion to participation. They also coincide, broadly, with three distinctive epochs of ideological shifts in the historical accounting on radio for development in Ghana: from British imperial hegemony, through post-independence command-and-control, to contemporary liberal pluralism.


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