Kinship and Conflict in a Yombe Village: a Genealogical Dispute

Africa ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Clement Bond
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Local Group ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Active Force ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphIn Myth in Primitive Psychology Malinowski saw in myth an active force which safeguarded and enforced morality and contained precedent, law, and practical rules for the guidance of man (1948, 101). It expressed, enhanced, and codified belief. For Malinowski myth was dominant and he thought that it still ruled Trobriand social life (1948, 126). Myth was an important integrating force and one of its social functions in Trobriand society was to convey, express, and strengthen the unity of the local group and that of the group of people descended from a common ancestress (1948, 116). In a Durkheimian sense, it was a social fact, external to the individual, generalized in society, and imposing constraints on human behaviour (Durkheim, 1958, 3).

scholarly journals RITUALISERET TALE I HOVEDLØSE SAMFUND

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Veber
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Local Group ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Traditional Authority ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Smooth Flow ◽  
Formal Leadership

Hanne Veber: Ritualized Speech in Headless Societies. The Constitution of Power and Publicness in the Amazon Anthropology conceptualizes native Amazonians as prototypical egalitarian societies. In these societies, formal leadership is weak and seldom operative beyond the extended family or local group level. It is based on personal prestige and the ability to inspire confidence. The leader is expected to guide his following through the topography of the economic and the socio-political landscapes but is in no position to give orders or command. This weak power syndrome has inspired the term “headless society” in the literature. Pierre Clastres has developed the idea that a systematic antistate campaign is embedded in Amazonian social structure and therefore, centralization and consolidation of power has been precluded. Short of subscribing to Clastres’ argument, it is clear that power in Amazonian societies, as elsewhere, is based on consent and this fumishes the only measure of its legitimacy. The questions remain, then, how is order constituted in the absence of explicit mechanisms for enforcement of rules and norms, and how are potential conflicts solved? One answer is furnished by the institution of ritualized speech or ceremonial dialogue found in most Amazonian societies. These constitute devices of meta-communication through which human interaction is regularized. Years ago, the Danish anthropologist Niels Fock explored the Waiwai oho-chant as a form of legal authority in Weber’s sense, supplementing the traditional authority on which Waiwai leadership rested. The relation between the two forms of authority remained unclear, however. Greg Urban views ceremonial dialogue through the optics of semiotics and demonstrates its regulative social functions, thus providing a sophisticated confirmation of Fock’s earlier hypothesis. Comparative data on ritualized speech from the author’s fieldwork among the Pajonal Asheninka of eastem Peru demonstrates how potential conflicts are negotiated through ritualized speech and how the resolutions are confirmed through their being made public by the ritualization. In this sense ritualized speech facilitates a smooth flow of social life - even in the societies with no head.

scholarly journals Philosophy of Responsibility in Mastering the Integrity of Social Life

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-50
Author(s):  
Petr Kostin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Ethical Content ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

The author connects the demand for social and philosophical research of the responsibility phenomenon with the need to strengthen the processes of self-identification, due to the decrease in the influence of the value and cultural space of modern society on the individual. The article substantiates the position on the irreducibility of the content of the responsibility category only to its ethical content due to the wider range of its social functions and socio-project potential. It is emphasized that in the space of social relations and their structures, the necessary condition for maintaining the influence of the moral and value world on organizational and technological processes is the development of relations between a person and society based on the relationship of responsibility. For this reason, the importance of a fundamental sociophilosophical study of the content of the responsibility category is associated in the article with overcoming the one-sidedness and incompleteness of its study in certain areas of social relations – medicine, business ethics, law, pedagogy, ecology – and identifying its integrative and project meanings as a factor of sustainable functioning and development of society. Revealing a number of historical and philosophical approaches to the analysis of responsibility, the author shows the connection of this category with the category of "freedom" both in its personal (existentialism of J.-P. Sartre) and transpersonal (representative of the philosophy of the Russian Diaspora S.A. Levitsky) dimensions. However, historical and philosophical experience testifies to the similarity of different methodological positions, which are determined by the fact that the content of the responsibility category reveals the forms of finding the personal meaning of life. The directions of philosophical searches of the XX century also point to the need to take into account, through the perspective of responsibility, the diversity of possibilities in different social circumstances and the understanding that only one of them will be realized. The disclosure of the meaning of responsibility as a norm of intersubjective interaction, in which the interests and needs of society are manifested, indicates its multidimensional nature and differences in the manifestation of the activities of individual and collective subjects of responsibility. Proceeding from this, it is shown that responsibility can be represented as a complex hierarchical system in which the levels that characterize it at the level of general and specific, as well as systemic and specialized knowledge are organically linked. Specifying the working model of connections that reveal the socio-philosophical content of responsibility, the author identifies a number of categories: general theory (society, person, state, social institution, nation, family, etc.); philosophy of Economics (property, labor, production, money, etc.); ethics (justice, conscience, duty, etc.); philosophy of religion and religious studies (God, fate, faith, sin, etc.); axiology (values). Based on the research, it is concluded that the socio-philosophical study of the category "responsibility" is promising, linking its philosophical, ethical and specifically scientific aspects, which is important for the theoretical and practical development of the human dimension and the morally-oriented development of modern society.

Victorian Pain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Ablow
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
First Time

The nineteenth century introduced developments in science and medicine that made the eradication of pain conceivable for the first time. This new understanding of pain brought with it a complex set of moral and philosophical dilemmas. If pain serves no obvious purpose, how do we reconcile its existence with a well-ordered universe? Examining how writers of the day engaged with such questions, this book offers a compelling new literary and philosophical history of modern pain. The book provides close readings of novelists Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy and political and natural philosophers John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Darwin, as well as a variety of medical, scientific, and popular writers of the Victorian age. The book explores how discussions of pain served as investigations into the status of persons and the nature and parameters of social life. No longer conceivable as divine trial or punishment, pain in the nineteenth century came to seem instead like a historical accident suggesting little or nothing about the individual who suffers. A landmark study of Victorian literature and the history of pain, the book shows how these writers came to see pain as a social as well as a personal problem. Rather than simply self-evident to the sufferer and unknowable to anyone else, pain was also understood to be produced between persons—and even, perhaps, by the fictions they read.

The True Believers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara J. Risman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Gender Differentiation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Gendered Expectations

This is the first data chapter. In this chapter, respondents who are described as true believers in the gender structure, and essentialist gender differences are introduced and their interviews analyzed. They are true believers because, at the macro level, they believe in a gender ideology where women and men should be different and accept rules and requirements that enforce gender differentiation and even sex segregation in social life. In addition, at the interactional level, these Millennials report having been shaped by their parent’s traditional expectations and they similarly feel justified to impose gendered expectations on those in their own social networks. At the individual level, they have internalized masculinity or femininity, and embody it in how they present themselves to the world. They try hard to “do gender” traditionally.

scholarly journals Grimy Heritage: Organic Bar Streets in Shanghai and Tokyo

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 76-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Farrer
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Commercial Sex ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Social Functions

Abstract Every city has built environments that are largely regarded as eyesores, for aesthetic, social, or moral reasons. Urban nightlife streets are examples of such ‘grimy heritage’. Not only shabby and disorderly, they harbour forms of commercial sex, drinking cultures, and ephemeral nightlife cultures that many city residents and government officials consider undesirable. Sometimes their built forms are regarded as the enemy of genuine heritage architecture, since they obscure more solid, carefully designed structures around them. However, in many cities, organic nightlife streets—developing in such spaces precisely because they were derelict or poorly regulated—serve important social functions as spaces of creativity and community formation. This paper examines the ways that such ‘grimy heritage’ has developed in Shanghai and Tokyo, using examples from ethnographic research and historical sources, and addressing the question of the contribution of the ‘grimy heritage’ to authentic, urban social life.

Free Agent or ‘Conscious Automaton’? Contrasting Interpretations of the Individual in Spencer's Writing on Social and Moral Life

2003 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Offer
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Policy Sociology ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Individual

Herbert Spencer remains an important and intriguing figure in thinking about political, social and moral matters. At present his writings in relation to idealist thought, social policy, sociology and ethics are undergoing reassessment. This article is concerned with some recent interpretations of Spencer on individuals in social life. It looks in some detail at Spencer's work on psychology and sociology as well as on ethics, seeking to establish how Spencer understood people as social individuals. In particular the neglect of Spencer's denial of freedom of the will is identified as a problem in some recent interpretations. One of his contemporary critics, J.E. Cairnes, charged that Spencer's own theory of social evolution left even Spencer himself the status of only a ‘conscious automaton’. This article, drawing on a range of past and present interpretative discussions of Spencer, seeks to show that Spencerian individuals are psychically and socially so constituted as to be only indirectly responsive to moral suasion, even to that of his own Principles of Ethics as he himself acknowledged. Whilst overtly reconstructionist projects to develop a liberal utilitarianism out of Spencer to enliven political and philosophical debate for today are worthwhile – dead theorists have uses – care needs to be taken that the original context and its concerns with the processes associated with innovation (and decay) in social life are not thereby eclipsed, the more so since in some important respects they have recently received little systematic attention even though the issues have contemporary relevance in sociology.

The Nature of Political Thought

1923 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-215
Author(s):  
Raymond G. Gettell
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Present Condition ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Philosophy Professor ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Individual

In the introduction to his readings in political philosophy, Professor Coker says, “since the time of Plato there has been, in every philosophic age, some inquiry as to the justification of political organization in general, as to the relative merits of different political forms, and as to the appropriate position and privileges of the individual as master, member, or subject of the political order of society. Why do we have political organization? What in our present condition do we owe to it? What future benefits may we properly expect to derive from it? Are its purposes characteristically manifold and changing, or are they ultimately reducible to a few limited objects or to some single end? What is its best form? Who should control it? What is its proper relation to the ideas and sentiments of the community at its basis? What spheres of individual and social life is it incompetent to enter? Philosophers and publicists of various types have sought to answer these questions in abstract terms.”If an analysis be made of the questions with which political thought has been concerned, it is found that emphasis was placed at various periods upon widely different types of problems. In the medieval period political controversy centered in the contest for supremacy between spiritual and temporal authorities; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the dominant interest was in the contest between monarchic and democratic theories of political organization; at present, the extent of state activities has come into prominence, and the connection between political and economic interests is especially close. Besides, political conditions have changed so greatly from age to age that the same problem had quite different meanings at different periods.

HUNIAN VERTIKAL MONODUALISME (INDIVIDUALISME-KOLEKTIVISME)

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1111
Author(s):  
Hidayatul Reza ◽  
Franky Liauw
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Personal Space ◽  
Small Community ◽  
Social Force ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Basic Human Needs ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Self Potential

The conflict between the two social understandings between individualism and collectivism does not need to be clashed, but instead it needs to be managed according to values, morals and ethics. So that it can become a social force for social life. In this issue, architects can play a role in cultivating a 'space' that is fit to the problem of individualism-collectivism. The research method used is a comparative and synergistic method. Literature in the form of journals and books on the phenomenon of individualism-collectivism is used as a reference and comparison. To be able to change a person's attitude, it is necessary to have an environmental role that creates events and events that occur repeatedly and continuously, gradually being absorbed into the individual and influencing the formation of an attitude. In order for this approach to be applied easily, this approach must be applied to basic human needs. In basic human needs there is a hierarchy of the most basic, namely physiological needs, the most basic needs to be fulfilled because they include things that are vital for survival, namely, clothing, food, and shelter. So in order to answer this issue, the vertical housing function is fixed. In addition, vertical housing is considered important because it responds to limited land and the increasing human population. Vertical housing with a collaborative space in grouped dwelling unit concept, because offers many possibilities, from people who live together sharing physical space to communities that share values, interests and philosophies of life. Grouping system is also be an important value and in community prefer to live in small community amount 4-10 members with various background. Consisted by good quality personal space and supporting facilities to develop self-potential as self-actualization. Keywords:  collaborative; collectivism; individualism; monodualism; self actualization Abstrak Konflik dua paham sosial antara individualisme dengan kolektivisme tidak perlu dibenturkan, tetapi justru perlu dikelola menurut nilai-nilai, moral, dan etika, sehingga dapat menjadi kekuatan sosial bagi kehidupan bermasyarakat. Dalam isu ini, arsitek dapat berperan dalam mengolah ‘ruang’ yang fit terhadap permasalahan individualisme-kolektivisme. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode komparatif dan sinergis. Literatur berupa jurnal dan buku tentang fenomena individualisme-kolektivisme, dijadikan sebagai acuan dan pembanding. Untuk dapat mengubah sikap seseorang diperlukan peran lingkungan untuk menciptakan kejadian-kejadian dan peristiwa-peristiwa yang terjadi berulang-ulang dan terus-menerus, lama-kelamaan secara bertahap diserap kedalam diri individu dan memengaruhi terbentuknya suatu sikap. Agar pendekatan ini dapat diterapkan dengan mudah maka pendekatan ini harus diterapkan pada kebutuhan dasar manusia. Pada kebutuhan dasar manusia terdapat hierarki yang paling dasar yaitu kebutuhan fisiologis (physiological needs), kebutuhan yang paling dasar untuk dipenuhi karena meliputi hal-hal yang vital bagi kelangsungan hidup yaitu, sandang, pangan, dan papan. Sehingga untuk menjawab isu ini, ditetapkan fungsi hunian vertikal. Selain itu, hunian vertikal dinilai penting karena untuk mejawab keterbatasan lahan dan semakin tingginya populasi manusia. Hunian vertikal dengan mengusung konsep ruang kolaboratif pada setiap unit hunian yang dikelompokkan, karena menawarkan banyak kemungkinan, mulai dari orang-orang yang tinggal bersama dengan berbagi ruang fisik hingga komunitas yang juga berbagi nilai, minat, dan filosofi hidup. Sistem pengelompokan penghuni juga menjadi nilai penting dan dalam komunitas lebih menyukai jumlah yang sedikit 4-10 orang dengan latar belakang yang berbeda. Ditunjang dengan kualitas ruang pribadi yang baik dan fasilitas penunjang yang dapat mengembangkan potensi sebagai bentuk aktualisai diri.

scholarly journals A city as an emotional space: theoretical-sociological analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 82-89
Author(s):  
Nadiya Mikhno
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Experience Economy ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Total Consumption ◽  
Modern City ◽  
The Individual

The focus of this article is focused on the study of peculiarities of the contemporary aestheticization of urban space as a product of emotional capitalism. Noted that the concepts "society experiences" and "experience economy" fixed vector of cultural changes of modern society, and suggest new theoretical trajectory of sociological research. Control for the "experience" in this case can be considered a new form of public influence in which not last role is played by the mass media, which is a kind of mediator for the active promotion of a variety of emotions, first and foremost sensual pleasure. Pointed out that the aestheticization of the contemporary urban space is connected with the logic of the functioning of emotional capitalism. The modern city is forced to form their own "alphabet of feelings", which prescribes rules for their feelings in different situations. Entertainment in the city acquires the features of a universal model, it is a particular code value in U. Eco, that is, a symbolic system that can reveal the contents of the message depending on the purpose and conditions of the functioning of the spectacle. Life in a modern city full of wealth of their own unrest, and the aestheticization of urban space is associated with replication "markets experiences" that focus on the commercialization of human feelings. The emotional richness of urban design has become a part of an overall program of total consumption. The theatricality, iconization and glamor can be considered as the main strategy "emotionalization" of urban space that aims at the reproduction of the effects of the "experience economy". Stressed that the idea glamorizes urban space can be traced in the concepts of the theoreticians of the "creative city", appealing to psychologically and design analysis of the urban environment, and the militarization of urban space through the creation of militaristic icons that form the therapeutically-emotional space. Respectively iconic images serve as points of reference, the individual ascribes to them a special importance as images that represent something significant for social life.

scholarly journals Campos de Deméter: Da Impossibilidade de Separar a Ciência, a Ética e a Estética na Hermenêutica da Paisagem

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (40) ◽  
pp. 69-94
Author(s):  
António Queirós ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
The Individual

Central conceptual terms, such as ‘culture’, ‘environment’, ‘nature’ and ‘landscape’, are far from being neutral scientific objects. They are academic constructions which need to be understood in their emergence across their historic contexts. Morality is a cultural expression determined by social domination and historical context, which gives it a sectary character. We need a moral theory that can be universal, timeless and that is able to guide the individual conduct, science and political ideologies, without considering the man the zenith of Life. Life, with its biodiversity, is only the tip of a complex Cosmos evolution, but we don’t know if our species, bom on planet Earth, are the final link in the Cosmos evolution. To answer all these questions, a new ethical perspective was born, a theory built upon the principles of meta-ethics and applicable to all human activities. Environmental ethics are supported by two principles - the critique against anthropocentrism and the critique against ethnocentrism, giving a universal answer to the macro moral problems of our era - environmental, social, economical and political crisis, war and weapons of mass destruction... And contributes towards rebuilding the human activities in all domains of individual and social life.

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