The Anthropology of Literature in France

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95
Author(s):  
Laurent Sebastian Fournier ◽  
Jean-Marie Privat

In this article we present the ongoing theoretical discussions concerning the relations between anthropology and literature in France. We recall the historical relationship of a part of French anthropology and the world of literature. We then try to show how the anthropology of literature began by using the model of the anthropology of art, mainly concentrating on literary works as individual creations specific to the style or the cosmology of a given writer. We explore a new perspective on the analysis of the social and symbolic meanings of literary worlds, putting the emphasis on what is called ‘ethnocriticism’ in France. In order to understand better the influence of literature and literary motives on contemporary cultural practices, and to grasp the relation of literary works with the outside world and with everyday life, we propose to build up a comparative approach of literary works and rituals. Through different novels or other literary works, we address possible developments of contemporary anthropologies of literature in France.

Author(s):  
Bibi van den Berg ◽  
Ruth Prins ◽  
Sanneke Kuipers

Security and safety are key topics of concern in the globalized and interconnected world. While the terms “safety” and “security” are often used interchangeably in everyday life, in academia, security is mostly studied in the social sciences, while safety is predominantly studied in the natural sciences, engineering, and medicine. However, developments and incidents that negatively affect society increasingly contain both safety and security aspects. Therefore, an integrated perspective on security and safety is beneficial. Such a perspective studies hazardous and harmful events and phenomena in the full breadth of their complexity—including the cause of the event, the target that is harmed, and whether the harm is direct or indirect. This leads to a richer understanding of the nature of incidents and the effects they may have on individuals, collectives, societies, nation-states, and the world at large.


1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
M.S. Jillani

The debate over the relationship of population and development is now more than 200 years old, starting with the treatise on population by Malthus, in 1798. The increase in population, ever since, has remained a matter of concern for economists and development planners. The most recent high point of the issue was witnessed at Cairo in September, 1994. The conference which was attended by more than 10,000 persons from all over the world ended with an agreement on the issues involved in the growth of population and the economy. The outcome was a Plan of Action for the next twenty years, which would concentrate on Reproductive Health in order to obtain, “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity in all matters relating to the reproductive system and its functions and process”. This can be a turn-around in global efforts for human health and welfare, if properly implemented.


Author(s):  
Seung-Hyun Lee

From being a simple communication technology to a key social tool, the mobile phone has become such an important aspect of people's everyday life. Mobile phones have altered the way people live, communicate, interact, and connect with others. Mobile phones are also transforming how people access and use information and media. Given the rapid pervasiveness of mobile phones in society across the world, it is important to explore how mobile phones have affected the way people communicate and interact with others, access the information, and use media, and their daily lifestyle. This article aims to explore the social and cultural implications that have come with the ubiquity, unprecedented connectivity, and advances of mobile phones. This article also focuses on the discussion about people's dependence on, attachment and addiction to mobile phones, social problems that mobile phones generate, and how people value mobile phone use.


Author(s):  
Walter E.A. van Beek

There is not one African indigenous religion (AIR); rather, there are many, and they diverge widely. As a group, AIRs are quite different from the scriptural religions the world is more familiar with, since what is central to AIRs is neither belief nor faith, but ritual. Exemplifying an “imagistic” form of religiosity, these religions have no sacred books or writings and are learned by doing, by participation and experience, rather than by instruction and teaching. Belonging to specific local ethnic groups, they are deeply embedded in and informed by the various ecologies of foragers, pastoralists, and horticulturalists—as they are also by the social structures of these societies: they “dwell” in their cultures. These are religions of the living, not so much preparing for afterlife as geared toward meeting the challenges of everyday life, illness and misfortune, mourning and comforting—but also toward feasting, life, fertility, and togetherness, even in death. Quiet rituals of the family contrast with exuberant public celebrations when new adults re-enter the village after an arduous initiation; intricate ritual attention to the all-important crops may include tense rites to procure much needed rains. The range of rituals is wide and all-encompassing. In AIRs, the dead and the living are close, either as ancestors or as other representatives of the other world. Accompanied by spirits of all kinds, both good and bad, harmful and nurturing, existence is full of ambivalence. Various channels are open for communication with the invisible world, from prayer to trance, and from dreams to revelations, but throughout it is divination in its manifold forms that offers a window on the deeper layers of reality. Stories about the other world abound, and many myths and legends are never far removed from basic folktales. These stories do not so much explain the world as they entertainingly teach about the deep humanity that AIRs share and cherish.


1991 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Bova

This article makes a case for viewing the politics of regime transition in communist states as a subcategory of the more generic phenomenon of transition from authoritarian rule. Drawing on case studies from Latin America and Southern Europe and from the more theoretical literature on postauthoritarian transitions that those cases have generated, the article reexamines the politics of reform in the Gorbachev-era USSR. This comparative approach shows that the dynamics of the liberalization process in the USSR adhere to a model of political change previously manifested in other parts of the world. Specifically, it provides a clearer understanding of the initial vitality and subsequent disintegration of Gorbachev's centrist reform program, as well as a new perspective from which to reevaluate Gorbachev's often-criticized program of regime democratization.


2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
Josef Früchtl

Vertrauen hat zunächst einmal eine fundamentale Funktion in der sozialen Sphäre. Dementsprechend fungiert es als philosophischer Terminus vor allem in der Politischen, der Sozial- und der Moralphilosophie. Aber auch in der neueren Soziologie und Psychologie ist es zentral. Im Verweis darauf kann man das Vertrauensverhältnis zwischen Zuschauer und Leinwandheld als parasozial bezeichnen, als eine Als-ob- Interaktion. Für die neuere Filmphilosophie spezifisch interessant ist demgegenüber das ontologische Vertrauen. Statt es mit Deleuze im Sinne einer Kino-Metaphysik zu erklären, scheint es angemessener, die verschiedenen fachspezifischen Antworten noch einmal unter Kants Spielkonzept zusammenzubinden. Ästhetische Erfahrungen bestärken uns in der Einstellung, so zu tun, als ob wir in die Welt Vertrauen haben könnten. At first trust plays a fundamental role within the social sphere. Accordingly, trust serves as philosophical term above all in Political, Social, and Moral Philosophy. But it is also central in recent Sociology and Psychology. Referring to these disciplines, the relationship of trust be- tween viewer and hero on the screen can be called ›parasocial‹, as-if-interaction. In contrast, ontological trust is of particular interest for recent philosophy of film. Instead of explaining it, following Deleuze, in terms of a metaphysics of cinema it seems to be more adequate to com- bine the different subject-specific answers in Kant’s concept of play. Aesthetic experiences then are encouraging us in the attitude to act as if there could be trust in the world.


Author(s):  
M.A. Perekhoda ◽  

The philosophical discourse of the XX–ХХI, in the face of the latest ontologies, is characterized by a change in the way of speaking about things (objects), the restoration of their philosophical rights, almost completely, excluding one of the central ontological roles of a person in access to the surrounding reality. The purpose of this study was to identify the features of ideas about the ontological status of an object in modern philosophical and ontological theories. Achievement of the stated goal of the research was ensured by complex application, based on the comparative approach, dialectical and hermeneutic methods, as well as the method of ontological differentiation. In the course of the study, the features of the vision of an object, characteristic of postclassical ontologies of the 20th century, were considered. In the course of the research, the features of the object vision characteristic of post-classical ontologies of the XX century (actor-network theory, flat ontologies) were considered. Based on the ideas of plurality, heterogeneity, anti-essentialism and relationalism in the philosophical discourse of our time, the author presents a modern interpretation of the ontological statuses of objects. By analyzing the relationship of postclassical ontologies to the category of truth, the epistemological and methodological nature of the above ontological theories has been revealed. A critical analysis of the features of the status that is attributed to the object within their framework is carried out. The author substantiates the idea that the ontological status of an object in modern ontologies is reduced exclusively to its communicative and intermediary nature. The article ends with a brief presentation of the author’s views that the ontological status of an object is a fundamental issue of the connection between the idea of essence and the idea of subjectivity, which is inherent in intentionality as the ability to cognize an object. At the same time, it is pointed out that the researcher must concentrate exclusively on «cognition» and not on the «construction» of the object. The author notes that modern specialists, operating with traditional ontological terms (being, existence) in the sphere of the considered ontologies, and trying to create a new «ontology of the social», miss their original intention. In this connection, the idea turns into a new epistemology and, as a consequence, the construction of a completely different methodological framework for the cognitive process, but not an integral ontological concept.


2018 ◽  
Vol 222 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-24
Author(s):  
Asst. Instructor: Ayad Enad Khalaf

This article highlights different ways of metaphorical use in language and shows its potential in attracting the readers' attention. Language as a biological being lives its own life witnessing never-ending changes: falling outs and newly built elements. We enrich our language not only by new elements but also by new styles and reusing of existing sources. One of these ways which makes language more alive and active is metaphor. Metaphor nowadays is found in all the fields of life, education, medicine, policy and everyday life. Metaphor, in fact, reflects the relationship of language to culture and the world of ideas. Language, on the one hand, is a repository of culture; the traditions, proverbs, and knowledge of our ancestors. On the other hand, language is the mirror of the world of ideas. People reflect their new ideas in using language in new ways, even such devices as paintings and riddles. Metaphor has many shapes and is found in spoken and written language, graphics, cartoon or caricature, riddles, jokes and paintings to express novel shades of meanings, e.g., metaphor in newspaper photos, magazines or even in advertisements attracts the attention of readers and are memorized for a long time. Metaphoric use is also a way of enjoying the readers. It is used for both real and logical aims such as; warnings, advises, or invitations ...etc


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo MINYOUNG ◽  

This thesis explains the characteristics of the simile concept and application of Uzbek and Korean, and the differences and similarities between the objects used as simile auxiliary ideas in Uzbek and Korean through simile example sentences. Humans have been vividly and efficiently expressing parts and various thoughts that are difficult to speak directly through the method of simile within a limited vocabulary for a long time. In particular, it can be seen that expressing animals, plants, and nature, which have always been together since the beginning of humanity, in relation to simile objects, occurs frequently in everyday life and in literary works. For a long time, many scholars around the world have found that metaphors are indispensable and important tools in human cognitive activity, and in particular, representing animals that are closest to humans is very effective in the way humans communicate.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-114
Author(s):  
Carmen Darabus

The aim of investigation. The floral symbol manifests intself according to the aesthetic codes of each literary era. For romantic creators the outside world begins to lose its meaning so that the real nature will be subordinated by them to the inner movements of feelings. The literary motif of the blue flower consecrated by Novalis in German romanticism is the desire to access a higher spiritual life because in romanticism literature becomes a means of knowing the world not just mirroring it, no matter how elaborate this reflection. With reverberation in Mihai Eminescu`s poetry this floral motif is originally autochthonous along with other floral aesthetic codes. The method of research. Constructive comparativism or third-degree comparativism is the method used amd is based on relationship of dependence or influence between at least two texts. Thus, there are certain myths, themes, motives that radiate from one culture to another, from one era to another, enriching their meaning according to new visions about the world and life. Conclusion. From the dawn of literature until now aesthetic codes including floral ones have been constant they being part of the mythical structure of humanity. The relation between literary works, the contacts berween national literatures and the circulation in time of ideas materialize in the taking of some forms, of some suggestions regarding the stylistic construction or the interpretation of the phenomena from the objective world.


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