scholarly journals THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL TOPOLOGY OF THE CRAFT

Author(s):  
S. A. Azarenko ◽  
◽  
A. V. Keller ◽  

In the so-called historical periods of artisanal and industrial development, craft, social, and cultural practices have gained a new position in history and thus in the modern scale of values, their own time and place in the new framework of the «green economy». The formal contradiction between crafts and modernization can be removed if we consider the historical experience of crafts. With their genetic link to trade masters and their workshops, small- and medium-sized enterprises can be drivers of innovation through conservational, ecological, and socially neutral productive processes. The article attempts to outline the theoretical and methodological basis of a social topology of crafts as a new sphere in the philosophy of history and trades. Drawing on ancient, western European and Russian philosophy, the authors show that the social topology of trades can be seen as an alternative theoretical and methodological basis when researching the history of crafts, the development of their form and their deployment in space and time. The timeliness and relevance of this theoretical discussion is defined by the need to answer the conceptual challenges of the space-time of post-industrial development, to open a new historical retrospective on crafts and to realize the current and future sustainable development of trades. A topological research agenda, where the historical personality is seen as a socio-bodily being with a place in the space-time it itself produces, is founded on the key concepts of corporeality and location and interconnectedness within the socio-ontological context. In the framework of social phenomenology and ontology, the schema of flexible networks of small manufacturers takes the following form: «trade fraternities — workshops — practices — the self-organization and self-administration of fraternities». The craft topologeme suggests cooperation within the framework of a global trade fraternity of ecological manufacturing networks.

Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 310
Author(s):  
Alicia Izharuddin

What accounts for the endurance of forced marriage (kahwin paksa) narratives in Malaysian public culture? How does one explain the ways popular fascination with forced marriage relate to assumptions about heteronormative institutions and practices? In a society where most who enter into marriages do so based on individual choice, the enduring popularity of forced marriage as a melodramatic trope in fictional love stories suggests an ambivalence about modernity and egalitarianism. This ambivalence is further excavated by illuminating the intertextual engagement by readers, publishers and booksellers of Malay romantic fiction with a mediated discourse on intimacy and cultural practices. This article finds that forced marriage in the intimate publics of Malay romance is delivered as a kind of melodramatic mode, a storytelling strategy to solve practical problems of experience. Intertextual narratives of pain and struggle cast light on ‘redha’ (submission to God’s will) and ‘sabar’ (patience), emotional virtues that are mobilised during personal hardship and the challenge of maintaining successful marital relations. I argue that ‘redha’ and ‘sabar’ serve as important linchpins for the reproduction of heteronormative institutions and wifely obedience (taat). This article also demonstrates the ways texts are interwoven in the narratives about gender roles, intimacy, and marital success (or lack thereof) and how they relate to the modes of romantic melodrama.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Blagrove ◽  
Julia Lockheart

There are many theories of the function of dreams, such as memory consolidation, emotion processing, threat simulation and social simulation. In general, such theories hold that the function of dreams occurs within sleep; occurs for unrecalled dreams as well as for dream that are recalled on awakening; and that conscious recall of dreams is not necessary for their function to occur. In contrast, we propose that dreams have an effect of enhancing empathy and group bonding when dreams are shared and discussed with others. We propose also that this effect would have occurred in history and pre-history and, as it would have enhanced the cohesiveness and mutual understanding of group members, the fictional and engaging characteristics of dream content would have been selected for during human social evolution, interacting with cultural practices of dream-sharing. Such dream-sharing may have taken advantage of the long REM periods that occur for biological reasons near the end of the night. Dream-production and dream-sharing may have developed alongside story-telling, utilising common neural mechanisms. Dream-sharing hence would have contributed to Human Self-Domestication, held by many researchers to be the primary driver of the evolution of human prosociality, tolerance and reduced intragroup emotional reactivity. We note that within-sleep theories of dream function rely on correlational rather than experimental findings, and have as yet untested and speculative mechanisms, whereas post-sleep effects of dream-sharing are easily testable and have mechanisms congruent with the social processes proposed by the theory of Human Self-Domestication.


Author(s):  
Boris I. Pruzhinin ◽  
◽  
Aleksandr V. Antoshchenko ◽  
Tanya N. Galcheva ◽  
Inna V. Golubovich ◽  
...  

On August 26, 2021, with the support of “Voprosy filosofii” was held a “round table”, the participants of which considered it meaningful and relevant to address the legacy of experiencing and philosophical reflection of critical epochs by peo­ple who have fully endured the “breakdown” of being and an anthropological crisis – for comprehending the disturbing changes taking place in modern soci­ety. In this regard, the intellectual biographies of thinkers who felt a colossal shock in the 1920s and who tried to comprehend their local experience as a global are exceptional. In the authors’ focus are ideas and arguments of the philosophers of the Russian Abroad about the crisis of their contemporary culture (Fedotov – Weidle – Landau – Bicilli). The “round table” is an attempt to correlate their experience with the modern reality of the anthropological crisis. The studying intellectuals underlined the death of culture as the main threat to the life of the social organism. The salvation of culture, first of all, depends on the spiritual efforts of people. From this point of view, philosophy has to com­prehend the principles that make it possible to resist the processes of cultural de­struction. And in this regard, the personality of the philosopher is of exceptional importance, his willingness to live and work “as if history would never end, and at the same time, as if it ended today” (G.P. Fedotov). The philosophy of culture forms the ideal of personal choice as a free submission to universal human goals. The relevance of the intellectual and spiritual search of the “Russian Abroad” thinkers can't be overestimated since this crisis continues today, entering ever new, previously unpredictable phases. The struggle for culture continues. There­fore, the intellectual searches of the "Russian Abroad" thinkers are essential to­day. The core of the discussions was three actual topics in the context of their comprehension by the philosophers: 1. The crisis of religious consciousness; 2. The crisis of scientific rationality; 3. Crisis of cultural identity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 218-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Koziura

This article is part of the special cluster titled Bukovina and Bukovinians after the Second World War: (Re)shaping and (re)thinking a region after genocide and ‘ethnic unmixing’, guest edited by Gaëlle Fisher and Maren Röger. This article explores ways in which Habsburg nostalgia has become an important factor in contemporary place-making strategies in the city of Chernivtsi, Western Ukraine. Through the analysis of diasporic homecomings, city center revitalization, and nationalist rhetoric surrounding the politics of monuments, I explore hybrid and diverse ways in which Habsburg nostalgia operates in a given setting. Rather than a static and homogenous form of place attachment, in Chernivtsi different cultural practices associated with Habsburg nostalgia coexist with each other and depending on the political context as well as the social position of the “nostalgic agents” manifest themselves differently. Drawing from my long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that in order to fully understand individuals’ attachment to space, it is necessary to grasp both the subtle emotional ways in which the city is experienced by individuals as well as problematize the role of the built environment in the visualization of collective memory and emotions of particular groups. The focus on changing manifestations of the Habsburg nostalgia can bring then a better understanding of the range and scope of the city’s symbolic resources that might be mobilized for various purposes.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-724
Author(s):  
Geraldo Andrello ◽  
Antonio Guerreiro ◽  
Stephen Hugh-Jones

Abstract The multi-ethnic and multilingual complexes of the Upper Rio Negro and the Upper Xingu share common aspects that frequently emerge in ethnographies, including notions of descent, hierarchical social organization and ritual activities, as well as a preference for forms of exogamy and the unequal distribution of productive and ritual specialties and esoteric knowledge. In this article we investigate how the people of both regions conceive of their humanity and that of their neighbours as variations on a shared form, since in both regions ritual processes for negotiating positions and prerogatives seems to take the place of the latent state of warfare typical of the social life of other Amazonian peoples. In this article we will synthesize, for each region, the spatio-temporal processes that underscore the eminently variable constitution of collectivities, seeking, in conclusion, to isolate those elements that the two regions have in common.


10.1068/c9866 ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Bathelt

Since the late 1980s, various scholars have concluded that a recovery from the Fordist crisis will require that rigid Fordist practices and structures in the industrial sector be replaced by flexible ones. The mode of development to follow, often referred to as a post-Fordist or after-Fordist mode, is often assumed to be characterized by flexibility in technologies, labor, and production processes. Aside from idealistic scenarios and limited empirical findings, relatively little is known about the product, process, and linkage structures which will lead to a new mode of development. The degree to which flexibility processes will be influential is also unclear. It is within this context that I try to provide new insights into the changing nature of industrial production and the social and technical division of labor, with the aid of results from a recent study of the German chemical industry (basic chemicals; pigments, dyes, paints, varnishes; and pharmaceuticals). Using a postal survey of 155 German chemical firms and 18 firm case studies, I investigate how firms have adjusted their product and process configurations and their supplier relations and customer relations to meet the changing technological, economic, and societal settings. According to my analysis, it seems unlikely that industrial development will follow a single growth trajectory towards flexibility. Increases in flexibility in products and processes are often only subordinate goals, or are not considered necessary. I describe how chemical firms benefit from spatial proximity to their supplier and customer bases. I also provide evidence that most firms rely on strategically important stable linkages within the short and middle distance.


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