Fragmenting Hominins and the Presencing of Early Palaeolithic Social Worlds

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Chapman ◽  
Bisserka Gaydarska
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Cognitive Evolution ◽  
David Bohm ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Distributed Elements

This chapter introduces the fragmentation premise — the idea that the deliberate breakage of a complete object and the re-use of the resultant fragments as new and separate objects ‘after the break’ was a common practice in the past. It also summarizes the main implications of the fragmentation premise for the study of enchained social relations and of the creation and development of personhood in the past. Enchained relations connect the distributed elements of a person's social identity using material culture. These concepts of fragmentation, enchainment and fractality are used to think through some of the earliest remains of objects in the world. Following the philosopher David Bohm, the discussion supports the co-evolution of fragmentation in both consciousness and in objects, and compares Bohm's three-stage ideas to Mithen's model of cognitive evolution and Donald's model of external symbolic storage.

scholarly journals Reality bytes. Hybrid inter-faces, hybrid selves

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-104
Author(s):  
Mario Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Self ◽  
Multiple Selves ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

Kyoto UniversityOver the past 20 years, computer games have become a very integral part of consumptive practices, acting as a guide to mediate multiple selves. This sets the context for this paper, a philosophical inquiry into the creation and mediation of ‘selves’ through the consumption of Japanese computer games, taking a detailed look at some of the symbolic and semiotic structures that permeate game structures. Games placed in the realm of human creativity and normative freedoms are as argued in this paper, a subtle form of the Deleuzian concept of assemblage.This paper argues that the ‘self’ as seen through computer games manifest multiple ‘selves’ that highlight the fluidity of identities which are being fabricated, disseminated and transmitted from Japan. Through an analysis of a number of Japanese games popular in Japan and actively consumed abroad, this paper examines an underlying grammar that transcribes the self and how social relations are reworked through technological enquiry. This paper further highlights how computer-dominated social practices that have heavily flowed from Japan have introduced very specific ontological ways of seeing the world to a whole generation of games players residing in other geographical spheres.

The New Islamic State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhad Khosrokhavar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
The West ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) changed the nature of jihadism worldwide. For a few years (2014–2017) it exemplified the destructive capacity of jihadism and created a new utopia aimed at restoring the past greatness and glory of the former caliphate. It also attracted tens of thousands of young wannabe combatants of faith (mujahids, those who make jihad) toward Syria and Iraq from more than 100 countries. Its utopia was dual: not only re-creating the caliphate that would spread Islam all over the world but also creating a cohesive, imagined community (the neo-umma) that would restore patriarchal family and put an end to the crisis of modern society through an inflexible interpretation of shari‘a (Islamic laws and commandments). To achieve these goals, ISIS diversified its approach. It focused, in the West, on the rancor of the Muslim migrants’ sons and daughters, on exoticism, and on an imaginary dream world and, in the Middle East, on tribes and the Sunni/Shi‘a divide, particularly in the Iraqi and Syrian societies.

White Skin Privilege: Modern Myth, Forgotten Past

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Peter Frost
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Selection Pressure ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
White Slavery ◽  
White Skin ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Preference ◽  
European Women ◽  
Modern Myth

Abstract European women dominate images of beauty, presumably because Europe has dominated the world for the past few centuries. Yet this presumed cause poorly explains “white slavery”—the commodification of European women for export at a time when their continent was much less dominant. Actually, there has long been a cross-cultural preference for lighter-skinned women, with the notable exception of modern Western culture. This cultural norm mirrors a physical norm: skin sexually differentiates at puberty, becoming fairer in girls, and browner and ruddier in boys. Europeans are also distinguished by a palette of hair and eye colors that likewise differs between the sexes, with women more often having the brighter hues. In general, the European phenotype, especially its brightly colored features, seems to be due to a selection pressure that targeted women, apparently sexual selection. Female beauty is thus a product of social relations, but not solely those of recent times.

scholarly journals Merging the Human and the Nonhuman: The Object Narrator in The Adventures of a Black Coat

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-159
Author(s):  
Ivana Dragoș ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Commodity Fetishism ◽  
The World ◽  
Pedagogical Function

Rooted in the tradition of eighteenth-century circulation novels recounted by an object narrator, The Adventures of a Black Coat (1760) epitomizes the features of this experimental novelistic subgenre by foregrounding a coat which, acting as a homodiegetic narrator, lambastes the world of commodities prompted by the rise of early capitalism. As an object endowed with moral conscience, the coat epistemologically proves to be a reliable narrator that is able to render authentic experience and feelings by getting empirically involved in the world it describes. Worn by a few owners, the coat becomes a sharp observer of society and, most importantly, it foreshadows what Karl Marx has termed “commodity fetishism.” According to Marx, commodities and humans become part of a process that is economically endorsed by exchange. Read in this light, I argue that the text reveals the Marxist process of reification whereby social relations between humans turn into social relations between things. Despite being an object narrator, the coat fulfils a typically eighteenth-century pedagogical function, in that it warns the reader against the degrading morals of a society addicted to material culture.

scholarly journals Alternative international currencies

2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (194) ◽  
pp. 31-39
Author(s):  
Vladimirovna Rozhentsova
Keyword(s):  
International Monetary System ◽  
International Currency ◽  
The Past ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
International Currencies ◽  
The World ◽  
Circulation Mechanism ◽  
The Creation

The modern international monetary system has a number of flaws and therefore needs cardinal change. Hence, economists from all over the world are suggesting alternative international currencies that would make the international monetary system more efficient. However, it is essential when approaching the creation of a new international currency to analyze and take into account the experience of all the past international currencies. Therefore this paper begins with an exploration of the drawbacks of each of the past and present international currencies. Drawing on this analysis a justification will be made for the necessity of introducing a new international currency, pointing to the requirements it should meet. Further on, this paper proposes an alternative theoretically possible variant of the international currency, with a fixed value relative to a commodity basket. An abstract example is used to demonstrate its composition and circulation mechanism.

Poetosphere and mythopoetics of the estate in A.A. Blok’s dramatic poem “Song of Fate”

2020 ◽  
pp. 186-205
Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Kuznetsova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Russian Literature ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
White House ◽  
Modern City ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
The Hill ◽  
As If

As it noted by the researchers, the “Song of fate” accumulates painful thoughts of A.A. Blok about the fate of Russia and about his personal fate associat ed with the past, present and future of the Motherland. In addition to the ideological problems raised in it, the poem is interesting in an attempt to escape from the specifics of historical and national-cultural realities through their symbolization, combining the plans of life and being. The white house with a garden on the hill, in which the action of the play begins and the return to which is implied at the end, incorporates the most important features of Russia as a cultural, natural and spiritual space. The world of the estate is opposed by the space of the modern city and the big world of Russian open spaces. However, the estate for Blok is Russia the same. Therefore, Elena, the keeper of the estate, and Faina, the personalization of the world element, are two parts of one whole, as if the projection of an ideal Russia. The plot of the “Song of fate”, accord ing to D.M. Magomedova, I.S. Prikhodko, etc., is an artistic realization of the Gnostic myth of the captive Sophia, the Soul of the world. The imposition of the Gnostic myth in the “Song of fate” on the entire existing in Russian literature of the XIX century poetosphere of the estate leads to the creation of the author’s myth about Russia, the transformation of poetosphere in the mythopoetics.

Creating the Past: Schelling’s Ages of the World

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Welchman ◽  
Judith Norman
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Viewing Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hegelian Dialectic ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Creation ◽  
To Receive

AbstractF.W.J. Schelling’s Ages of the World has just begun to receive the critical attention it deserves as a contribution to the philosophy of history. Its most significant philosophical move is to pose the question of the origin of the past itself, asking what “caused” the past. Schelling treats the past not as a past present (something that used to be a ’now’ but no longer is) — but rather as an eternal past, a different dimension of time altogether, and one that was never a present ’now’. For Schelling, the past functions as the transcendental ground of the present, the true ’a priori’. Schelling’s account of the creation of this past takes the form of a theogeny: in order to exist, God needed to separate the past from the present. By grounding the creation of the past in a free decision of God, Schelling tries to conceptualize temporality so as to preserve the sort of radical contingency and authentic freedom that he considers essential features of history. In so doing, he opens up a way of viewing time that avoids the pitfalls of the Hegelian dialectic and anticipates some of the 20th century developments in phenomenology.

The Peculiar Temporality of Violence: a Source of Perplexity about Social Power

KronoScope ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Violent Event ◽  
Final Cause ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Origin Myths

AbstractMost national myths of origin begin with some transcendent or sacrificial story of violent revolution, warfare or liberation. This is also true of many origin myths of ethnic, tribal or other forms of social identity. This makes it appear that some act of violence is the cause of their coming into being. This paper argues that this is an artefact of the temporal 'peculiarity' of violence. Violent events, it is argued, are essentially unpredictable even when statistically probable. This means that violence is only 'visible' after the fact, and rarely before and that plausible causal models can rarely be constructed in advance. Violence is always seen in retrospect, then, and where it has caused significant death and destruction, it requires that we begin to make sense of what caused it. Unlike other planned or and emotionally charged social interactions (such as eating, sexuality, ritual) acts of violence interrupt (disrupt, breach, rupture, break, etc.) and terminate parts or all of previous social relations. Since the cause of violence can only be assigned retrospectively, this means that we must (re-)construct the past in a way that allows us to make sense of it. Where some violent event is followed by the eventual emergence of a new identity, the new identity is often explained as having 'originated' in violence. This implies that violence caused the new social identity in some way, and that it functions as a political instrument. But violence can only create a void, and is chaotic. After violence, we require the (re-)telling of the past in a new way. This makes violence appear at the beginning of narratives of origin, but does not imply that violence caused these identities. Since large scale violence leads cultural loss and to large scale social (re)construction, narratives of identity tend to begin at these moments in time. This account of violence seeks, therefore, to undermine the notion that violence is an efficient or final cause of social forms.

Promiscuity, Polygyny, and the Power of Revenge: The Past and Future of Burmese Buddhist Law in Myanmar

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa CROUCH
Keyword(s):  
Potential Application ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Family Law ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

AbstractMyanmar is the only Buddhism-majority country in the world that has developed and maintained a system of family law for Buddhists enforced by the courts. This article considers the construction of Burmese Buddhist law by lawyers, judges, and legislators, and the changes made through legislative intervention in 2015. It begins by addressing the creation and contestation of Burmese Buddhist law to demonstrate that it has largely been defined by men and by its perceived opposites, Hinduism and Islam. Three aspects of Burmese Buddhist law that affect women are then examined more closely. First, Burmese Buddhist law carries no penalties for men who commit adultery, although women may risk divorce and the loss of her property. Second, a man can take more than one wife under Burmese Buddhist law; a woman cannot. Third, restrictions on Buddhist women who marry non-Buddhist men operate to ensure the primacy of Burmese Buddhist law over the potential application of Islamic law. This article deconstructs the popular claim that women are better off under Burmese Buddhist law than under Hindu law or Islamic law by showing how Burmese Buddhist law has been preoccupied with regulating the position of women. The 2015 laws build on this history of Burmese Buddhist law, creating new problems, but also potentially operating as a new source of revenge.

scholarly journals Plots and Motives about the Creation of the Earth and Man in the Mythology of the Altaians

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-62
Author(s):  
N. R. Oinotkinova
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Folk Tradition ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Close Contacts

The paper analyzes the plots and motives of Altai myths about the creation of the earth and man with the use of comparative material from the folklore of peoples with which the Altai people had close contacts in the past, in particular from Russian and Buryat-Mongolian folklore. The motives characteristic of these versions are considered: diving behind the earth; creation of the earth; the creation of man; the dog protects the human body; desecration of the human body; spilled elixir of immortality; lost heaven; the overthrow of the devil from heaven; competition of deities for primacy in the rule of the world. In the Altai folk tradition, two versions of the myth of the creation of the world and man are distinguished: the first is dualistic (pagan) and the second is “Buddhist”. In the dualistic version of the myth, the main characters are two deities – Ulgen and Erlik. In the plot of the “Buddhist” version of the myth, unlike the dualistic one, 4 deity brothers participate in the act of creation: Yuch-Kurbustan (Three Kurbustan) and Erlik. This story is joined by a Buddhist legend about how bodhisattvas competed in order for the victor to become the ruler of the world.

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