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Wikinomics | Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything is a book by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, first published in December 2006. It explores how some companies in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration and open-source technology, such as wikis, to be successful.
The term 'Wikinomics' describes the effects of extensive collaboration and user-participation and how relationships between businesses and markets have changed as a result.
Concepts
According to Tapscott, the use of mass collaboration in a business environment in recent history can be seen as an extension of the trend in business to outsource: externalize formerly internal business functions to other business entities. The difference however is that instead of an organized business body brought into being specifically for a unique function, mass collaboration relies on free individual agents to come together and cooperate to improve a given operation or solve a problem. This kind of outsourcing is also referred to as crowdsourcing, to reflect this difference. This can be incentivized by a reward system, though it is not required.
The book also discusses seven new models of mass collaboration, including:
Peering: For example, page 24, "Marketocracy employs a form of peering in a mutual fund that harnesses the collective intelligence of the investment community... Though not completely open source, it is an example of how meritocratic, peer-to-peer models are seeping into an industry where conventional wisdom favors the lone super-star stock advisor."
Ideagoras: For example, page 98, linking experts with unsolved research and development problems. The company InnoCentive is a consulting group that encapsulates the idea of ideagoras.
Prosumers: For example, page 125, where it discusses the social video game Second Life as being created by its customers. When customers are also the producers, you have the phenomenon: Prosumer.
New Alexandrians: This idea is about the Internet and sharing knowledge.
The last chapter is written by viewers, and was opened for editing on February 5, 2007.
Central concepts of wikinomics in the enterprise
According to Tapscott and Williams, these four principles are the central concepts of wikinomics in the enterprise:
Openness, which includes not only open standards and content but also financial transparency and an open attitude towards external ideas and resources;
Peering, which replaces hierarchical models with a more collaborative forum. Tapscott and Williams cite the development of Linux as the "quintessential example of peering";
Sharing, which is a less proprietary approach to (among other things) products, intellectual property, bandwidth, scientific knowledge;
Acting globally, which involves embracing globalization and ignoring "physical and geographical boundaries" at both the corporate and individual level.
Coase's Law
In the chapter The Perfect Storm, the authors give an overview of the economic effects of the kind of transactions Web 2.0 permits. According to the authors, Coase's Law (see Ronald Coase) governs the expansion of a business:
A firm will tend to expand until the cost of organizing an extra transaction within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction on the open market.
However, because of the changing usage patterns of Internet technologies, the cost of transactions has dropped so significantly that the authors assert that the market is better described by an inversion of Coase's Law. That is:
A firm will tend to expand until the cost of carrying out an extra transaction on the open market become equal to the costs of organizing the same transaction within the firm. Thus, the authors think that with the costs of communicating dramatically dropping, firms who do not change their current structures will perish. Companies who utilize mass collaboration will dominate their respective markets.
Reception
A review of this book in the Harvard Business Review states "like its title, the book's prose can fall into breathless hype." A review of this book in Choice recommends the book for "general readers and practitioners," but cautions that the authors "present an optimistic overview of successful collaborations and business ventures", "use unique terms (e.g., marketocracy, prosumption, knowledge commons)", should have given "more consideration [to] the darker sides of human motivation as well as groupthink and mass mediocrity", and "primarily draw on their own observations of businesses and trends for the ideas presented".
Tapscott and Williams released a followup to Wikinomics, titled Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, on September 28, 2010.
See also
Business Intelligence 2.0 (BI 2.0)
Cory Doctorow
File sharing
Financial crisis
Free: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson
FreeBSD
Human-based computation
Linux
Mutualism
Open business
Open-source economics
Participatory organization
Stigmergy
The Cathedral and the Bazaar, an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods
Theory of value
References
External links
Mass collaboration could change way companies operate, article in USA Today
Website for the public to create the "unwritten chapter"
Abstract: Don Tapscott - Wikinomics: Winning with the enterprise 2.0
Make Room, Wikipedia: Internet-based Collaboration Could Change the Way We Do Business, February 21, 2007
Up is down and black is white as Wikinomics changes the business world, article on PCWorld.ca
The Cult of the Amateur, New York Times' Book Review on Andrew Keen's criticism of Web 2.0 philosophy
A Book Review of Wikinomics
Review by Roger Parry in Management Today August 2007
The Guardian: "The wiki way", 5 September 2007
Videos
2007-02-26 Don Tapscott 82 minute presentation on Wikinomics, hosted on Google Video and Internet Archive (mpeg4 and Windows Media Player)
2007-01-25 Don Tapscott 45 minute presentation on Wikinomics, hosted by The Canadian Club. (Windows Media Player only)
2006-11-08 Don Tapscott 3 minute preview of Wikinomics to ZDNet.
2006 non-fiction books
Business books
Works about the information economy
Wiki concepts | 0.76477 | 0.98935 | 0.756625 |
Cultural-historical activity theory | Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is a theoretical framework to conceptualize and analyse the relationship between cognition (what people think and feel) and activity (what people do). The theory was founded by L. S. Vygotsky and Aleksei N. Leontiev, who were part of the cultural-historical school of Russian psychology. The Soviet philosopher of psychology, S.L. Rubinshtein, developed his own variant of activity as a philosophical and psychological theory, independent from Vygotsky's work. (V. Lektorsky in Engeström, Miettinen & Punamäki 1999, p. 66;Brushlinskii, A. V. 2004) Political restrictions in Stalinist Russia had suppressed the cultural-historical psychology – also known as the Vygotsky School – in the mid-thirties. This meant that the core "activity" concept remained confined to the field of psychology. Vygotsky's insight into the dynamics of consciousness was that it is essentially subjective and shaped by the history of each individual's social and cultural experiences. Since the 1990s, CHAT has attracted a growing interest among academics worldwide. Elsewhere CHAT has been described as "a cross-disciplinary framework for studying how humans transform natural and social reality, including themselves, as an ongoing culturally and historically situated, materially and socially mediated process". CHAT explicitly incorporates the mediation of activities by society, which means that it can be used to link concerns normally independently examined by sociologists of education and (social) psychologists. (Roth, Radford & Lacroix 2012) Core ideas are: 1) humans act collectively, learn by doing, and communicate in and via actions; 2) humans make, employ, and adapt tools to learn and communicate; and 3) community is central to the process of making and interpreting meaning – and thus to all forms of learning, communicating, and acting.
The term CHAT was coined by Michael Cole and popularized by to promote the unity of what, by the 1990s, had become a variety of currents harking back to Vygotsky's work. Prominent among those currents are Cultural-historical psychology, in use since the 1930s, and Activity theory in use since the 1960s.
Historical overview
Origins: revolutionary Russia
CHAT traces its lineage to dialectical materialism, classical German philosophy, and the work of Lev Vygotsky, Aleksei N. Leontiev and Aleksandr Luria, known as "the founding troika" of the cultural-historical approach to Social Psychology. In particular Goethe's romantic science ideas which were later taken up by Hegel. The conceptual meaning of "activity" is rooted in the German word Tätigkeit. Hegel is considered the first philosopher to point out that the development of humans' knowledge is not spiritually given, but developed in history from living and working in natural environments. In a radical departure from the behaviorism and reflexology that dominated much of psychology in the early 1920s, they formulated, in the spirit of Karl Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, the concept of activity, i.e., "artifact-mediated and object-oriented action". By bringing together the notion of history and culture in the understanding of human activity, they were able to transcend the Cartesian dualism between subject and object, internal and external, between people and society, between individual inner consciousness and the outer world of society. At the beginning of and into the mid-20th century, psychology was dominated by schools of thought that ignored real-life processes in psychological functioning (e.g. Gestalt psychology, Behaviorism and Cognitivism (psychology)). Lev Vygotsky, who developed the foundation of cultural-historical psychology based on the concept of mediation, published six books on psychology topics during a working life which spanned only ten years. He died of tuberculosis in 1934 at the age of 37. A.N. Leont'ev worked with Lev Vygotsky and Alexandr Luria from 1924 to 1930, collaborating on the development of a Marxist psychology. Leontiev left Vygotsky's group in Moscow in 1931, to take up a position in Kharkov. There he was joined by local psychologists, including Pyotr Galperin and Pyotr Zinchenko. He continued to work with Vygotsky for some time but, eventually, there was a split, although they continued to communicate with one another on scientific matters. Leontiev returned to Moscow in 1934. Contrary to popular belief, Vygotsky's work was never banned in Stalinist Soviet Russia. In 1950 A.N. Leontiev became the Head of the Psychology Department at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (MGU). This department became an independent Faculty in 1966. He remained there until his death in 1979. Leontiev's formulation of activity theory, post 1962, had become the new "official" basis for Soviet psychology. In the two decades between a thaw in the suppression of scientific enquiry in Russia and the death of the Vygotsky's continuers, contact was made with the West.
Developments in the West
Michael Cole, a psychology post-graduate exchange student, arrived in Moscow in 1962 for a one-year stint of research under Alexandr Luria. He was one for the first Westerners to present Luria's and Vygotsky's ideas to an Anglo-Saxon public. This, and a steady flow of books translated from Russian ensured the gradual establishment of a Cultural Psychology base in the west. The earliest books translated into English were Lev Vygotsky's "Thought and Language" (1962), Luria's "Cognitive Development" (1976), Leontiev's Activity, Consciousness, and Personality (1978) and Wertsch's "The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology" (1981). Principal among the groups promoting CHAT-related research was Yjrö Engeström's Helsinki-based CRADLE. In 1982, Yrjö Engeström organized an Activity Conference to concentrate on teaching and learning issues. This was followed by the Aarhus (Dk) Conference in 1983 and the Utrecht (Nl) conference in 1984. In October 1986, West Berlin's College of Arts hosted the first ISCAR International Congress on Activity Theory. The second ISCRAT congress took place in 1990. In 1992, ISCRAT became a formal legal organization with its own by-laws in Amsterdam. Other ISCRAT conferences: Rome (1993), Moscow (1995), Aarhus (1998) and Amsterdam (2002), when ISCRAT and the Conference for Socio-Cultural Research merged into ISCAR. From here on, ISCAR organizes an international Congress every three years: Sevilla (Es) 2005; San Diego (USA) 2008; Rome (It) 2011; Sydney (Au) 2014; Quebec, Canada (2017).
In recent years, the implications of activity theory in organizational development have been the focus of researchers at the Centre for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research (CATDWR), now known as CRADLE, at the University of Helsinki, as well as Mike Cole at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC) at the University of California San Diego.
Three generations of activity theory
Diverse philosophical and psychological sources inform activity theory. In subsequent years, a simplified picture emerged, namely the idea that there are three principal 'stages' or 'generations' of activity theory, or "cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). 'Generations' do not imply a 'better-worse' value judgment. Each generation illustrates a different aspect. Whilst the first generation built on Vygotsky's notion of mediated action from the individual's perspective, the second generation built on Leont'ev's notion of activity system, with emphasis on the collective. The third generation, which appeared in the mid-nineties, builds on the idea of multiple interacting activity systems focused on a partially shared object, with boundary-crossings between them. An activity system is a collective in which one or more human actors engage in activity to cyclically transform an object (a raw material or problem) to repeatedly achieve a desired result.
First generation – Vygotsky
The first generation emerges from Vygotsky's theory of cultural mediation, which was a response to behaviorism's explanation of consciousness, or the development of the human mind, by reducing the human "mind" to atomic components or structures associated with "stimulus – response" (S-R) processes. Vygotsky argued that the relationship between a human subject and an object is never direct but must be sought in society and culture because they evolve historically, rather than evolving in the human brain or individual mind unto itself. Vygotsky saw the past and present as fused within the individual, that the "present is seen in the light of history." His cultural-historical psychology attempted to account for the social origins of language and thinking. To Vygotsky, consciousness emerges from human activity mediated by artifacts (tools) and signs. These artifacts, which can be physical tools such as hammers, ovens, or computers; cultural artifacts, including language; or theoretical artifacts, like algebra or feminist theory, are created and/or transformed in the course of activity, which, in the first generation framework, happens at the individual level. Semiotic mediation is embodied in Vygotsky's triangular model which features the subject (S), object (O), and mediating artifact. Vygotsky's triangular representation of mediated action attempts to explain human consciousness development in a manner that did not rely on dualistic stimulus–response (S-R) associations. In mediated action the subject, object, and artifact stand in dialectical relationship whereby each affects the other and the activity as a whole. Vygotsky argued that the use of signs leads to a specific structure of human behavior, which allows the creation of new forms of culturally-based psychological processes – hence the importance of a cultural-historical context. Individuals could no longer be understood without their cultural environment, nor society without the agency of the individuals who use and produce these artifacts. The objects became cultural entities, and action that was oriented towards the objects became key to understanding the human psyche. In the Vygotskyan framework, the unit of analysis is the individual. First-generation activity theory has been used to understand individual behavior by examining the ways in which a person's objectivized actions are culturally mediated. Mediation is a key theoretical idea behind activity: People don't simply use tools and symbol systems; instead, everyday lived experiences are significantly mediated and intermediated by use of tools and symbols systems. Therefore, activity theory helps frame our understanding of such mediation. There is a strong focus on material and symbolic mediation, as well as internalization of external (social, societal, and cultural) forms of mediation. In Vygotskyan psychology, internalization is a theoretical concept that explains how individuals process what they learned through mediated action in the development of individual consciousness. Another important aspect of first generation CHAT is the concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) or "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers". ZPD is the theoretical range of what a performer can do with competent peers and assistance, as compared with what can be accomplished on one's own.
Second generation – Leontiev
While Vygotsky formulated practical human activity as the general explanatory category in human psychology, he did not fully clarify its nature. A.N. Leontiev developed the second generation of activity theory, which is a collective model. In Engeström's depiction of second-generation activity, the unit of analysis includes collective motivated activity toward an object, making room for understanding how collective action by social groups mediates activity. Leontiev theorized that activity resulted from the confluence of a human subject, the object of their activity as "the target or content of a thought or action" and the tools (including symbol systems) that mediate the object(ive). He saw activity as tripartite in structure, being composed of unconscious operations on/with tools, conscious but finite actions which are goal-directed, and higher level activities which are object-oriented and driven by motives. Hence, second generation activity theory included community, rules, division of labor and the importance of analyzing their interactions with each other. Rules may be explicit or implicit. Division of labor refers to the explicit and implicit organization of the community involved in the activity. Engeström described Vygotskian psychology as emphasizing the way semiotic and cultural systems mediate human action, whereas Leontiev's second-generation CHAT focused on the mediational effects of the systemic organization of human activity. In conceptualizing activity as only existing in relation to rules, community and division of labor, Engeström expanded the unit of analysis for studying human behavior from individual activity to a collective activity system. While the unit of analysis, for Vygotsky, is "individual activity" and, for Leontiev, the "collective activity system", for Jean Lave and others working around situated cognition the unit of analysis is "practice", "community of practice", and "participation". Other scholars analyze "the relationships between the individual's psychological development and the development of social systems". The activity system includes the social, psychological, cultural and institutional perspectives in the analysis. In this conceptualization, context or activity systems are inherently related to what Engeström argues are the deep-seated material practices and socioeconomic structures of a given culture. These societal dimensions had not been taken sufficiently into account by Vygotsky's, earlier triadic model. In Leontiev's understanding, thought and cognition were understood as a part of social life – as a part of the means of production and systems of social relations on one hand, and the intentions of individuals in certain social conditions on the other. In the second generation diagram, activity is positioned in the middle, mediation at the top, adding rules, community and division of labor at the bottom. The minimum components of an activity system are: the subject; the object; outcome; mediating instruments/tools/artifacts; rules and signs; community and division of labor.
In his example of the 'primeval collective hunt', Leontiev clarifies the difference between an individual action ("the beater frightening game") and a collective activity ("the hunt"). While individuals' actions (frightening game) are different from the overall goal of the activity (hunt), they share the same motive (obtaining food). Operations, on the other hand, are driven by the conditions and tools at hand, i.e. the objective circumstances under which the hunt is taking place. To understand the separate actions of the individuals, one needs to understand the broader motive behind the activity as a whole. This accounts for the three hierarchical levels of human functioning: object-related motives drive the collective activity (top); goals drive individual/group action(s) (middle); conditions and tools drive automated operations (lower level).
Third generation – Engeström et al.
After Vygotsky's foundational work on individuals' higher psychological functions and Leontiev's extension of these insights to collective activity systems, questions of diversity and dialogue between different traditions or perspectives became increasingly serious challenges. The work of Michael Cole and Yrjö Engeström in the 1970s and 1980s brought activity theory to a much wider audience of scholars in Scandinavia and North America. Once the lives and biographies of all the participants and the history of the wider community are taken into account, multiple activity systems needed to be considered, positing, according to Engeström, the need for a "third generation" to "develop conceptual tools to understand dialogue, multiple perspectives, and networks of interacting activity Systems". This larger canvas of active individuals (and researchers) embedded in organizational, political, and discursive practices constitutes a tangible advantage of second- and third-generation CHAT over its earlier Vygotskian ancestor, which focused on mediated action in relative isolation. Third-generation activity theory is the application of Activity Systems Analysis (ASA) in developmental research where investigators take a participatory and interventionist role in the participants' activities and change their experiences. Engeström's basic activity triangle (which adds rules/norms, intersubjective community relations, and division of labor, as well as multiple activity systems sharing an object) has become the principal third-generation model for analysing individuals and groups. Engeström summarizes the current state of CHAT with five principles:
The activity system as primary unit of analysis: the basic third-generation model includes minimally two interacting activity systems.
Multi-voicedness: an activity system is always a community of multiple points of views, traditions and interests.
Historicity: activity systems take shape and get transformed over long stretches of time. Potentials and problems can only be understood against the background of their own histories.
The central role of contradictions as sources of change and development.
Activity systems' possibility for expansive transformation (cycles of qualitative transformation): when object and motive are reconceptualized a radically wider horizon opens up.
Learning technologists have used third-generation CHAT as a guiding theoretical framework to understand how technologies are adopted, adapted, and configured through use in complex social situations. Engeström has acknowledged that the third-generation model was limited to analysing 'reasonably well-bounded' systems and that in view of new, often web-based participatory practices. a Fourth generation was needed.
Informing research and practice
Leontiev and social development
From the 1960s onwards, starting in the global South, and independently from the mainstream European developmental line, Leontiev's core Objective Activity concept has been used in a Social Development context. In the Organization Workshop's Large Group Capacitation-method, objective/ized activity acts as the core causal principle which postulates that, in order to change the mind-set of (large groups of) individuals, we need to start with changes to their activity – and/or to the object that "suggests" their activity. In Leontievian vein, the Organization Workshop is about semiotically mediated activities through which (large groups of) participants learn how to manage themselves and the organizations they create to perform tasks that require complex division of labor.
CHAT-inspired research and practice since the 1980s
Over the last two decades, CHAT has offered a theoretical lens informing research and practice, in that it posits that learning takes place through collective activities that are purposefully conducted around a common object. Starting from the premise that learning is a social and cultural process that draws on historical achievements, its systems thinking-based perspectives allow insights into the real world.
Change Laboratory (CL)
Change Laboratory (CL) is a CHAT-based method for formative intervention in activity systems and for research on their developmental potential as well as processes of expansive learning, collaborative concept-formation, and transformation of practices, elaborated in the mid-nineties by the Finnish Developmental Work Research (DWR) group, which became CRADLE in 2008. The CL method relies on collaboration between practitioners of the activity being analyzed and transformed, and academic researchers or interventionists supporting and facilitating collective developmental processes. Engeström developed a theory of expansive learning, which "begins with individual subjects questioning accepted practices, and it gradually expands into a collective movement or institution. The theory enables a "longitudinal and rich analysis of inter-organizational learning by using observational as well as interventionist designs in studies of work and organization". From this, the foundation of an interventionist research approach at DWR was elaborated in the 1980s, and developed further in the 1990s as an intervention method now known as Change Laboratory. CL interventions are used both to study the conditions of change and to help those working in organizations to develop their work, drawing on participant observation, interviews, and the recording and videotaping of meetings and work practices. Initially, with the help of an external interventionist, the first stimulus that is beyond the actors' present capabilities, is produced in the Change Laboratory by collecting first-hand empirical data on problematic aspects of the activity. This data may comprise difficult client cases, descriptions of recurrent disturbances and ruptures in the process of producing the outcome. Steps in the CL process: Step 1 Questioning; Step 2 Analysis; Step 3 Modeling; Step 4 Examining; Step 5 Implementing; Step 6 Reflecting; Step 7 Consolidating. These seven action steps for increased understanding are described by Engeström as expansive learning, or phases of an outwardly expanding spiral, while multiple kinds of actions can take place at any time. The phases of the model simply allow for the identification and analysis of the dominant action type during a particular period of time. These learning actions are provoked by contradictions. Contradictions are not simply conflicts or problems, but are "historically accumulating structural tensions within and between activity systems". CL is used by a team or work unit or by collaborating partners across the organizational boundaries, initially with the help of an interventionist-researcher. The CL method has been used in agricultural contexts, educational and media settings, health care and learning support.
Activity systems analysis (ASA)
Activity systems analysis is a CHAT-based method that uses Activity Theory concepts such as mediated action, goal-directed activity and dialectical relationship between the individual and environment for understanding human activity in real-world situations with data collection, analysis, and presentation methods that address the complexities of human activity in natural settings aimed to advance both theory and practice. It is based on Vygotsky's concept of mediated action and captures human activity in a triangle model that includes the subject, tool, object, rule, community, and division of labor. Subjects are participants in an activity, motivated toward a purpose or attainment of the object. The object can be the goal of an activity, the subject's motives for participating in an activity, and the material products that subjects gain through an activity. Tools are socially shared cognitive and material resources that subjects can use to attain the object. Informal or formal rules regulate the subject's participation while engaging in an activity. The community is the group or organization to which subjects belong. The division of labor is the shared participation responsibilities in the activity determined by the community. Finally, the outcome is the consequences that the subject faces due to actions driven by the object. These outcomes can encourage or hinder the subject's participation in future activities. In Part 2 of her video "Using Activity Theory to understand human behaviour", shows how activity theory is applied to the problem of behavior change and HIV and AIDs (in South Africa). The video focuses on sexual activity as the activity of the system and illustrates how an activity system analysis, through a historical and current account of the activity, provides a way of understanding the lack of behavior change in response to HIV and AIDS. The book Activity Systems Analysis Methods describes seven ASA case studies which fall "into four distinct work clusters. These clusters include works that help (a) understand developmental work research (DWR), (b) describe real-world learning situations, (c) design human-computer interaction systems, and (d) plan solutions to complicated work-based problems". Other uses of ASA include summarizing organizational change; identifying guidelines for designing constructivist learning environments; identifying contradictions and tensions that shape developments in educational settings; demonstrating historical developments in organizational learning, and evaluating K–12 school and university partnership relations.
Human–computer interaction (HCI)
When human-computer interaction (HCI) first appeared as a separate field of study in the early 1980s, HCI adopted the information processing paradigm of computer science as the model for human cognition, predicated on prevalent cognitive psychology criteria, which did not account for individuals' interests, needs and frustrations involved, nor that the technology depends on the social and dynamic contexts in which it takes place. Adopting a CHAT theoretical perspective carries implications for understanding how people use interactive technologies: for example, a computer is typically an object of activity rather than a mediating artefact means that people interact with the world through computers, rather than with computer 'objects'. Since the 1980s, a number of diverse methodologies outlining techniques for human–computer interaction design have emerged. Most design methodologies stem from a model for how users, designers, and technical systems interact.
Systemic-structural activity theory (SSAT)
SSAT builds on the general theory of activity to provide an effective basis for both experimental and analytic methods of studying human performance, using developed units of analysis. SSAT approaches cognition both as a process and as a structured system of actions or other functional information-processing units, developing a taxonomy of human activity through the use of structurally organized units of analysis. The systemic-structural approach to activity design and analysis involves identifying the available means of work, tools and objects; their relationship with possible strategies of work activity; existing constraints on activity performance; social norms and rules; possible stages of object transformation; and changes in the structure of activity during skills acquisition.This method is demonstrated by applying it to the study of a human–computer interaction task.
Future
Evolving field of study
CHAT offers a philosophical and cross-disciplinary perspective for analyzing human practices as development processes in which both individual and social levels are interlinked, as well as interactions and boundary-crossings between activity systems. Crossing boundaries involves "encountering difference, entering into unfamiliar territory, requiring cognitive retooling". More recently, the focus of studies of organizational learning has increasingly shifted away from learning within single organizations or organizational units, towards learning in multi‐organizational or inter‐organizational networks, as well as to the exploration of interactions in their social contexts, multiple contexts and cultures, and the dynamics and development of particular activities. This shift has generated such concepts as "networks of learning", "networked learning", coworking, and knotworking. Industry has seen growth in nonemployer firms (NEFs) due to changes in long-term employment trends and developments in mobile technology which have led to more work from remote locations, more distance collaboration, and more work organized around temporary projects. Developments such as these and new forms of social production or commons-based peer production like open source software development and cultural production in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have become a key focus in Engeström's work. Social production processes are simultaneous, multi-directional and often reciprocal. The density and complexity of these processes blur distinctions between process and structure. The object of the activity is unstable, resists control and standardization, and requires rapid integration of expertise from various locations and traditions.
"Fourth generation"
The rapid rise of new forms of activities characterised by web-based social and participatory practices phenomena such as distributed workforce and the dominance of knowledge work, prompts a rethink of the third-generation model, bringing a need for a fourth generation activity system model. Fourth-Generation (4GAT) analysis should allow better examination of how activity networks interact, interpenetrate, and contradict each other. People "working alone together" may illuminate other examples of distributed, interorganizational, collaborative knowledge work. In fourth generation CHAT, the object(ive) will typically comprise multiple perspectives and contexts and be inherently transient; collaborations between actors are likely to be temporary, with multiple boundary crossings between interrelated activities. Fourth-generation activity theorists have specifically developed activity theory to better accommodate Castells's (and others') insights into how work organization has shifted in the network society. Hence, they will focus less on the workings of individual activity systems (often represented by triangles) and more on the interactions across activity systems functioning in networks.
See also
Activity theory
Aleksei N. Leontiev
Bonnie Nardi
Community of practice
Cultural-historical psychology
Kharkov School of Psychology
Knowledge sharing
Large-group capacitation
Legitimate peripheral participation
Lev Vygotsky
Organizational learning
Organization workshop
Social constructivism (learning theory)
Vygotsky Circle
Zone of proximal development
References
Publications
ISSN 0304-615X
– Chapter 25 in: Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Y.K. Lal, B., Williams, M., Schneberger, S.L., Wade, M., 2009, Handbook of Research on Contemporary Theoretical Models in Information Systems, IGI Global, 2009,
External links
Blunden, A. The Origins of CHAT.
Blunden, A. Concepts of CHAT Action, Behaviour and Consciousness (ppts).
Boardman, D. Activity Theory
Interview with Professor Yrjö Engeström: part 1
Interview with Professor Yrjö Engeström: part 2
Introduction to Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) Nygård
Leontiev works in English
Robertson, I. An Introduction to Activity Theory
Spinuzzi, Clay "All Edge: Understanding the New Workplace Networks" (Powerpoint Presentation)
The Future of Activity Theory
van der Riet Part I Introduction to Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT)
van der Riet Part II Using Activity to Understand Human Behaviour
Vygotsky archive
Yamagata "Activity Systems Analysis in Design Research". (Powerpoint Presentation)
What is Activity Theory?
Adult education
Cognitive psychology
Learning methods
Social change
Training | 0.768745 | 0.984227 | 0.75662 |
Effects of human sexual promiscuity | Human sexual promiscuity is the practice of having many different sexual partners. In the case of men, this behavior of sexual nondiscrimination and hypersexuality is referred to as satyriasis, while in the case of women, this behavior is conventionally known as nymphomania. Both conditions are regarded as possibly compulsive and pathological qualities, closely related to hyper-sexuality. The results of, or costs associated with, these behaviors are the effects of human sexual promiscuity.
A high number of sexual partners in a person's life usually means they are at a higher risk of sexually transmitted infections and life-threatening cancers. These costs largely pertain to the dramatic consequences to physical and mental health. The physical health risks mainly consist of the sexually transmitted infection risks, such as HIV and AIDS, that increase as individuals have develop sexual partners over their lifetime. The mental health risks typically associated with promiscuous individuals are mood, and personality disorders, often resulting in substance use disorders and, or permanent illness. These effects typically translate into several other long-term issues in people's lives and in their relationships, especially in the case of adolescents or those with previous pathological illnesses, disorders, or factors such as family dysfunction and social stress.
Research has also shown that there might be some benefit regarding the health fitness of the offsprings of promiscuous females in some animals.
Promiscuity in adolescents
The prevalence of promiscuity, in the case of adolescents, is known to be a root cause for many physical, mental, and socio-economic risks. Research has found that adolescents, in particular, are at a higher risk of negative consequences as a result of promiscuity.
In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescents engaged in promiscuous activities face many health and economic risks related to teenage pregnancy, maternal mortality, labor complications, and loss of educational opportunities.
It is suggested that the increasing association of sexually transmitted infections among adolescents could be a result of barriers to prevention and management services, such as infrastructural barriers (improper medical treatment facilities), cost barriers, educational barriers, and social factors such as concerns of confidentiality and embarrassment.
Physical health effects
Incidence and prevalence estimates suggest that adolescents, in comparison to adults, are particularly at higher risk of developing sexually transmitted infections, such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes. It is accepted that adolescent females are especially at risk to develop sexually transmitted infections. This is claimed to be due to the increased cervical ectopy, which is more susceptible to infection. In addition to these risks, adolescent mothers, whose offspring are generally first-births, are at a higher risk of certain pregnancy and labor complications, which can affect the mother and the offspring, as well as the entire community and future generations.
Pregnancy and maternal labor complications
It has been found that pregnancy-related complications cause up to half of all deaths in women of reproductive age in developing countries. In some areas, for every one woman who dies a maternal death, there are 10-15 who suffer severe damage to health by labor, which often causes substantial mental health risks and distress. These figures, however, are estimations since official data is not recorded in registration systems. In the context of pregnancy, maternal complications, and maternal death, it has been studied that age itself may cause fewer health risks for the mother or the offspring due to the prevalence of first-births among the younger ages. First births are higher among teenagers and are usually more complicated than higher-order births. Included in these observations are other complications related to delivery such as cephalopelvic disproportion, which is a condition in which the mother's pelvis is too small relative to the child's head to allow the child to pass. Cephalopelvis disproportion is most common in younger women. Many of these risks are higher among younger females, and a more mature physique is considered to be ideal for a successful pregnancy and childbearing. A mother older than 35 years old, however, may at a higher risk of facing various other labor complications.
In a study of over 22,000 births in Zaria, Nigeria, it was found that maternal mortality was 2-3 times higher for women 15 years old and under than for women from 16–29 years old. It was also found that in Africa, those under the age of 15 are 5-7 times more likely to have maternal deaths than women just 5–9 years older.
Sexually transmitted infections
While rates of these sexually transmitted infections increased for 15-24 year-old individuals in the United States for both males and females in 2016–2017, the rates of chlamydia are found to be consistently highest among 15-24 year-old young women. Reported cases of primary and secondary syphilis have consistently been higher among adolescent men and women compared to adult men and women. In the United States in 2017, there were 1,069,111 reported cases of chlamydia among persons aged 15–25, which represented the majority, almost 63%, of all chlamydia cases in the United States. These figures increased by 7.5% from 2016 in the 15-25 age group. In the 20-24 age group, the rate was increased by 5.0% during the same time frame. Among men in the 15-24 age group, there was an increase of 8.9% in 2017 since 2016 and an increase of 29.1% since 2013.
Gonorrhea infection cases were also reported to have increased for the 15-19 year age group in 2017 since 2016. In the case of women aged 15–24, there was an increase of 14.3% in 2017 since 2016, and a 24.1% increase since 2013. Among men, the rate of reported gonorrhea infections rose 913.4% in 2017 since 2016 and 951.6% since 2013. 20-24-year-old women had the highest increase in reported cases of gonorrhea among women, and the 15-19 year old age group had the second highest rate of increase.
While cases of primary and secondary syphilis is much rarer than gonorrhea, chlamydia, and herpes, the reported cases had increased for both males and females. In 15-24-year-old women, the cases of syphilis had increased 107.8% in 2017 since 2016 and increased 583.3% since 2013. In the case of 15-24-year-old men, the rate increased 8.3% to 26.1 cases per 100,000 males in 2017 since 2016 and 50.9% since 2013. Primary and secondary syphilis reports increased 9.8% for the 15-19 year age group and 7.8% for the 20-24 year age group from 2016 to 2017.
In the United States, Human papillomavirus is the most common STI. Routine use of HPV vaccines have greatly reduced the prevalence of HPV in specimens of females aged 14–19 and 20–24, the age group most at risk of contracting HPV, in 2011-2014 since 2003–2006.
Mental health effects
Emotional and mental disruptions are also observed to be an effect of the promiscuity in adolescence. Studies have shown a correlation and direct relationship between adolescent sexual risk taking and mental health risks. Sexual risks include multiple sexual partners, lack of protection use, and sexual intercourse at a young age. The mental risks that are associated with these include cognitive disorders such as anxiety, depression, and a substance use disorder. It is also found that sexual promiscuity in teens can be a result of substance misuse and pre-existing mental health conditions such as clinical depression.
In relation to the contraction of sexually transmitted infections, there is shown to be a correlation to decreased mental health. The neurosyphilis disease is known to cause extreme depression, mania, psychosis, and even hallucinations in late stages of the diseases. The chlamydia infection is known to increase rates of depression even in asymptomatic individuals.
STIs can put women at a high risk for infertility, which generally leads to feelings of depression. This holds true for women who are still able to conceive because there is a high risk of transferring the disease to their child through pregnancy or child birth.
Women are of higher susceptibility to psychosocial mental health effects of STIs. They report to having feelings immense of shame, guilt, and self blame after diagnosis. This can lead to avoidant behaviors and fear of disclosure to not only sexual partners but family and friends. All of these behaviors are associated with a decline to mental health, whether it is depression, anxiety, or any other disorder.
Other factors contribute to how STIs effect mental health and these include history of trauma and stigma from the disease.
Socio and economic effects
Sexual risk-taking and promiscuous activities, in regards to the youth, can also lead to many social and economic risks. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, research has found that teenage pregnancy poses significant social and economic risks, as it forces young women, particularly those from extremely low-income families, to leave school to pursue childbearing. These disruptions in basic education pose life-long and generational risks to those involved. Social condemnation also prevents these young mothers from seeking help, and as a result are at a higher risk for developing other physical and mental risks, which can later result in physical health risks and substance use.
Promiscuity in adults
Sexual promiscuity in adults, as with adolescents, presents substantial risks to physical, mental, and socioeconomic health. Having multiple sexual partners is linked with risks such as maternal deaths and complications, cancers, sexually transmitted infections, alcohol, and substance use, and social condemnation in some societies. A higher number of sexual partners poses a greater risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, mental health issues, and alcohol/substance use. Adults, however, are generally found to be less at risk of certain pregnancy and labor complications, such as cephalopelvis disproportion, than adolescents, while being at higher risk for other labor complications.
Physical health effects
Promiscuity in adults has detrimental effects on physical health. As the number of sexual partners a person has in his or her lifetime increases, the higher the risk he or she contracts sexually transmitted infections. The length of a sexual relationship with a partner, the number of past and present partners, and pre-existing conditions are all variables that affect the development of risks in a person's life. Promiscuous individuals may also be at a higher risk of developing prostate cancer, cervical cancer, and oral cancer as a result of having multiple sexual partners, and combined with other risky acts such as smoking, and substance use, promiscuity can also lead to heart disease.
Despite the frequency of HIV/AIDS cases decreasing as medical treatment and education on the matter improve, HIV/AIDS has still been responsible for over 20 million lives in 20 years, greatly affecting the livelihoods of whole communities in developing nations. According to the World Health Organization, over 40 million people are currently infected with HIV/AIDS, and 95% of these cases are in the developing world.
Over 340 million treatable sexually transmitted infections affect people around the world each year, which presents a great risk to individuals as they become more susceptible to HIV and more likely to spread the virus.
Studies have also shown that individuals who engage in long-term relationships, as opposed to hypersexual and promiscuous behavior are less likely to fall victim to domestic violence.
Mental health effects
According to research conducted by Sandhya Ramrakha of the Dunedin School of Medicine, the probability of developing a substance use disorder increased linearly with an increase in the number of sexual partners. This was particularly greater for women, however, there was no correlation with other mental health risks. This contrasts other studies that find there indeed is a correlation between mental health risk and multiple sexual partners.
Social and economic effects
Having multiple sexual partners frequently adversely affects educational opportunities for young women, which can affect their careers and opportunities as adults; the frequency of multiple sexual partners have negative long-term economic effects for women as a result of a loss of schooling. There is little evidence, however, that the number of sexual partners adversely affects the educational and economic opportunities for males.
Reducing the effects
Human sexual promiscuity presents substantial physical, mental, and socio-economic risks to adolescents as well as adults in all parts of the world. Researchers and organizations have identified ways of reducing these risks over time. These include the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections and other effects of human sexual promiscuity.
Prevention
According to the World Health Organization, the reduction in the harmful risks of human sexual promiscuity can be achieved first by prevention. These are sustained through HIV and STI prevention programs, defined in the Declaration of Commitment during the United Nations General Assembly on HIV/AIDS in June 2001. Safe sex, condom and contraceptive usage and effectual STI management are essential in preventing the spread of these sexually transmitted infections, and it can also improve the social and economic status of entire communities as young women can pursue education instead of childbearing. At a large enough scale with a target on STI concentrated locations with high rates of STIs, these programs can greatly reduce the effects of promiscuity.
Treatment
Many of these lower-income areas lack proper equipment or facilities to treat these risks. Expansion of antiretroviral treatment and the enabling of broader access to all medical services and support can be paramount in the treatment of sexually transmitted infections once they occur. For the mental health risks that human sexual promiscuity presents, effective counseling services, and facilities must be offered, enabling the reduction of these risks over time.
References
Human sexuality
Promiscuity
Societal effects of promiscuity may include crimes of passion as jealous partners may seek to drive-off competition.
Also, child support may be reduced as males
may be loth to contribute to support of children who may not be their own.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/crime-passion-and-changing-cultural-construction-jealousy
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/child-support/paternity/mistaken-paternity#:~:text=If%20the%20genetic%20testing%20results,child%20relationship%20and%20support%20obligation.
(Trying for first time here to cite references) | 0.763787 | 0.990611 | 0.756616 |
Content analysis | Content analysis is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic manner. One of the key advantages of using content analysis to analyse social phenomena is their non-invasive nature, in contrast to simulating social experiences or collecting survey answers.
Practices and philosophies of content analysis vary between academic disciplines. They all involve systematic reading or observation of texts or artifacts which are assigned labels (sometimes called codes) to indicate the presence of interesting, meaningful pieces of content. By systematically labeling the content of a set of texts, researchers can analyse patterns of content quantitatively using statistical methods, or use qualitative methods to analyse meanings of content within texts.
Computers are increasingly used in content analysis to automate the labeling (or coding) of documents. Simple computational techniques can provide descriptive data such as word frequencies and document lengths. Machine learning classifiers can greatly increase the number of texts that can be labeled, but the scientific utility of doing so is a matter of debate. Further, numerous computer-aided text analysis (CATA) computer programs are available that analyze text for predetermined linguistic, semantic, and psychological characteristics.
Goals
Content analysis is best understood as a broad family of techniques. Effective researchers choose techniques that best help them answer their substantive questions. That said, according to Klaus Krippendorff, six questions must be addressed in every content analysis:
Which data are analyzed?
How are the data defined?
From what population are data drawn?
What is the relevant context?
What are the boundaries of the analysis?
What is to be measured?
The simplest and most objective form of content analysis considers unambiguous characteristics of the text such as word frequencies, the page area taken by a newspaper column, or the duration of a radio or television program. Analysis of simple word frequencies is limited because the meaning of a word depends on surrounding text. Key Word In Context (KWIC) routines address this by placing words in their textual context. This helps resolve ambiguities such as those introduced by synonyms and homonyms.
A further step in analysis is the distinction between dictionary-based (quantitative) approaches and qualitative approaches. Dictionary-based approaches set up a list of categories derived from the frequency list of words and control the distribution of words and their respective categories over the texts. While methods in quantitative content analysis in this way transform observations of found categories into quantitative statistical data, the qualitative content analysis focuses more on the intentionality and its implications. There are strong parallels between qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis.
Qualitative and quantitative content analysis
Quantitative content analysis highlights frequency counts and statistical analysis of these coded frequencies. Additionally, quantitative content analysis begins with a framed hypothesis with coding decided on before the analysis begins. These coding categories are strictly relevant to the researcher's hypothesis. Quantitative analysis also takes a deductive approach. Examples of content-analytical variables and constructs can be found, for example, in the open-access database DOCA. This database compiles, systematizes, and evaluates relevant content-analytical variables of communication and political science research areas and topics.
Siegfried Kracauer provides a critique of quantitative analysis, asserting that it oversimplifies complex communications in order to be more reliable. On the other hand, qualitative analysis deals with the intricacies of latent interpretations, whereas quantitative has a focus on manifest meanings. He also acknowledges an "overlap" of qualitative and quantitative content analysis. Patterns are looked at more closely in qualitative analysis, and based on the latent meanings that the researcher may find, the course of the research could be changed. It is inductive and begins with open research questions, as opposed to a hypothesis.
Codebooks
The data collection instrument used in content analysis is the codebook or coding scheme. In qualitative content analysis the codebook is constructed and improved during coding, while in quantitative content analysis the codebook needs to be developed and pretested for reliability and validity before coding. The codebook includes detailed instructions for human coders plus clear definitions of the respective concepts or variables to be coded plus the assigned values.
According to current standards of good scientific practice, each content analysis study should provide their codebook in the appendix or as supplementary material so that reproducibility of the study is ensured. On the Open Science Framework (OSF) server of the Center for Open Science a lot of codebooks of content analysis studies are freely available via search for "codebook".
Furthermore, the Database of Variables for Content Analysis (DOCA) provides an open access archive of pretested variables and established codebooks for content analyses. Measures from the archive can be adopted in future studies to ensure the use of high-quality and comparable instruments. DOCA covers, among others, measures for the content analysis of fictional media and entertainment (e.g., measures for sexualization in video games), of user-generated media content (e.g., measures for online hate speech), and of news media and journalism (e.g., measures for stock photo use in press reporting on child sexual abuse, and measures of personalization in election campaign coverage).
Computational tools
With the rise of common computing facilities like PCs, computer-based methods of analysis are growing in popularity. Answers to open ended questions, newspaper articles, political party manifestos, medical records or systematic observations in experiments can all be subject to systematic analysis of textual data.
By having contents of communication available in form of machine readable texts, the input is analyzed for frequencies and coded into categories for building up inferences.
Computer-assisted analysis can help with large, electronic data sets by cutting out time and eliminating the need for multiple human coders to establish inter-coder reliability. However, human coders can still be employed for content analysis, as they are often more able to pick out nuanced and latent meanings in text. A study found that human coders were able to evaluate a broader range and make inferences based on latent meanings.
Reliability and Validity
Robert Weber notes: "To make valid inferences from the text, it is important that the classification procedure be reliable in the sense of being consistent: Different people should code the same text in the same way". The validity, inter-coder reliability and intra-coder reliability are subject to intense methodological research efforts over long years.
Neuendorf suggests that when human coders are used in content analysis at least two independent coders should be used. Reliability of human coding is often measured using a statistical measure of inter-coder reliability or "the amount of agreement or correspondence among two or more coders". Lacy and Riffe identify the measurement of inter-coder reliability as a strength of quantitative content analysis, arguing that, if content analysts do not measure inter-coder reliability, their data are no more reliable than the subjective impressions of a single reader.
According to today's reporting standards, quantitative content analyses should be published with complete codebooks and for all variables or measures in the codebook the appropriate inter-coder or inter-rater reliability coefficients should be reported based on empirical pre-tests. Furthermore, the validity of all variables or measures in the codebook must be ensured. This can be achieved through the use of established measures that have proven their validity in earlier studies. Also, the content validity of the measures can be checked by experts from the field who scrutinize and then approve or correct coding instructions, definitions and examples in the codebook.
Kinds of text
There are five types of texts in content analysis:
written text, such as books and papers
oral text, such as speech and theatrical performance
iconic text, such as drawings, paintings, and icons
audio-visual text, such as TV programs, movies, and videos
hypertexts, which are texts found on the Internet
History
Content analysis is research using the categorization and classification of speech, written text, interviews, images, or other forms of communication. In its beginnings, using the first newspapers at the end of the 19th century, analysis was done manually by measuring the number of columns given a subject. The approach can also be traced back to a university student studying patterns in Shakespeare's literature in 1893.
Over the years, content analysis has been applied to a variety of scopes. Hermeneutics and philology have long used content analysis to interpret sacred and profane texts and, in many cases, to attribute texts' authorship and authenticity.
In recent times, particularly with the advent of mass communication, content analysis has known an increasing use to deeply analyze and understand media content and media logic.
The political scientist Harold Lasswell formulated the core questions of content analysis in its early-mid 20th-century mainstream version: "Who says what, to whom, why, to what extent and with what effect?". The strong emphasis for a quantitative approach started up by Lasswell was finally carried out by another "father" of content analysis, Bernard Berelson, who proposed a definition of content analysis which, from this point of view, is emblematic: "a research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication".
Quantitative content analysis has enjoyed a renewed popularity in recent years thanks to technological advances and fruitful application in of mass communication and personal communication research. Content analysis of textual big data produced by new media, particularly social media and mobile devices has become popular. These approaches take a simplified view of language that ignores the complexity of semiosis, the process by which meaning is formed out of language. Quantitative content analysts have been criticized for limiting the scope of content analysis to simple counting, and for applying the measurement methodologies of the natural sciences without reflecting critically on their appropriateness to social science. Conversely, qualitative content analysts have been criticized for being insufficiently systematic and too impressionistic. Krippendorff argues that quantitative and qualitative approaches to content analysis tend to overlap, and that there can be no generalisable conclusion as to which approach is superior.
Content analysis can also be described as studying traces, which are documents from past times, and artifacts, which are non-linguistic documents. Texts are understood to be produced by communication processes in a broad sense of that phrase—often gaining mean through abduction.
Latent and manifest content
Manifest content is readily understandable at its face value. Its meaning is direct. Latent content is not as overt, and requires interpretation to uncover the meaning or implication.
Uses
Holsti groups fifteen uses of content analysis into three basic categories:
make inferences about the antecedents of a communication
describe and make inferences about characteristics of a communication
make inferences about the effects of a communication.
He also places these uses into the context of the basic communication paradigm.
The following table shows fifteen uses of content analysis in terms of their general purpose, element of the communication paradigm to which they apply, and the general question they are intended to answer.
As a counterpoint, there are limits to the scope of use for the procedures that characterize content analysis. In particular, if access to the goal of analysis can be obtained by direct means without material interference, then direct measurement techniques yield better data. Thus, while content analysis attempts to quantifiably describe communications whose features are primarily categorical——limited usually to a nominal or ordinal scale——via selected conceptual units (the unitization) which are assigned values (the categorization) for enumeration while monitoring intercoder reliability, if instead the target quantity manifestly is already directly measurable——typically on an interval or ratio scale——especially a continuous physical quantity, then such targets usually are not listed among those needing the "subjective" selections and formulations of content analysis. For example (from mixed research and clinical application), as medical images communicate diagnostic features to physicians, neuroimaging's stroke (infarct) volume scale called ASPECTS is unitized as 10 qualitatively delineated (unequal) brain regions in the middle cerebral artery territory, which it categorizes as being at least partly versus not at all infarcted in order to enumerate the latter, with published series often assessing intercoder reliability by Cohen's kappa. The foregoing italicized operations impose the uncredited form of content analysis onto an estimation of infarct extent, which instead is easily enough and more accurately measured as a volume directly on the images. ("Accuracy ... is the highest form of reliability.") The concomitant clinical assessment, however, by the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) or the modified Rankin Scale (mRS), retains the necessary form of content analysis. Recognizing potential limits of content analysis across the contents of language and images alike, Klaus Krippendorff affirms that "comprehen[sion] ... may ... not conform at all to the process of classification and/or counting by which most content analyses proceed," suggesting that content analysis might materially distort a message.
The development of the initial coding scheme
The process of the initial coding scheme or approach to coding is contingent on the particular content analysis approach selected. Through a directed content analysis, the scholars draft a preliminary coding scheme from pre-existing theory or assumptions. While with the conventional content analysis approach, the initial coding scheme developed from the data.
The conventional process of coding
With either approach above, immersing oneself into the data to obtain an overall picture is recommendable for researchers to conduct. Furthermore, identifying a consistent and clear unit of coding is vital, and researchers' choices range from a single word to several paragraphs, from texts to iconic symbols. Last, constructing the relationships between codes by sorting out them within specific categories or themes.
See also
Donald Wayne Foster
Hermeneutics
Text mining
The Polish Peasant in Europe and America
Transition words
Video content analysis
Grounded theory
References
Further reading
Quantitative research
Qualitative research
Hermeneutics | 0.763291 | 0.991254 | 0.756615 |
Content creation | Content creation or content creative is the act of producing and sharing information or media content for specific audiences, particularly in digital contexts. According to Dictionary.com, content refers to "something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing or any of various arts" for self-expression, distribution, marketing and/or publication. Content creation encompasses various activities including maintaining and updating web sites, blogging, article writing, photography, videography, online commentary, social media accounts, and editing and distribution of digital media. In a survey conducted by Pew, content creation was defined as "the material people contribute to the online world".
Content creators
News organizations
News organizations, especially those with a large and global reach like The New York Times, NPR, and CNN, consistently create some of the most shared content on the Web, especially in relation to current events. In the words of a 2011 report from the Oxford School for the Study of Journalism and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, "Mainstream media is the lifeblood of topical social media conversations in the UK." While the rise of digital media has disrupted traditional news outlets, many have adapted and have begun to produce content that is designed to function on the web and be shared on social media. The social media site Twitter is a major distributor and aggregator of breaking news from various sources, and the function and value of Twitter in the distribution of news is a frequent topic of discussion and research in journalism. User-generated content, social media blogging and citizen journalism have changed the nature of news content in recent years. The company Narrative Science is now using artificial intelligence to produce news articles and interpret data.
Colleges, universities, and think tanks
Academic institutions, such as colleges and universities, create content in the form of books, journal articles, white papers, and some forms of digital scholarship, such as blogs that are group edited by academics, class wikis, or video lectures that support a massive open online course (MOOC). Through an open data initiative, institutions may make raw data supporting their experiments or conclusions available on the Web. Academic content may be gathered and made accessible to other academics or the public through publications, databases, libraries, and digital libraries. Academic content may be closed source or open access (OA). Closed-source content is only available to authorized users or subscribers. For example, an important journal or a scholarly database may be a closed source, available only to students and faculty through the institution's library. Open-access articles are open to the public, with the publication and distribution costs shouldered by the institution publishing the content.
Companies
Corporate content includes advertising and public relations content, as well as other types of content produced for profit, including white papers and sponsored research. Advertising can also include auto-generated content, with blocks of content generated by programs or bots for search engine optimization. Companies also create annual reports which are part of their company's workings and a detailed review of their financial year. This gives the stakeholders of the company insight into the company's current and future prospects and direction.
Artists and writers
Cultural works, like music, movies, literature, and art, are also major forms of content. Examples include traditionally published books and e-books as well as self-published books, digital art, fanfiction, and fan art. Independent artists, including authors and musicians, have found commercial success by making their work available on the Internet.
Government
Through digitization, sunshine laws, open records laws and data collection, governments may make statistical, legal or regulatory information available on the Internet. National libraries and state archives turn historical documents, public records, and unique relics into online databases and exhibits. This has raised significant privacy issues. In 2012, The Journal News, a New York state paper, sparked an outcry when it published an interactive map of the state's gun owner locations using legally obtained public records. Governments also create online or digital propaganda or misinformation to support domestic and international goals. This can include astroturfing, or using media to create a false impression of mainstream belief or opinion.
Governments can also use open content, such as public records and open data, in service of public health, educational and scientific goals, such as crowdsourcing solutions to complex policy problems. In 2013, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) joined the asteroid mining company Planetary Resources to crowdsource the hunt for near-Earth objects. Describing NASA's crowdsourcing work in an interview, technology transfer executive David Locke spoke of the "untapped cognitive surplus that exists in the world" which could be used to help develop NASA technology. In addition to making governments more participatory, open records and open data have the potential to make governments more transparent and less corrupt.
Users
The introduction of Web 2.0 made it possible for content consumers to be more involved in the generation and sharing of content. With the advent of digital media, the amount of user generated content, as well as the age and class range of users, has increased. 8% of Internet users are very active in content creation and consumption. Worldwide, about one in four Internet users are significant content creators, and users in emerging markets lead the world in engagement. Research has also found that young adults of a higher socioeconomic background tend to create more content than those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. 69% of American and European internet users are "spectators," who consume—but don't create—online and digital media. The ratio of content creators to the amount of content they generate is sometimes referred to as the 1% rule, a rule of thumb that suggests that only 1% of a forum's users create nearly all of its content. Motivations for creating new content may include the desire to gain new knowledge, the possibility of publicity, or simple altruism. Users may also create new content in order to bring about social reforms. However, researchers caution that in order to be effective, context must be considered, a diverse array of people must be included, and all users must participate throughout the process.
According to a 2011 study, minorities create content in order to connect with their communities online. African-American users have been found to create content as a means of self-expression that was not previously available. Media portrayals of minorities are sometimes inaccurate and stereotypical which affects the general perception of these minorities. African-Americans respond to their portrayals digitally through the use of social media such as Twitter and Tumblr. The creation of Black Twitter has allowed a community to share their problems and ideas.
Teens
Younger users now have greater access to content, content creating applications, and the ability to publish to different types of media, such as Facebook, Blogger, Instagram, DeviantArt, or Tumblr. As of 2005, around 21 million teens used the internet and 57%, or 12 million teens, consider themselves content creators. This proportion of media creation and sharing is higher than that of adults. With the advent of the Internet, teens have had more access to tools for sharing and creating content. Increase in accessibility to technology, especially due to lower prices, has led to an increase in accessibility of content creation tools as well for teens. Some teens use this to become content creators through online platforms like YouTube, while others use it to connect to friends through social networking sites.
Issues
The rise of anonymous and user-generated content presents both opportunities and challenges to Web users. Blogging, self-publishing and other forms of content creation give more people access to larger audiences. However, this can also perpetuate rumors and lead to misinformation. It can make it more difficult to find
content that users' information needs.
The feature of user-generated content and personalized recommendation algorithms of digital media also gives a rise to confirmation bias. Users may tend to seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them. This can lead to one-sided, unbalanced content that does not present a complete picture of an issue.
The quality of digital contents varies from traditional academic or published writing. Digital media writing is often more engaging and accessible to a broader audience than academic writing, which is usually intended for a specialized audience. Digital media writers often use a conversational tone, personal anecdotes, and multimedia elements like images and videos to enhance the reader's experience. For example, the veteran populist anti-EU campaigner Farage's tweets in 2017–2018 used a lot of colloquial expressions and catchphrases to resonate the “common sense” with audiences.
At the same time, digital media is also necessary for professional (academic) communicators to reach an audience, as well as with connecting to scholars in their areas of expertise.
The quality of digital contents is also influenced by capitalism and market-driven consumerism. Writers may have commercial interests that influence the content they produce. For example, a writer who is paid to promote a particular product or service may write articles that are biased in favor of that product or service, even if it is not the best option for the reader.
Metadata
Digital content is difficult to organize and categorize. Websites, forums, and publishers all have different standards for metadata, or information about the content, such as its author and date of creation. The perpetuation of different standards of metadata can create problems of accessibility and discoverability.
Ethics
Digital writing and content creation has evolved significantly. This has led to various ethical issues, including privacy, individual rights, and representation. A focus on cultural identity has helped increase accessibility, empowerment, and social justice in digital media, but might also prevent users from freely communicating and expressing.
Intellectual property
The ownership, origin, and right to share digital content can be difficult to establish. User-generated content presents challenges to traditional content creators (professional writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians, choreographers, etc.) with regard to the expansion of unlicensed and unauthorized derivative works, piracy and plagiarism. Also, the enforcement of copyright laws, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the U.S., makes it less likely that works will fall into the public domain.
Social movements
2011 Egyptian revolution
Content creation serves as a useful form of protest on social media platforms. The 2011 Egyptian revolution was one example of content creation being used to network protestors globally for the common cause of protesting the "authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa throughout 2011". The protests took place in multiple cities in Egypt, and quickly evolved from peaceful protest into open conflict. Social media outlets allowed protestors from different regions to network with each other and raise awareness of the widespread corruption in Egypt's government, as well as helping coordinate their response. Youth activists promoting the rebellion were able to formulate a Facebook group, "Progressive Youth of Tunisia".
Other
Examples of recent social media protest through online content include the global widespread use of the hashtags #MeToo, used to raise awareness against sexual abuse, and #BlackLivesMatter, which focused on police brutality against black people.
See also
References
Digital media
Advertising
Social media | 0.760854 | 0.994398 | 0.756592 |
Culture gap | A culture gap is any systematic difference between two cultures which hinders mutual understanding or relations. Such differences include the values, behavior, education, and customs of the respective cultures.
As international communications, travel, and trade have expanded, some of the communication and cultural divisions have lessened. Books on how to handle and be aware of cultural differences seek to prepare business people and travelers. Immigrants and migrant laborers need to learn the ways of a new culture. Tourists can also be confronted with variants in protocols for tipping, body language, personal space, dress codes, and other cultural issues. Language instructors try to teach cultural differences as well.
Legal
A legal culture is a system of laws and precedents peculiar to a nation, region, religion, or other organized group. A culture gap occurs when incompatible or opposing systems might be applied to the same situation or assumed by the parties. Legal constructs such as contracts and corporations are not uniform across cultures. In some cases, such a gap is intentionally sought by one party, as in forum shopping for a more favorable legal framework or in libel tourism, by which speech protected in one jurisdiction may be actionable in another.
Generational
A generation gap occurs when the experiences and attitudes of one generation differ significantly from those of another. The world wars contributed to generation gaps in several nations. The term first saw widespread use in contrasting the Baby Boomer generation with their parents. The "Youth culture" of adolescents and teenagers seeking to stake out their own identity and independence from their parents often results in a cultural divide. Younger generations have experienced different technologies, freedoms and standards of propriety.
Gender and sexual identity
Urban
Professional
Communication between and collaboration among scientific disciplines is sometimes hindered by use of different paradigms or competition between the desires to describe a simple explanatory framework and elucidate fine details. The framework of the questions to which each field lends itself may differ, leading to frustration and wasted effort.
Educational
The education culture is the different education people receive in their life. A culture gap occurs when people with different cultures sit together and take the same class. Different cultures behave differently towards the teacher both in class and after class. Differences can be noticed in assessment method and the direction method of the class.
Asian students focus on books and exercises more than European and American students, who are willing to raise questions in the classes. The cultural gap in education is due to the different education traditions in different places.
For example, Asian students receive exam-oriented education, but European and American students receive a very different, freer education and are both expected to challenge their teachers and strongly encouraged to challenge the teachers in class.
In both China and Japan, the education system normally usually uses exams to show a student's ability. In American and Britain, students grade instructors according to ability.
Both systems have advantages and disadvantages but form a cultural gap between people. Different ways of thinking and analyzing things makes students view things very differently.
See also
Cross-cultural communication
Cultural anthropology
Cultural bias
Cultural diplomacy
Cultural dissonance
Cultural identity
Cultural relativism
Culture shock
Ethnocentrism
Generation gap
Intercultural competence
Legal culture
National psychology
Red states and blue states, a political manifestation of a culture gap in the United States
Untranslatability
Us Girls, sitcom about the culture gap among three generations of West Indian women.
References
Conflict of laws
Sociology of culture | 0.792769 | 0.954354 | 0.756582 |
Framing (social sciences) | In the social sciences, framing comprises a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies organize, perceive, and communicate about reality. Framing can manifest in thought or interpersonal communication. Frames in thought consist of the mental representations, interpretations, and simplifications of reality. Frames in communication consist of the communication of frames between different actors. Framing is a key component of sociology, the study of social interaction among humans. Framing is an integral part of conveying and processing data daily. Successful framing techniques can be used to reduce the ambiguity of intangible topics by contextualizing the information in such a way that recipients can connect to what they already know.
In social theory, framing is a schema of interpretation, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes, that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In other words, people build a series of mental "filters" through biological and cultural influences. They then use these filters to make sense of the world. The choices they then make are influenced by their creation of a frame. Framing involves social construction of a social phenomenon – by mass media sources, political or social movements, political leaders, or other actors and organizations. Participation in a language community necessarily influences an individual's perception of the meanings attributed to words or phrases. Politically, the language communities of advertising, religion, and mass media are highly contested, whereas framing in less-sharply defended language communities might evolve imperceptibly and organically over cultural time frames, with fewer overt modes of disputation.
One can view framing in communication as positive or negative – depending on the audience and what kind of information is being presented. The framing may be in the form of equivalence frames, where two or more logically equivalent alternatives are portrayed in different ways (see framing effect) or emphasis frames, which simplify reality by focusing on a subset of relevant aspects of a situation or issue. In the case of "equivalence frames", the information being presented is based on the same facts, but the "frame" in which it is presented changes, thus creating a reference-dependent perception.
The effects of framing can be seen in journalism: the frame surrounding the issue can change the reader's perception without having to alter the actual facts as the same information is used as a base. This is done through the media's choice of certain words and images to cover a story (e.g. using the word fetus vs. the word baby). In the context of politics or mass-media communication, a frame defines the packaging of an element of rhetoric in such a way as to encourage certain interpretations and to discourage others. For political purposes, framing often presents facts in such a way that implicates a problem that requires a solution. Members of political parties attempt to frame issues in a way that makes a solution favoring their own political leaning appear as the most appropriate course of action for the situation at hand.
Examples
When we want to explain an event, our understanding is often based on our interpretation (frame). If someone rapidly closes and opens an eye, we react differently based on if we interpret this as a "physical frame" (they blinked) or a "social frame" (they winked). The blink may be due to a speck of dust (resulting in an involuntary and not particularly meaningful reaction). The wink may imply a voluntary and meaningful action (to convey humor to an accomplice, for example).
Observers will read events seen as purely physical or within a frame of "nature" differently from those seen as occurring with social frames. But we do not look at an event and then "apply" a frame to it. Rather, individuals constantly project into the world around them the interpretive frames that allow them to make sense of it; we only shift frames (or realize that we have habitually applied a frame) when incongruity calls for a frame-shift. In other words, we only become aware of the frames that we always already use when something forces us to replace one frame with another.
Though some consider framing to be synonymous with agenda setting, other scholars state that there is a distinction. According to an article written by Donald H. Weaver, framing selects certain aspects of an issue and makes them more prominent in order to elicit certain interpretations and evaluations of the issue, whereas agenda setting introduces the issue topic to increase its salience and accessibility.
Effect in communication research
In communication, framing defines how news media coverage shapes mass opinion. Richard E. Vatz's discourse on the creation of rhetorical meaning relates directly to framing, although he references it little. To be specific, framing effects refer to behavioral or attitudinal strategies and/or outcomes that are due to how a given piece of information is being framed in public discourse. Today, many volumes of the major communication journals contain papers on media frames and framing effects. Approaches used in such papers can be broadly classified into two groups: studies of framing as the dependent variable and studies of framing as the independent variable. The former usually deals with frame building (i.e. how frames create societal discourse about an issue and how different frames are adopted by journalists) and latter concerns frame setting (i.e. how media framing influences an audience).
Frame building
Frame-building research has typically recognized at least three main sets of influences that may impact the way journalists frame a certain issue:
Systemic (e.g., characteristics of the media or political system in the specific setting of study).
Organizational (e.g., features of the media organization such as political orientation, professional routines, relationships with government and elites, etc.).
Temporal-contextual (e.g., time elapsed after the triggering event).
Erving Goffman emphasized the role of cultural context as a shaper of frames when he posited that the meaning of a frame has implicit cultural roots. This context dependency of media frames has been described as 'cultural resonance' or 'narrative fidelity'. As an example, most people might not notice the frame in stories about the separation of church and state, because the media generally does not frame their stories from a religious point of view. Frame building is a process that influences the creation or changes of frames applied by journalists. The term frame building, borrowed from agenda-setting research, seems to capture these processes best.
Frame setting
When people are exposed to a novel news frame, they will accept the constructs made applicable to an issue, but they are significantly more likely to do so when they have existing mindset for those settings. This is called the applicability effect. That is, when new frames invite people to apply their existing schema to an issue, the implication of that application depends, in part, on what is in that schema. Therefore, generally, the more the audiences know about issues, the more effective are frames. For example, the more an audience knows about the deceitful practices of the tobacco industry, the more effective is the frame of the tobacco industry, rather than individuals who smoke, being responsible for the health impacts of smoking.
There are a number of levels and types of framing effects that have been examined. For example, scholars have focused on attitudinal and behavioral changes, the degrees of perceived importance of the issue, voting decisions, and opinion formations. Others are interested in psychological processes other than applicability. For instance, Iyengar suggested that news about social problems can influence attributions of causal and treatment responsibility, an effect observed in both cognitive responses and evaluations of political leaders, or other scholars looked at the framing effects on receivers' evaluative processing style and the complexity of audience members' thoughts about issues. Frame setting studies also address how frames can affect how someone thinks about an issue (cognitive) or feels about an issue (affective).
In mass communication research
News media frame all news items by emphasizing specific values, facts, and other considerations, and endowing them with greater apparent applicability for making related judgments. News media promotes particular definitions, interpretations, evaluations and recommendations.
Foundations in communication research
Anthropologist Gregory Bateson first defined the concept of framing as "a spatial and temporal bounding of a set of interactive messages" (A Theory of Play and Fantasy, 1954, reproduced in his 1972 book Steps to an Ecology of Mind).
Sociological roots of media framing research
Media framing research has both sociological and psychological roots. Sociological framing focuses on "the words, images, phrases, and presentation styles" that communicators use when relaying information to recipients. Research on frames in sociologically driven media research generally examines the influence of "social norms and values, organizational pressures and constraints, pressures of interest groups, journalistic routines, and ideological or political orientations of journalists" on the existence of frames in media content.
Todd Gitlin, in his analysis of how the news media trivialized the student New Left movement during the 1960s, was among the first to examine media frames from a sociological perspective. Frames, Gitlin wrote, are "persistent patterns of cognition, interpretations, and presentation, of selection [and] emphasis ... [that are] largely unspoken and unacknowledged ... [and] organize the world for both journalists [and] for those of us who read their reports".
Psychological roots of media framing research
Research on frames in psychologically driven media research generally examines the effects of media frames on those who receive them. For example, Iyengar explored the impact of episodic and thematic news frames on viewers' attributions of responsibility for political issues including crime, terrorism, poverty, unemployment, and racial inequality. According to Iyengar, an episodic news frame "takes the form of a case study or event-oriented report and depicts public issues in terms of concrete instances", in other words focusing on specific place in a specific time Thematic news frame "places public issues in some more general abstract context ... directed at general outcomes or conditions", for example exploring commonality that happens in several place and time. Iyengar found that the majority of television news coverage of poverty, for example, was episodic. In fact, in a content analysis of six years of television news, Iyengar found that the typical news viewer would have been twice as likely to encounter episodic rather than thematic television news about poverty.
Further, experimental results indicate participants who watched episodic news coverage of poverty were more than twice as likely as those who watched thematic news coverage of poverty to attribute responsibility of poverty to the poor themselves rather than society. Given the predominance of episodic framing of poverty, Iyengar argues that television news shifts responsibility of poverty from government and society to the poor themselves. For example, the news media could use the "laziness and dysfunction" frame, which insinuates the poor would rather stay at home than go to work. After examining content analysis and experimental data on poverty and other political issues, Iyengar concludes that episodic news frames divert citizens' attributions of political responsibility away from society and political elites, making them less likely to support government efforts to address those issue and obscuring the connections between those issues and their elected officials' actions or lack thereof.
Visual framing
Visual framing refers to the process of using images to portray certain parts of reality. Visuals can be used to manifest meaning alongside textual framing. Text and visuals function best simultaneously. Advancement in print and screen-based technologies has resulted in merging of the two modes in information dissemination. Since each mode has its limitations, they are best used together and are interlinked in forming meaning.
Images are more preferable than text since they are less intrusive than words and require less cognitive load. From a psychological perspective, images activate nerve cells in the eyes in order to send information to the brain. Images can also generate a stronger emotional appeal and have high attraction value. Within the framing context, images can obscure issues and facts in effort to frame information. Visuals consist of rhetorical tools such as metaphors, depiction and symbols to portray the context of an event or scene graphically in an attempt to help us better understand the world around us. Images can have a one-to-one correspondence between what is captured on camera and its representation in the real world.
Along with increasing understanding, visuals can also elevate retention rates, making information easier to remember and recall. Due to the comparable nature of images, grammar rules do not apply. According to researchers, framing is reflected within a four-tiered model, which identifies and analyzes visual frames as follows: visuals as denotative systems, visuals as stylistic-semiotic systems, visuals as connotative systems and visuals as ideological representations. Researchers caution against relying only on images to understand information. Since they hold more power than text and are more relatable to reality, we may overlook potential manipulations and staging and mistake this as evidence.
Images can be representative of ideologies by ascertaining underlying principles that constitute our basic attributes by combining symbols and stylistic features of an image into a process of coherent interpretation. One study indicates visual framing is prominent in news coverage, especially in relation to politics. Emotionally charged images are seen as a prominent tool for framing political messages. Visual framing can be effective by putting emphasis on a specific aspect of an issue, a tactic commonly used in portrayal of war and conflict news known as empathy framing. Visual framing that has emotional appeal can be considered more salient. This type of framing can be applied to other contexts, including athletics in relation to athletic disability. Visual framing in this context can reinterpret the perspective on athletic and physical incompetence, a formerly established media stereotype.
Clarifying and distinguishing a "fractured paradigm"
Perhaps because of their use across the social sciences, frames have been defined and used in many disparate ways. Entman called framing "a scattered conceptualization" and "a fractured paradigm" that "is often defined casually, with much left to an assumed tacit understanding of the reader". In an effort to provide more conceptual clarity, Entman suggested that frames "select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described". Entman's conceptualization of framing, which suggests frames work by elevating particular pieces of information in salience, is in line with much early research on the psychological underpinnings of framing effects (see also Iyengar, who argues that accessibility is the primary psychological explanation for the existence of framing effects). Wyer and Srull explain the construct of accessibility thus:
People store related pieces of information in "referent bins" in their long-term memory.
People organize "referent bins" such that more frequently and recently used pieces of information are stored at the top of the bins and are therefore more accessible.
Because people tend to retrieve only a small portion of information from long-term memory when making judgments, they tend to retrieve the most accessible pieces of information to use for making those judgments.
The argument supporting accessibility as the psychological process underlying framing can therefore be summarized thus: Because people rely heavily on news media for public affairs information, the most accessible information about public affairs often comes from the public affairs news they consume. This argument has also been cited as support in the debate over whether framing should be subsumed by agenda-setting theory as part of the second level of agenda setting. McCombs and other agenda-setting scholars generally agree that framing should be incorporated, along with priming, under the umbrella of agenda setting as a complex model of media effects that links media production, content, and audience effects. Indeed, McCombs, Llamas, Lopez-Escobar, and Rey justified their attempt to combine framing and agenda-setting research on the assumption of parsimony.
Scheufele, however, argues that, unlike agenda setting and priming, framing does not rely primarily on accessibility, making it inappropriate to combine framing with agenda setting and priming for the sake of parsimony. Empirical evidence seems to vindicate Scheufele's claim. For example, Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley empirically demonstrated that applicability, rather than their salience, is key. Measuring accessibility in terms of response latency of respondent answers, where more accessible information results in faster response times, Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley demonstrated that accessibility accounted for only a minor proportion of the variance in framing effects while applicability accounted for the major proportion of variance. Therefore, according to Nelson and colleagues, "frames influence opinions by stressing specific values, facts, and other considerations, endowing them with greater apparent relevance to the issue than they might appear to have under an alternative frame."
In other words, while early research suggested that by highlighting particular aspects of issues, frames make certain considerations more accessible and therefore more likely to be used in the judgment process, more recent research suggests that frames work by making particular considerations more applicable and therefore more relevant to the judgment process.
Equivalency versus emphasis: two types of frames in media research
Chong and Druckman suggest framing research has mainly focused on two types of frames: equivalency and emphasis frames. Equivalency frames offer "different, but logically equivalent phrases", which cause individuals to alter their preferences. Equivalency frames are often worded in terms of "gains" versus "losses". For example, Kahneman and Tversky asked participants to choose between two "gain-framed" policy responses to a hypothetical disease outbreak expected to kill 600 people. Response A would save 200 people while Response B had a one-third probability of saving everyone, but a two-thirds probability of saving no one. Participants overwhelmingly chose Response A, which they perceived as the less risky option. Kahneman and Tversky asked other participants to choose between two equivalent "loss-framed" policy responses to the same disease outbreak. In this condition, Response A would kill 400 people while Response B had a one-third probability of killing no one but a two-thirds probability of killing everyone. Although these options are mathematically identical to those given in the "gain-framed" condition, participants overwhelmingly chose Response B, the risky option. Kahneman and Tversky, then, demonstrated that when phrased in terms of potential gains, people tend to choose what they perceive as the less risky option (i.e., the sure gain). Conversely, when faced with a potential loss, people tend to choose the riskier option.
Unlike equivalency frames, emphasis frames offer "qualitatively different yet potentially relevant considerations" which individuals use to make judgments. Emphasis framing is distinct from agenda-setting. Emphasis framing represents the changes in the structure of communication to evoke a particular cognitive schema. Agenda setting relies upon the frequency or prominence of a message's issues to tell people what to think about. Emphasis framing refers to the influence of the structure of the message and agenda setting refers to the influence of the prominence of the content. For example, Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley exposed participants to a news story that presented the Ku Klux Klan's plan to hold a rally. Participants in one condition read a news story that framed the issue in terms of public safety concerns while participants in the other condition read a news story that framed the issue in terms of free speech considerations. Participants exposed to the public safety condition considered public safety applicable for deciding whether the Klan should be allowed to hold a rally and, as expected, expressed lower tolerance of the Klan's right to hold a rally. Participants exposed to the free speech condition considered free speech applicable for deciding whether the Klan should be allowed to hold a rally and, as expected, expressed greater tolerance of the Klan's right to hold a rally.
In finance
Preference reversals and other associated phenomena are of wider relevance within behavioural economics, as they contradict the predictions of rational choice, the basis of traditional economics. Framing biases affecting investing, lending, borrowing decisions make one of the themes of behavioral finance.
In psychology and economics
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have shown that framing can affect the outcome of choice problems (i.e. the choices one makes), so much so that some of the classic axioms of rational choice are not true. This led to the development of prospect theory. The context or framing of problems adopted by decision-makers results in part from extrinsic manipulation of the decision-options offered, as well as from forces intrinsic to decision-makers, e.g., their norms, habits, and unique temperament.
Experimental demonstration
Tversky and Kahneman (1981) demonstrated systematic when the same problem is presented in different ways, for example in the Asian disease problem. Participants were asked to "imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs are as follows."
The first group of participants was presented with a choice between programs:
In a group of 600 people,
Program A: "200 people will be saved"
Program B: "there is a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and a 2/3 probability that no people will be saved"
72 percent of participants preferred program A (the remainder, 28%, opting for program B).
The second group of participants was presented with the choice between the following:
In a group of 600 people,
Program C: "400 people will die"
Program D: "there is a 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die"
In this decision frame, 78% preferred program D, with the remaining 22% opting for program C.
Programs A and C are identical, as are programs B and D. The change in the decision frame between the two groups of participants produced a preference reversal: when the programs were presented in terms of lives saved, the participants preferred the secure program, A (= C). When the programs were presented in terms of expected deaths, participants chose the gamble D (= B).
Absolute and relative influences
Framing effects arise because one can often frame a decision using multiple scenarios, in which one may express benefits either as a relative risk reduction (RRR), or as absolute risk reduction (ARR). Extrinsic control over the cognitive distinctions (between risk tolerance and reward anticipation) adopted by decision makers can occur through altering the presentation of relative risks and absolute benefits.
People generally prefer the absolute certainty inherent in a positive framing-effect, which offers an assurance of gains. When decision-options appear framed as a likely gain, risk-averse choices predominate. A shift toward risk-seeking behavior occurs when a decision-maker frames decisions in negative terms, or adopts a negative framing effect. In medical decision making, framing bias is best avoided by using absolute measures of efficacy.
Frame-manipulation research
Researchers have found that framing decision-problems in a positive light generally results in less-risky choices; with negative framing of problems, riskier choices tend to result. In a study by researchers at Dartmouth Medical School, 57% of the subjects chose a medication when presented with benefits in relative terms, whereas only 14.7% chose a medication whose benefit appeared in absolute terms. Further questioning of the patients suggested that, because the subjects ignored the underlying risk of disease, they perceived benefits as greater when expressed in relative terms.
Theoretical models
Researchers have proposed various models explaining the framing effect:
cognitive theories, such as the fuzzy-trace theory, attempt to explain the framing-effect by determining the amount of cognitive processing effort devoted to determining the value of potential gains and losses.
prospect theory explains the framing-effect in functional terms, determined by preferences for differing perceived values, based on the assumption that people give a greater weighting to losses than to equivalent gains.
motivational theories explain the framing-effect in terms of hedonic forces affecting individuals, such as fears and wishes—based on the notion that negative emotions evoked by potential losses usually out-weigh the emotions evoked by hypothetical gains.
cognitive cost-benefit trade-off theory defines choice as a compromise between desires, either as a preference for a correct decision or a preference for minimized cognitive effort. This model, which dovetails elements of cognitive and motivational theories, postulates that calculating the value of a sure gain takes much less cognitive effort than that required to select a risky gain.
Neuroimaging
Cognitive neuroscientists have linked the framing effect to neural activity in the amygdala, and have identified another brain-region, the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex (OMPFC), that appears to moderate the role of emotion on decisions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor brain-activity during a financial decision-making task, they observed greater activity in the OMPFC of those research subjects less susceptible to the framing effect.
In sociology
Framing theory and frame analysis provide a broad theoretical approach that analysts have used in communication studies, news (Johnson-Cartee, 1995), politics, and social movements (among other applications). According to Bert Klandermans, the "social construction of collective action frames" involves "public discourse, that is, the interface of media discourse and interpersonal interaction; persuasive communication during mobilization campaigns by movement organizations, their opponents and countermovement organizations; and consciousness raising during episodes of collective action".
History
Word-selection has been a component of rhetoric. Most commentators attribute the concept of framing to the work of Erving Goffman on frame analysis and point to his 1974 book, Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Goffman used the idea of frames to label "schemata of interpretation" that allow individuals or groups "to locate, perceive, identify, and label" events and occurrences, thus rendering meaning, organizing experiences, and guiding actions.
Goffman's framing concept evolved out of his 1959 work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, a commentary on the management of impressions. These works arguably depend on Kenneth Boulding's concept of image.
Social movements
Sociologists have utilized framing to explain the process of social movements.
Movements act as carriers of beliefs and ideologies (compare memes). In addition, they operate as part of the process of constructing meaning for participants and opposers (Snow & Benford, 1988). Sociologists deem the mobilization of mass-movements "successful" when the frames projected align with the frames of participants to produce resonance between the two parties. Researchers of framing speak of this process as frame re-alignment.
Frame alignment
Snow and Benford (1988) regard frame-alignment as an important element in social mobilization or movement. They argue that when individual frames become linked in congruency and complementariness, "frame alignment" occurs,
producing "frame resonance", a catalyst in the process of a groresearup making the transition from one frame to another (although not all framing efforts prove successful). The conditions that affect or constrain framing efforts include the following:
"The robustness, completeness, and thoroughness of the framing effort". Snow and Benford (1988) identify three core framing-tasks, and state that the degree to which framers attend to these tasks will determine participant mobilization. They characterize the three tasks as the following:
diagnostic framing for the identification of a problem and assignment of blame
prognostic framing to suggest solutions, strategies, and tactics to a problem
motivational framing that serves as a call to arms or rationale for action
The relationship between the proposed frame and the larger belief-system; centrality: the frame cannot be of low hierarchical significance and salience within the larger belief system. Its range and interrelatedness, if the framer links the frame to only one core belief or value that, in itself, has a limited range within the larger belief system, the frame has a high degree of being discounted.
Relevance of the frame to the realities of the participants; a frame must seem relevant to participants and must also inform them. Empirical credibility or testability can constrain relevancy: it relates to participant experience, and has narrative fidelity, meaning that it fits in with existing cultural myths and narrations.
Cycles of protest (Tarrow 1983a; 1983b); the point at which the frame emerges on the timeline of the current era and existing preoccupations with social change. Previous frames may affect efforts to impose a new frame.
Snow and Benford (1988) propose that once someone has constructed proper frames as described above, large-scale changes in society such as those necessary for social movement can be achieved through frame-alignment.
Types
Frame-alignment comes in four forms: frame bridging, frame amplification, frame extension and frame transformation.
Frame bridging involves the "linkage of two or more ideologically congruent but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem" (Snow et al., 1986, p. 467). It involves the linkage of a movement to "unmobilized [sic] sentiment pools or public opinion preference clusters" (p. 467) of people who share similar views or grievances but who lack an organizational base.
Frame amplification refers to "the clarification and invigoration of an interpretive frame that bears on a particular issue, problem, or set of events" (Snow et al., 1986, p. 469). This interpretive frame usually involves the invigorating of values or beliefs.
Frame extensions represent a movement's effort to incorporate participants by extending the boundaries of the proposed frame to include or encompass the views, interests, or sentiments of targeted groups (Snow et al., 1986, p. 472).
Frame transformation becomes necessary when the proposed frames "may not resonate with, and on occasion may even appear antithetical to, conventional lifestyles or rituals and extant interpretive frames" (Snow et al., 1986, p. 473).
When this happens, the securing of participants and support requires new values, new meanings and understandings. Goffman (1974, pp. 43–44) calls this "keying", where "activities, events, and biographies that are already meaningful from the standpoint of some primary framework, in terms of another framework" (Snow et al., 1986, p. 474) such that they are seen differently. Two types of frame transformation exist:
Domain-specific transformations, such as the attempt to alter the status of groups of people, and
Global interpretive frame-transformation, where the scope of change seems quite radical—as in a change of world-views, total conversions of thought, or uprooting of everything familiar (for example: moving from communism to market capitalism, or vice versa; religious conversion, etc.).
As rhetorical criticism
Although the idea of language-framing had been explored earlier by Kenneth Burke (terministic screens), political communication researcher Jim A. Kuypers first published work advancing frame analysis (framing analysis) as a rhetorical perspective in 1997. His approach begins inductively by looking for themes that persist across time in a text (for Kuypers, primarily news narratives on an issue or event) and then determining how those themes are framed. Kuypers's work begins with the assumption that frames are powerful rhetorical entities that "induce us to filter our perceptions of the world in particular ways, essentially making some aspects of our multi-dimensional reality more noticeable than other aspects. They operate by making some information more salient than other information."
In his 2009 essay "Framing Analysis" in Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action and his 2010 essay "Framing Analysis as a Rhetorical Process", Kuypers offers a detailed conception for doing framing analysis from a rhetorical perspective. According to Kuypers, "Framing is a process whereby communicators, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular manner. Frames operate in four key ways: they define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies. Frames are often found within a narrative account of an issue or event, and are generally the central organizing idea." Kuypers's work is based on the premise that framing is a rhetorical process and as such it is best examined from a rhetorical point of view. Curing the problem is not rhetorical and best left to the observer.
In environmental discourse
History of climate activism
Climate activism is constantly shaped and reshaped by dialogue at the local, national, and international level pertaining to climate change as well as by evolving societal norms and values. Beginning with the 19th century transcendental movement in which Henry David Thoreau penned his novel On Walden Pond detailing his experiences with the natural environment and augmented by the work of other transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, climate activism has taken many forms. John Muir, also from the late 19th century, advocated for the preservation of Earth for its own sake, establishing the Sierra Club. Aldo Leopold's 1949 collection of essays, A Sand County Almanac, established a "land ethic" and has set the stage for modern environmental ethics, calling for conservation and preservation of nature and wilderness. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962, revealed the environmental and human health harms of pesticides and successfully advocated for the cessation of DDT usage.
The concept of global climate change and subsequently the activism space pertaining to the climate took off in the 1970s. The first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970. The decades following witnessed the establishment of Greenpeace, Earth First!, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Landmark climate documents in the last 30 years include the Rio Declaration, Kyoto Protocol, Paris Climate Agreement, Global Youth Climate Action Declaration, among others.
Most recently, the Peoples Climate March and Global Climate Strike have evolved into events attended by millions of activists and citizens around the world annually. Climate activism has been reinvigorated by an insurgence of young people on the frontlines of dialogue and advocacy. Greta Thunberg, a young Swedish woman, founded the initiative Fridays for Future which now has active chapters in scores of countries around the world. Other active youth-led climate groups include Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, SustainUS, the Global Youth Climate Action Declaration (GYCAD), ZeroHour, among others working at both the transnational and local levels.
Individual motivation and acceptance
Individual motivation to address climate change is the bedrock on which collective action is built. Decision-making processes are informed by a myriad of factors including values, beliefs, and normative behaviors. In the United States, individuals have been most effectively motivated to support climate change policies when a public health frame has been employed. This frame reduces the sense of ambiguity and dissociation often elicited by talk of melting ice sheets and carbon emissions by placing climate issues in a local context for the individual, whether in their country, state, or city.
Climate change, as an issue that has yet to be established as a normative belief, is often subject to dissent in the face of activism and advocacy. Activists engaging in interpersonal, grassroots advocacy in order to elicit more pro-environmental conduct within their social groups, even those engaged in polite confrontation, are subject to negative reactions and social consequences in the face of opposition. Moreover, climate change has the capacity to be defined as a moral issue due to anthropogenic effects on the planet and on other human life, however there are psychological barriers to the acceptance of climate change and subsequent motivation to act in response to the need for intervention. An article in the journal Nature Climate Change by Ezra Markowitz and Azim Shariff emphasizes six psychological challenges, listed below, posed by climate change to the human moral judgement system:
Abstractness and cognitive complexity: the abstract nature of climate change makes it non-intuitive and cognitively effortful to grasp
The blamelessness of unintentional action: The human moral judgement system is finely tuned to react to intentional transgressions
Guilty bias: Anthropogenic climate change provokes self-defensive biases
Uncertainty breeds wishful thinking: The lack of definitive prognoses results in unreasonable optimism
Moral tribalism: The politicization of climate change fosters ideological polarization
Long time horizons and faraway places: Out-group victims fall by the wayside
Dire messaging
Climate activism manifests itself through a range of expressions. One aspect of climate change framing that is commonly observed is the frame of dire messaging that has been criticized as alarmist and pessimistic, resulting in a dismissal of evidence-based messages.
The just-world theory supports the notion that some individuals must rely on their presupposition of a just-world in order to substantiate beliefs. "Research on just-world theory has demonstrated that when individuals' need to believe in a just world is threatened, they commonly employ defensive responses, such as dismissal or rationalization of the information that threatened their just-world beliefs". In the case of climate change, the notion of dire messaging is critical to understanding what motivates activism. For example, having a fear of climate change "attributed to the self's incapacity to prevent it may result in withdrawal, while considering someone else responsible may result in anger".
In a 2017 study, it was found that activist interviewees from the Global North embrace fear as a motivation, but "emphasize hope, reject guilt, and treat anger with caution". Interviewees from the Global South indicated that they are "instead more acutely frightened, less hopeful, and more angered, ascribing guilt – responsibility – to northern countries. These differences may indicate a relatively depoliticized activist approach to climate change in the north, as opposed to a more politicized approach in the south."
Another 2017 study shows that fear motivates action through raising awareness of the threat of climate catastrophe. Fear's paralyzing potential is mediated by hope: Hope propels action, while collective action generates hope while also managing fear. The danger-alerting capacity of fear is embraced "internally", but is rejected as an effective emotion in motivating people to mobilize. Research has shown that dire messaging reduces the efficacy of advocacy initiatives through demotivation of individuals, lower levels of concern, and decreased engagement.
Positive framing
Research contends that prognostic framing—which offers tangible solutions, strategies, targets, and tactics—coupled with motivational framing is most efficacious in moving people to act. Especially as it relates to climate change, the power of positive psychology is made evident when applied by activists and others generating interventions.
The four main tenets of motivation as elucidated by Positive Psychology are agency, compassion, resilience, and purpose. When applied to climate action, the 4th edition textbook Psychology for Sustainability, further expands upon these tenets as they relate to sustainability and as catalysts of action:
Agency: Choosing, planning, and executing situation-relevant behavior
Compassion: Noticing, feeling, and responding to others' suffering arising from a sense of connectedness
Purpose: Striving toward meaningful activity
Resilience: Recovering from, coping with, or developing new strategies for resisting adversity
Hope augments a sense of purpose and agency, while enhancing resilience. For climate activists, it is infeasible to decouple hope from fear. However, when deconstructing the hope that others will take necessary actions, hope is generated through faith in one's own capacity, indicating that "trust in 'one's own' collective action seems to be the essence of the hope that activists talk about". Additionally, creating a link between climate action and positive emotions such as gratitude and pride, improvements in subjective well-being, and potential for impact permits individuals to perceive their own actions to better the climate as a sustainable, rewarding manner rather than as demotivating.
Another approach that has proven to be efficacious is the projection of a future utopian society in which all pressing issues have been resolved, offering creative narratives that walk individuals from current problems to future solutions and allow them to choose to serve as a bridge between the two. This intergenerational, positive approach generates a sense of excitement about climate action in individuals and offers creative solutions that they may choose to take part in. For example, a public service announcement pertaining to climate change could be framed as follows:
Political ideology
Political communication scholars adopted framing tactics since political rhetoric was around. Advances in technology have shifted the communication channels they were delivered on. From oral communication, written material, radio, television, and most recently, social media have played a prominent role in how politics is framed. Social media, in particular, allows politicians to communicate their ideologies with concise and precise messaging. Using emotional triggering words, focusing on eliciting fear or anger, to change the way the public feels about a policy is facilitated by the short attention span created by social media.
In recent decades, climate change has become deeply politicized and often, initiatives to address or conceptualize climate change are palatable to one contingency, while deeply contentious to the other. Thus, it is important to frame climate activism in a way that is tangible for the audience, finding means of communicating while minimizing provocation. In the context of the United States, left-leaning "liberals" share the core values of care, openness, egalitarianism, collective good, possess a tolerance for uncertainty or ambiguity, and an acceptance of change; while right-leaning "conservatives" share the core values of security, purity, stability, tradition, social hierarchy, order, and individualism. Research finds that framing environmental protection as consistent with the more values of "purity" and sanctity can increase conservatives support for environmental protection.
A study examining various predictors of public approval for renewable energy usage in the Western United States used seven varying frames in order to assess the efficacy of framing renewable energy. Neoliberal frameworks that are often echoed by conservatives, such as support for the free market economy, are posited against climate action interventions that inherently place constraints on the free economy through support for renewable energy through subsidies or through additional tax on nonrenewable sources of energy. Thus, when climate activists are in conversation with conservative-leaning individuals, it would be advantageous to focus on framing that does not provoke fear of constraint on the free market economy or that insinuates broad-sweeping lifestyle changes. Results of the same study support the notion that "non-climate-based frames for renewable energy are likely to garner broader public support" relative to political context and demonstrate the polarized response to climate-based framing, indicating a deep political polarization of climate change.
The idea of political framing is derived from loss aversion. Politicians want to make their idea less of a risk to potential voters since "People pay more attention to losses than to gains, just as they tend to engage in particular behaviors in the face of losses. Specifically, people take risks when they believe it helps them avert a loss, but when they face a gain, they opt for risk-averse strategies that maintain status quo". They will communicate it in a way that can convince themselves that they are not losing by agreeing with their ideology.
Political framing has also affected other policies besides climate change. Welfare, for example, has been subjected to political framing to shift public opinion on the implementation of the policy. The sheer flux of different frames is conducive to the change of public opinion throughout the years. It affects how people look at "deservedness" when it comes to welfare. One end can be seen as political credit, claiming where in-need citizens have a right to claim welfare as a necessity. It is framed as a duty from the government to citizens. In this frame, no one losses because government is doing its duty to maximize the quality of life for its entire society. The other side sees welfare retrenchment as necessary by using framing tactics to shift the blame and responsibility from the government to the citizens. The idea is to convince the public that welfare should be pushed back for their benefit. Contemporary rhetoric, championed by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, has made the idea of "hard work" their frame to say welfare wouldn't be necessary if people "worked harder". With this contrasting frame, wealthier people are now losing because they are losing money in helping fund welfare benefits to those that "work less" than them. This different frame makes welfare seem like a zero-sum game.
Gender norms
The framing of climate change varies according to the intended audience and their perceived responses to various approaches to activism. In Sweden, research evaluating sustainability in the male-dominated transportation sector suggests that the norms provided by femininity are more likely to advance sustainability endeavors, while subsequently lowering the overall emissions of the sector. This is evident throughout the study, which goes on to indicate that the "mobility patterns, behavior, and attitudes of women suggest norms that are more conducive to decarbonized and more sustainable transport policies". This suggests that masculinity is often portrayed as the norm in many sectors and substantiates the link between women and a sustainability ethic that is critically missing from many male-dominated sectors and industries.
Studies indicate that consumers who exhibit a predisposition to environmentally conscious, "green" behaviors are perceived across the gender spectrum as being more feminine, enforcing a "Green Feminine" stereotype. Climate activism is viewed as an effeminate act, undermining hallmarks of masculinity and underscoring the gender gap in a care-based concern for the climate. Additionally, as a result of theories pertaining to gender-identity maintenance, "men's environmental choices can be influenced by gender cues, results showed that following a gender-identity (vs. age) threat, men were less likely to choose green products". Attributes that are associated with femininity and substantiate the cognitive association between women and green behavior include empathy and the capacity for self-transcendence.
In law
Edward Zelinsky has shown that framing effects can explain some observed behaviors of legislators.
In media
In media, to frame is "to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communication context, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, casual interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described". The role framing plays in the effects of media presentation has been widely discussed, with the central notion that associated perceptions of factual information can vary based upon the presentation of the information. Oftentimes journalists do not necessarily develop and use these frames consciously, but they are used as a way to organize ideas and suggest what is an issue in the media.
News media examples
In Bush's War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age, Jim A. Kuypers examined the differences in framing of the war on terror between the Bush administration and the U.S. mainstream news media between 2001 and 2005. Kuypers looked for common themes between presidential speeches and press reporting of those speeches, and then determined how the president and the press had framed those themes. By using a rhetorical version of framing analysis, Kuypers determined that the U.S. news media advanced frames counter to those used by the Bush administration:
Table One: Comparison of President and News Media Themes and Frames 8 Weeks after 9/11
In 1991 Robert M. Entman published findings surrounding the differences in media coverage between Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and Iran Air Flight 655. After evaluating various levels of media coverage, based on both amount of airtime and pages devoted to similar events, Entman concluded that the frames the events were presented in by the media were drastically different:
Differences in coverage amongst various media outlets:
In 1988 Irwin Levin and Gary Gaeth did a study on the effects of framing attribute information on consumers before and after consuming a product (1988). In this study, they found that in a study on beef, people who ate beef labeled as 75% lean rated it more favorably than people whose beef was labelled 25% fat. In the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of loss vs. gain framing was studied in the use of messages communication COVID-19 risk to the public. Messages framed in terms of gain would say "Wear a mask, save lives". Messages framed in terms of loss would say "if you do not wear a mask, lives will be lost". Results of this studies showed there was no impact on (1) behavioral intentions to follow guidelines to prevent COVID-19 transmission, (2) attitudes to- ward COVID-19 prevention policies, (3) whether participants chose to seek more information about COVID-19, however there was increased self reported anxiety when messages from the media where framed in loss.
In politics
Linguist and rhetoric scholar George Lakoff argues that, in order to persuade a political audience of one side of an argument or another, the facts must be presented through a rhetorical frame. It is argued that, without the frame, the facts of an argument become lost on an audience, making the argument less effective. The rhetoric of politics uses framing to present the facts surrounding an issue in a way that creates the appearance of a problem at hand that requires a solution. Politicians using framing to make their own solution to an exigence appear to be the most appropriate compared to that of the opposition. Counter-arguments become less effective in persuading an audience once one side has framed an argument, because it is argued that the opposition then has the additional burden of arguing the frame of the issue in addition to the issue itself.
Framing a political issue, a political party or a political opponent is a strategic goal in politics, particularly in the United States. Both the Democratic and Republican political parties compete to successfully harness its power of persuasion. According to The New York Times:
Because framing can alter the public's perception, politicians disagree on how issues are framed. Hence, the way the issues are framed in the media reflects who is winning the battle. For instance, according to Robert Entman, professor of Communication at George Washington University, in the build-up to the Gulf War the conservatives were successful in making the debate whether to attack sooner or later, with no mention of the possibility of not attacking.
One particular example of Lakoff's work that attained some degree of fame was his advice to rename trial lawyers (unpopular in the United States) as "public protection attorneys". Though Americans have not generally adopted this suggestion, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America did rename themselves the "American Association of Justice", in what the Chamber of Commerce called an effort to hide their identity.
The New York Times depicted similar intensity among Republicans:
From a political perspective, framing has widespread consequences. For example, the concept of framing links with that of agenda-setting: by consistently invoking a particular frame, the framing party may effectively control discussion and perception of the issue. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in Trust Us, We're Experts illustrate how public-relations (PR) firms often use language to help frame a given issue, structuring the questions that then subsequently emerge. For example, one firm advises clients to use "bridging language" that uses a strategy of answering questions with specific terms or ideas in order to shift the discourse from an uncomfortable topic to a more comfortable one.
Practitioners of this strategy might attempt to draw attention away from one frame in order to focus on another. As Lakoff notes, "On the day that George W. Bush took office, the words "tax relief" started coming out of the White House."
By refocusing the structure away from one frame ("tax burden" or "tax responsibilities"), individuals can set the agenda of the questions asked in the future.
Cognitive linguists point to an example of framing in the phrase "tax relief". In this frame, use of the concept "relief" entails a concept of (without mentioning the benefits resulting from) taxes putting strain on the citizen:
Alternative frames may emphasize the concept of taxes as a source of infrastructural support to businesses:
Frames can limit debate by setting the vocabulary and metaphors through which participants can comprehend and discuss an issue. They form a part not just of political discourse, but of cognition. In addition to generating new frames, politically oriented framing research aims to increase public awareness of the connection between framing and reasoning.
Examples
The initial response of the Bush administration to the assault of September 11, 2001 was to frame the acts of terror as crime. This framing was replaced within hours by a war metaphor, yielding the "War on Terror". The difference between these two framings is in the implied response. Crime connotes bringing criminals to justice, putting them on trial and sentencing them, whereas as war implies enemy territory, military action and war powers for government.
The term "escalation" to describe an increase in American troop-levels in Iraq in 2007 implied that the United States deliberately increased the scope of conflict in a provocative manner and possibly implies that U.S. strategy entails a long-term military presence in Iraq, whereas "surge" framing implies a powerful but brief, transitory increase in intensity.
The "bad apple" frame, as in the proverb "one bad apple spoils the barrel". This frame implies that removing one underachieving or corrupt official from an institution will solve a given problem; an opposing frame presents the same problem as systematic or structural to the institution itself—a source of infectious and spreading rot.
The "taxpayers money" frame, rather than public or government funds, which implies that individual taxpayers have a claim or right to set government policy based upon their payment of tax rather than their status as citizens or voters and that taxpayers have a right to control public funds that are the shared property of all citizens and also privileges individual self-interest above group interest.
The "collective property" frame, which implies that property owned by individuals is really owned by a collective in which those individuals are members. This collective can be a territorial one, such as a nation, or an abstract one that does not map to a specific territory.
Program-names that may describe only the intended effects of a program but may also imply their effectiveness. These include the following:
"Foreign aid" (which implies that spending money will aid foreigners, rather than harm them)
"Social security" (which implies that the program can be relied on to provide security for a society)
"Stabilisation policy" (which implies that a policy will have a stabilizing effect).
Based on opinion polling and focus groups, ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm, has advanced the position that global warming is an ineffective framing due to its identification as a leftist advocacy issue. The organization has suggested to government officials and environmental groups that alternate formulations of the issues would be more effective.
In her 2009 book Frames of War, Judith Butler argues that the justification within liberal-democracies for war, and atrocities committed in the course of war, (referring specifically to the current war in Iraq and to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay) entails a framing of the (especially Muslim) 'other' as pre-modern/primitive and ultimately not human in the same way as citizens within the liberal order.
Political leaders provide their personal photographers and videographers with access to private moments that are off-limits to journalists. The news media then faces an ethical dilemma of whether to republish freely available digital handouts that project the politician's desired frame but which might be newsworthy.
Effectiveness
According to Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor, human beings are by nature "cognitive misers", meaning they prefer to do as little thinking as possible. Frames provide people a quick and easy way to process information. Hence, people will use the previously mentioned mental filters (a series of which is called a schema) to make sense of incoming messages. This gives the sender and framer of the information enormous power to use these schemas to influence how the receivers will interpret the message.
A 2020 published theory suggests that judged usability (i.e., the extent to which a consideration featured in the message is deemed usable for a given subsequent judgment) may be an important mediator of cognitive media effects like framing, agenda setting, and priming. Emphasizing judged usability leads to the revelation that media coverage may not just elevate a particular consideration, but may also actively suppress a consideration, rendering it less usable for subsequent judgments. The news framing process illustrates that among different aspects of an issue, a certain aspect is chosen over others to characterize an issue or event. For example, the issue of unemployment is described in terms of the cheap labor provided by immigrants. Exposure to the news story activates thoughts correspond to immigrants rather than thoughts related to other aspects of the issue (e.g., legislation, education, and cheap imports from other countries) and, at the same time, makes the former thoughts prominent by promoting their importance and relevance to the understanding of the issue at hand. That is, issue perceptions are influenced by the consideration featured in the news story. Thoughts related to neglected considerations become relegated to the degree that thoughts about a featured consideration are magnified.
See also
Anecdotal value
Alternative facts
Argumentation theory
Bias
Choice architecture
Code word (figure of speech)
Communication theory
Connotation
Cultural bias
Decision making
Definition of the situation
Demagoguery
Died by suicide vs committed suicide
Domain of discourse
Echo chamber (media)
Fallacy of many questions
Figure of speech
Filter bubble
Framing rules in the thought of Arlie Russell Hochschild
Freedom of speech
Free press
Idea networking
Language and thought
Meme
Metaphorical Framing
Newspeak
Overton window
Plus-size rather than fat
Political correctness
Power word
Rhetorical device
Semantics
Semantic domain
Social heuristics
Sophism
Spin (propaganda)
Stovepiping
Thought Reform (book)
Trope
Unspeak (book)
Virtue word
References
Bibliography
Aziz, S., Imtiaz, A., & Saeed, R. (2022). Framing COVID-19 in Pakistani mainstream media: An analysis of newspaper editorials. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 9(1), 2043510.
Further reading
Baars, B. A cognitive theory of consciousness, NY: Cambridge University Press 1988, .
Boulding, Kenneth E. (1956). The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society. Michigan University Press.
Clark, A. (1997), Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cutting, Hunter and Makani Themba Nixon (2006). Talking the Walk: A Communications Guide for Racial Justice: AK Press
Dennett, D. (1978), Brainstorms, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fairhurst, Gail T. and Sarr, Robert A. 1996. The Art of Framing: Managing the Language of Leadership. Jossey-Bass, Inc.
Feldman, Jeffrey. (2007), Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Control the Conversation (and Win Elections). Brooklyn, NY: Ig Publishing.
Fodor, J.A. (1983), The Modularity of Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fodor, J.A. (1987), "Modules, Frames, Fridgeons, Sleeping Dogs, and the Music of the Spheres", in Pylyshyn (1987).
Fodor, J.A. (2000), The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ford, K.M. & Hayes, P.J. (eds.) (1991), Reasoning Agents in a Dynamic World: The Frame Problem, New York: JAI Press.
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. London: Harper and Row.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Goffman, E. (1959). Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.
Goodman, N. (1954), Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Haselager, W.F.G. (1997). Cognitive science and folk psychology: the right frame of mind. London: Sage
Hayes, P.J. (1991), "Artificial Intelligence Meets David Hume: A Reply to Fetzer", in Ford & Hayes (1991).
Heal, J. (1996), "Simulation, Theory, and Content", in Theories of Theories of Mind, eds. P. Carruthers & P. Smith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 75–89.
Johnson-Cartee, K. (2005). News narrative and news framing: Constructing political reality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Kendall, Diana, Sociology In Our Times, Thomson Wadsworth, 2005, Google Print, p. 531
Klandermans, Bert. 1997. The Social Psychology of Protest. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Leites, N. & Wolf, C., Jr. (1970). Rebellion and authority. Chicago: Markham Publishing Company.
McAdam, D., McCarthy, J., & Zald, M. (1996). Introduction: Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Framing Processes—Toward a Synthetic, Comparative Perspective on Social Movements. In D. McAdam, J. McCarthy & M. Zald (Eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements; Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (pp. 1–20). New York: Cambridge University Press.
McCarthy, J. & Hayes, P.J. (1969), "Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence", in Machine Intelligence 4, ed. D.Michie and B.Meltzer, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 463–502.
McDermott, D. (1987), "We've Been Framed: Or Why AI Is Innocent of the Frame Problem", in Pylyshyn (1987).
Mithen, S. (1987), The Prehistory of the Mind, London: Thames & Hudson.
Pan. Z. & Kosicki, G. M. (2001). Framing as a strategic action in public deliberation. In S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy, Jr., & A. E. Grant (Eds.), Framing public life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world, (pp. 35–66). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Pan, Z. & Kosicki, G. M. (2005). Framing and the understanding of citizenship. In S. Dunwoody, L. B. Becker, D. McLeod, & G. M. Kosicki (Eds.), Evolution of key mass communication concepts, (pp. 165–204). New York: Hampton Press.
Pylyshyn, Zenon W. (ed.) (1987), The Robot's Dilemma: The Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H. Gandy and August E. Grant. (2001). Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. Maywah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Russell, S. & Wefald, E. (1991), Do the Right Thing: Studies in Limited Rationality, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shanahan, Murray P. (1997), Solving the Frame Problem: A Mathematical Investigation of the Common Sense Law of Inertia, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shanahan, Murray P. (2003), "The Frame Problem", in The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, ed. L.Nadel, Macmillan, pp. 144–50.
Simon, Herbert (1957), Models of Man, Social and Rational: Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting, New York: John Wiley.
Tarrow, S. (1983a). "Struggling to Reform: social Movements and policy change during cycles of protest". Western Societies Paper No. 15. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
Tarrow, S. (1983b). "Resource mobilization and cycles of protest: Theoretical reflections and comparative illustrations". Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Detroit, August 31 – September 4.
Tilly, C., Tilly, L., & Tilly, R. (1975). The rebellious century, 1830–1930. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Turner, R. H., & Killian, L. M. (1972). Collective Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Willard, Charles Arthur. Liberalism and the Social Grounds of Knowledge Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 199
External links
Curry, Tom. 2005. "Frist chills talk of judges deal". "The framing of the issue as 'a fair, up-or-down vote,' Republican strategists believe, is the most advantageous one". MSNBC
HBS.edu – "Fixing Price Tag Confusion" (interview), Sean Silverthorne (December 11, 2006)
Framing effect' influences decisions: Emotions play a role in decision-making when information is too complex", Charles Q. Choi, NBC (August 3, 2006)
Cognitive biases
Knowledge representation
Media studies
Propaganda techniques
Prospect theory
Psychological warfare
Social constructionism | 0.761545 | 0.993459 | 0.756564 |
The Civic Culture | The Civic Culture or The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations is a 1963 political science book by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The book is credited with popularizing the political culture sub-field and is considered to be the first systematic study in this field.
Synopsis
In the text Almond and Verba examine the democratic systems in five countries, the United States, Germany, Mexico, Italy, and the United Kingdom. They interviewed about a thousand individuals in each country on their views of government and political life. As they define it, the "civic culture" (singular) is "based on communication and persuasion, a culture of consensus and diversity, a culture that [permits] change but [moderates] it" (Almond and Verba 1963, 8). They consider political culture to be the element that connects individual attitudes with the overall political system structure.
They identify three political structures: participant, subject, and parochial.
Parochial cultures exemplified by tribal societies have little or no specialized political roles and low expectations for political change. Members conceive of their political role in familistic terms, thinking of their family's advantage as the main goal to pursue. Members have low affective and evaluative orientation within the political system.
Subject cultures have citizens with high cognitive, affective and evaluative orientation towards the political system and policy outputs, but have a relatively detached passive relationship towards them, with minimal to no relationship to political groups or being an active participant. Subject cultures are most compatible with authoritarian political structures.
Participant cultures have citizens who regard law not as simply something to passively obey, but something they help shape. Members have high cognitive, affective and evaluative orientation to all four types of objects within the political system.
Strong civic cultures are distinguished by robust support for achieving political homeostasis: the optimal mediated balance between multiple contradictory forces such as in the tension between respect for individual rights and concern for the public good, or that between governmental effectiveness and responsiveness to the interests of citizens.
Almond and Verba considered the Italian emphasis on the family as the driving main force for society as "amoral" (in the words of Edward Banfield (The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, 1958), or "exclusive", and believed that such a culture would impede the culture's potential for developing a "sense of community and civic culture," which they saw as a necessary background for "effective democracy".
Reception
Seymour Lipset wrote in The Democratic Century that Almond and Verba, "did argue persuasively that the extent of civic culture could be predicted by structural and historical factors" but that there was also "strong evidence that some aspects of the civic culture were powerfully associated with education levels, across national borders".
The Civic Culture was criticized for having an "Anglo-American bias", with the authors stating that only the United Kingdom and the United States possessed the capability for long term democratic stabilization. Critics also expressed skepticism over the accuracy of depicting a culture based upon individual interviews and that the approach was "ethnocentric and more prescriptive than objective and empirical". Verba agrees that there is much to the criticism of putting cultures into the same mould, paying too little attention to context and institutional structures in other countries.
In a retrospective in 2015, Verba offered some additional criticisms of his work, the most important of which was its mistaken optimism about education’s impact on civic culture. His assumption, which has been disproved in the last 50 years, was that a more highly-educated population would create a more secular and rational world. This change would significantly reduce clashes based on religious, racial and ethnic differences. Numerous other studies had replicated his other findings, but Verba pointed out that his data collection and analysis were primitive compared to what is typical in similar studies today. This criticism applied not just to technology but also to methodology such as care in crafting comparable questions in various languages.
References
Books about politics of the United Kingdom
Books about politics of the United States
Books about politics of Italy
Political culture
1963 non-fiction books
1963 in politics
Collaborative non-fiction books | 0.776851 | 0.973819 | 0.756513 |
Europeanisation | Europeanisation (or Europeanization, see spelling differences) refers to a number of related phenomena and patterns of change:
The process in which a notionally non-European subject (be it a culture, a language, a city or a nation) adopts a number of European features (often related to Westernization).
Outside the social sciences, it commonly refers to the growth of a European continental identity or polity over and above national identities and polities on the continent.
Europeanization also mean a trend in Orthodox countries (Russia and the Balkans) catching up with and becoming similar to the Western Europe in terms of political system, social system, culture, dress codes, artistic styles, economy, infrastructure, technology, and basic rules of behaviour from the 19th century to first half of the 20th century.
Europeanisation may also refer to the process through which European Union political and economic dynamics become part of the organisational logic of national politics and policy-making.
Definitions
Europeanisation in political science has been referred to very generally as 'becoming more European like'. More specifically than this, it has been defined in a number of ways. One of the earliest conceptualisations of the term is by Ladrech (1994, 69), who defines Europeanisation simply as ‘an incremental process of re-orienting the direction and shape of politics to the extent that EC political and economic dynamics become part of the organisational logic of national politics and policy making.’
This emphasises what is known as the 'top-down approach' to Europeanisation, in which change emanates from the impact of the Union on the national policy. The state is viewed as reactive to actions of the Union. Another definition that needs to be taken into account is from Radaelli, who describes Europeanisation as "a process involving a) construction, b) diffusion and c) institutionalisation of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, 'ways of doing things' and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the EU policy process and then incorporated in the logic of domestic (national and subnational) discourse, political structures and public choices." More recently, Moumoutzis (2011: 612) has revised Radaelli's definition, arguing that Europeanisation should be defined as 'a process of incorporation in the logic of domestic (national and sub-national) discourse, political structures and public policies of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, “ways of doing things” and shared beliefs and norms that are first defined in the EU policy processes'.
From a 'bottom-up' approach Europeanisation occurs when states begin to affect the policy of the European Union in a given area. A more nuanced analysis posits that the institutional interaction of policy actors at the various levels of European governance leads to the re-definition of national, regional and other identities within a European context, where the multiple levels of governance in Europe are not seen as necessarily in opposition to one another. An elected representative can, for example, see his loyalties and responsibilities as lying with Barcelona, Spain, and Europe, or with Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Europe, for unitary states. Some scholars, including Samuel Huntington, argue that citizens of European states increasingly identify themselves as such, rather than Portuguese, British, French, German, Italian, etc. An obvious area of change is in the institutions of Europe; the enlargement of the European Union and the gradual acquisition of authority over the national member governments in numerous areas is creating a centralised European polity. The Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union would be an example of this; in this case, the nations using the euro have passed control of their monetary policy to the European Central Bank.
Another perspective of Europeanisation is the 'horizontal approach.' This approach takes into account the transfer of politics, policies and policy making between member states of the European Union. The transfer is based on a form of 'soft law' — it is not enforceable but based on 'best practice' and mutual recognition.
Whether Europeanisation is a continuing process that will eventually lead to a full European government or whether centralisation will be unable to overcome persisting national identities and/or increasing interest in localism is a matter of some debate.
See also
European integration
Eurosphere
Pan-European identity
Pro-Europeanism
Globalisation
Accession of Turkey to the European Union
Ukraine–European Union relations
Euro-Slavism
References
Further reading
Börzel, T and Risse (2003) Conceptualizing the Domestic Impact of Europe: In K. Featherstone and C Radaelli (eds), The Politics of Europeanization, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 57–80
Cernat, L. (2006) Europeanization, Varieties of Capitalism and Economic Performance in Central and Eastern Europe, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Howell, K. E. (2004) Developing Conceptualisations of Europeanization: Synthesising Methodological Approaches Queens University Belfast Working Papers
Howell, K. E. (2004) Europeanization, European Integration and Financial Services. Palgrave.
Johan Olsen, The Many Faces of Europeanization, ARENA Working Papers, 2002.
Schmale, Wolfgang (2011): Processes of Europeanization, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, retrieved: November 16, 2011.
Headley, John M. (2007) The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
External links
Europeanisation Papers - Queen's University, Belfast.
European Research Papers Archive
Cultural assimilation
European integration
European studies
Political science terminology
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Elements of music | Music can be analysed by considering a variety of its elements, or parts (aspects, characteristics, features), individually or together. A commonly used list of the main elements includes pitch, timbre, texture, volume, duration, and form. The elements of music may be compared to the elements of art or design.
Selection of elements
According to Howard Gardner, there is little dispute about the principal constituent elements of music, though experts differ on their precise definitions. Harold Owen bases his list on the qualities of sound: pitch, timbre, intensity, and duration while John Castellini excludes duration. Gordon C. Bruner II follows the line of temporal-based deductions in association with musical composition, denoting music's primary components as "time, pitch, and texture." Most definitions of music include a reference to sound and sound perception can be divided into six cognitive processes. They are: pitch, duration, loudness, timbre, sonic texture and spatial location.
A 'parameter' is any element that can be manipulated (composed) separately from other elements or focused on separately in an educational context. Leonard B. Meyer compares distinguishing parameters within a culture by their different constraints to distinguishing independent parameters within music, such as melody, harmony, timbre, "etc." The first person to apply the term parameter to music may have been Joseph Schillinger, though its relative popularity may be due to Werner Meyer-Eppler. Gradation is gradual change within one parameter, or an overlapping of two blocks of sound.
Meyer lists melody, rhythm, timbre, harmony, "and the like" as principal elements of music, while Narmour lists melody, harmony, rhythm, dynamics, tessitura, timbre, tempo, meter, texture, "and perhaps others". According to McClellan, two things should be considered, the quality or state of an element and its change over time. Alan P. Merriam proposed a theoretical research model that assumes three aspects are always present in musical activity: concept, behaviour, and sound. Virgil Thomson lists the "raw materials" of music in order of their supposed discovery: rhythm, melody, and harmony; including counterpoint and orchestration. Near the end of the twentieth century music scholarship began to give more attention to social and physical elements of music. For example: performance, social, gender, dance, and theatre.
Definition of music
Does the definition of music determine its aspects, or does the combination of certain aspects determine the definition of music? For example, intensional definitions list aspects or elements that make up their subject.
Some definitions refer to music as a score, or a composition: music can be read as well as heard, and a piece of music written but never played is a piece of music notwithstanding. According to Edward E. Gordon the process of reading music, at least for trained musicians, involves a process, called "inner hearing" or "audiation", where the music is heard in the mind as if it were being played. This suggests that while sound is often considered a required aspect of music, it might not be.
Jean Molino points out that "any element belonging to the total musical fact can be isolated, or taken as a strategic variable of musical production." Nattiez gives as examples Mauricio Kagel's Con Voce [with voice], where a masked trio silently mimes playing instruments. In this example sound, a common element, is excluded, while gesture, a less common element, is given primacy. However Nattiez goes on to say that despite special cases where sound is not immediately obvious (because it is heard in the mind): "sound is a minimal condition of the musical fact".
Universal aspect
There is disagreement about whether some aspects of music are universal, as well as whether the concept of music is universal. This debate often hinges on definitions. For instance, the fairly common assertion that "tonality" is a universal of all music may necessarily require an expansive definition of tonality. A pulse is sometimes taken as a universal, yet there exist solo vocal and instrumental genres with free and improvisational rhythm—no regular pulse—one example being the alap section of an Indian classical music performance. Harwood questions whether a "cross-cultural musical universal" may be found in the music or in the making of music, including performance, hearing, conception, and education.
One aspect that is important to bear in mind when examining multi-cultural associations is that an English-language word (i.e. the word "music"), not a universal concept, is the object of scrutiny. For this reason it is important to approach apparently equivalent words in other languages with caution. Based on the many disparate definitions that can be found just in English language dictionaries,) it seems there is no agreement on what the word "music" means in English, let alone determining a potentially equivalent word from another culture.
Kenneth Gourlay describes how, since different cultures include different elements in their definitions of music, dance, and related concepts, translation of the words for these activities may split or combine them, citing Nigerian musicologist Chinyere Nwachukwu's definition of the Igbo term "nkwa" as an activity combining and/or requiring singing, playing musical instruments, and dancing. He then concludes that there exists "nonuniversality of music and the universality of nonmusic".
Other terms
Other terms used to discuss particular pieces include:
Note—an abstraction that refers to either a specific pitch or rhythm, or the written symbol
Chord—a simultaneity of notes heard as some sort of unit
Chord progression—a succession of chords (simultaneity succession)
For a more comprehensive list of terms see: Outline of music
See also
Combinatoriality
New musicology
Noise in music
Permutation (music)
Philosophy of music
Process music
Serialism
Set (music)
Sound art
References
Sources
Cited in and , p. 78.
Cited in .
Cited in .
Further reading
Agricola, Martin (1991). The Rudiments of Music, new edition, translated from the Latin edition of 1539 by John Trowell. Aberystwyth: Boethius Press.
American National Standards Institute, "American National Psychoacoustical Terminology". [N.p.]: American Standards Association
Macpherson, Stewart, and Anthony Payne (1970). The Rudiments of Music, revised edition, with a new chapter by Anthony Payne. London: Stainer & Bell; New York: Galliard. .
Ottman, Robert W., and Frank D. Mainous (2000). Rudiments of Music, second edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. .
White, John D. (1976). The Analysis of Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. .
External links
The Elements of Music
Musical analysis
Musical composition
Philosophy of music
Serialism
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Andragogy | Andragogy refers to methods and principles used in adult education. The word comes from the Greek ἀνδρ- (andr-), meaning "adult male", and ἀγωγός (agogos), meaning "leader of". Therefore, andragogy literally means "leading men (adult males)", whereas "pedagogy" literally means "leading children".
Definitions
There are many different theories in the areas of learning, teaching and training. Andragogy commonly is defined as the art or science of teaching adults or helping adults learn. In contrast to pedagogy, or the teaching of children, andragogy is based on a humanistic conception of self-directed and autonomous learners where teachers are defined as facilitators of learning.
Although Malcolm Knowles proposed andragogy as a theory, others posit that there is no single theory of adult learning or andragogy. In the literature where adult learning theory is often identified as a principle or an assumption, there are a variety of different approaches and theories that are also evolving in view of evolving higher education instruction, workplace training, new technology and online learning (Omoregie, 2021).
Malcolm Knowles identified these adult learner characteristics related to the motivation of adult learning.
Need to know: Adults need to know the reason for learning something.
Foundation: Experience (including error) provides the basis for learning activities.
Self-concept: Adults need to be responsible for their decisions on education; involvement in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.
Readiness: Adults are most interested in learning subjects having immediate relevance to their work and/or personal lives.
Orientation: Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.
Motivation: Adults respond better to internal versus external motivators.
Blaschke (2012) described Malcolm Knowles' 1973 theory as "self-directed" learning. The goals include helping learners develop the capacity for self-direction, supporting transformational learning and promoting "emancipatory learning and social action" (Blaschke, 2019, p. 76).
Although Knowles' andragogy is a well-known theory in the English-speaking world, his theory has an ancillary role internationally. This is especially true in European countries where andragogy is a term used to refer to a field of systematic reflection. The acceptance of andragogy in European countries, according to St. Clair and Käpplinger (2021) is to accept andragogy as the "scientific study of learning in adults and the concomitant teaching approaches" (p. 485). Further, the definition of andragogy and its application to adult learning is more variable currently due to both the impact of globalization and the rapid expansion of adult online learning.
History
The term was originally coined by German educator Alexander Kapp in 1833. Andragogy was developed into a theory of adult education by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. It later became very popular in the US by the American educator Malcolm Knowles. Knowles asserted that andragogy (Greek: "man-leading") should be distinguished from the more commonly used term pedagogy (Greek: "child-leading").
Knowles collected ideas about a theory of adult education from the end of World War II until he was introduced to the term "androgogy". In 1966, Knowles met Dušan Savićević in Boston. Savićević was the one who shared the term andragogy with Knowles and explained how it was used in the European context. In 1967, Knowles made use of the term "andragogy" to explain his theory of adult education. Then after consulting with Merriam-Webster, he corrected the spelling of the term to "andragogy" and continued to make use of the term to explain his multiple ideas about adult learning.
Knowles' theory can be stated with six assumptions related to the motivation of adult learning:
Need to know: Adults need to know the reason for learning something.
Foundation: Experience (including error) provides the basis for learning activities.
Self-concept: Adults need to be responsible for their decisions on education; involvement in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.
Readiness: Adults are most interested in learning subjects having immediate relevance to their work and/or personal lives.
Orientation: Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.
Motivation: Adults respond better to internal versus external motivators.
In most European countries, the Knowles discussion played at best, a marginal role. "Andragogy" was, from 1970 on, connected with emerging academic and professional institutions, publications, or programs, triggered by a similar growth of adult education in practice and theory as in the United States. "Andragogy" functioned here as a header for (places of) systematic reflections, parallel to other academic headers like "biology", "medicine", and "physics".
Early examples of this use of andragogy are the Yugoslavian (scholarly) journal for adult education, named Andragogija in 1969, and the Yugoslavian Society for Andragogy; at Palacky University in Olomouc (Czech Republic) the Katedra sociologie a andragogiky (Sociology and Andragogy Department) was established in 1990. Also, Prague University has a Katedra Andragogiky (Andragogical Department); in 1993, Slovenia's Andragoski Center Republike Slovenije (Slovenian Republic Andragogy Center) was founded with the journal Andragoska Spoznanja; in 1995, Bamberg University (Germany) named a Lehrstuhl Andragogik (Androgogy Chair).
On this formal level "above practice" and specific approaches, the term "andragogy" could be used relating to all types of theories, for reflection, analysis, training, in person-oriented programs, or human resource development.
Principles
Adult learning is based upon comprehension, organization and synthesis of knowledge rather than rote memory. Some scholars have proposed seven principles of adult learning:
Adults must want to learn: They learn effectively only when they are free to direct their own learning and have a strong inner motivation to develop a new skill or acquire a particular type of knowledge, this sustains learning.
Adults will learn only what they feel they need to learn – Adults are practical in their approach to learning; they want to know, "How is this going to help me right now? Is it relevant (content, connection, and application) and does it meet my targeted goals?"
Adults learn by doing: Adolescents learn by doing, but adults learn through active practice and participation. This helps in integrating component skills into a coherent whole.
Adult learning focuses on problem solving: Adolescents tend to learn skills sequentially. Adults tend to start with a problem and then work to find a solution. A meaningful engagement, such as posing and answering realistic questions and problems is necessary for deeper learning. This leads to more elaborate, longer lasting, and stronger representations of the knowledge (Craik & Lockhart, 1972).
Experience affects adult learning: Adults have more experience than adolescents. This can be an asset and a liability, if prior knowledge is inaccurate, incomplete, or immature, it can interfere with or distort the integration of incoming information (Clement, 1982; National Research Council, 2000).
Adults learn best in an informal situation: Adolescents have to follow a curriculum. Often, adults learn by taking responsibility for the value and need of content they have to understand and the particular goals it will achieve. Being in an inviting, collaborative and networking environment as an active participant in the learning process makes it efficient.
Adults want guidance and consideration as equal partners in the process: Adults want information that will help them improve their situation. They do not want to be told what to do and they evaluate what helps and what doesn't. They want to choose options based on their individual needs and the meaningful impact a learning engagement could provide. Socialization is more important among adults.
Academic discipline
In the field of adult education during recent decades, a process of growth and differentiation emerged as a scholarly and scientific approach, andragogy. It refers to the academic discipline(s) within university programs that focus on the education of adults; andragogy exists today worldwide. The term refers to a new type of education which was not qualified by missions and visions, but by academic learning including: reflection, critique, and historical analyses.
Dušan Savićević, who provided Knowles with the term andragogy, explicitly claims andragogy as a discipline, the subject of which is the study of education and learning of adults in all its forms of expression' (Savicevic, 1999, p. 97, similarly Henschke, 2003,), Reischmann, 2003.
Recent research and the COVID 19 pandemic have expanded andragogy into the online world internationally, as evidenced by country and international organizations that foster the development of adult learning, research and collaboration in educating adults. New and expanding online instruction is fostered by national organizations, literacy organizations, academic journals and higher education institutions that are helping adults to achieve learning and skills that will contribute to individual economic improvement.
New learning resources and approaches are identified, such as finding that using collaborative tools like a wiki can encourage learners to become more self-directed, thereby enriching the classroom environment. Andragogy gives scope to self-directed learners and helps in designing and delivering the focused instructions. The methods used by andragogy can be used in different educational environments (e.g. adolescent education).
Internationally there are many academic journals, adult education organizations (including government agencies) and centers for adult learning housed in a plethora of international colleges and universities that are working to promote the field of adult learning, as well as adult learning opportunities in training, traditional classes and in online learning.
In academic fields, andrologists are those who practice and specialize in the field of andragogy. Andragologists have received a doctoral degree from an accredited university in Education (EdD) or a Philosophy (PhD) and focused their dissertation utilizing andragogy as a main component of their theoretical framework.
Differences in learning: The Pedagogy, andragogy and heutagogy continuum
In the 20th century, adult educators began to challenge the application of pedagogical theory and teacher-centered approaches to the teaching of adults. Unlike children, adult learners are not transmitted knowledge. Rather, the adult learner is an active participant in their learning. Adult students also are asked to actively plan their learning process to include identifying learning objectives and how they will be achieved. Knowles (1980) summarized the key characteristics of andragogy in this model: 1) independency or self-directedness 2) using past experiences to construct learning, 3) association with readiness to learn, and 4) changing education perspectives from subject-centered one to performance centered perspectives.
A new educational strategy has evolved in response to globalization that identifies learners as self-determined, especially in higher education and work-place settings: heutagogy, a process where students learn on their own with some guidance from the teacher. The motivation to learn comes from the students' interest in not only performing, but being recognized for their accomplishment (Akiyildiz, 2019). In addition, in heutagogy, learning is learner-centric - where the decisions relating to the learning process are managed by the student. Further, the student determines whether or not the learning objectives are met.
Differences between pedagogy, andragogy, and heutagogy include:
Critique
There is no consensus internationally on whether andragogy is a learning theory or a set of principles, characteristics or assumptions of adult learning. Knowles himself changed his position on whether andragogy applied only to adults and came to believe that "pedagogy-andragogy represents a continuum ranging from teacher-directed to student-directed learning and that both approaches are appropriate with children and adults, depending on the situation." Hanson (1996) argues that the difference in learning is not related to the age and stage of one's life, but instead related to individual characteristics and the differences in "context, culture and power" within different educational settings.
In another critique of Knowles' work, Knowles was not able to use one of his principles (Self-concept) with adult learners to the extent that he describes in his practices. In one course, Knowles appears to allow "near total freedom in learner determination of objectives" but still "intended" the students to choose from a list of 18 objectives on the syllabus. Self-concept can be critiqued not just from the instructor's point of view, but also from the student's point of view. Not all adult learners will know exactly what they want to learn in a course and may seek a more structured outline from an instructor. An instructor cannot assume that an adult will desire self-directed learning in every situation.
Kidd (1978) goes further by claiming that principles of learning have to be applied to lifelong development. He suggested that building a theory on adult learning would be meaningless, as there is no real basis for it. Jarvis even implies that andragogy would be more the result of an ideology than a scientific contribution to the comprehension of the learning processes. Knowles himself mentions that andragogy is a "model of assumptions about learning or a conceptual framework that serves as a basis for an emergent theory." There appears to be a lack of research on whether this framework of teaching and learning principles is more relevant to adult learners or if it is just a set of good practices that could be used for both children and adult learners.
The way adults learn is different from the pedagogical approach used to foster learning in K-12 settings. These learning differences are key and can be used to show that the six characteristics/principles of andragogy remain applicable when designing teaching and learning materials, in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), for example.
See also
References
Further reading
Loeng, S. (2012). Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy – an andragogical pioneer. Studies in Continuing Education,
Reischmann, Jost (2005): Andragogy. In: English, Leona (ed): International Encyclopedia of Adult Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan. S. 58–63. (.pdf-download)
Smith, M. K. (1996; 1999) 'Andragogy', in the Encyclopedia of Informal Education.
Andragogy and other Learning Theories
Philosophy of education | 0.761321 | 0.993581 | 0.756434 |
Criticism of postmodernism | Criticism of postmodernism is intellectually diverse, reflecting various critical attitudes toward postmodernity, postmodern philosophy, postmodern art, and postmodern architecture. Postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection towards what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism, especially those associated with Enlightenment rationality (though postmodernism in the arts may have its own definitions). Thus, while common targets of postmodern criticism include universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, science, language, and social progress, critics of postmodernism often defend such concepts.
It is frequently alleged that postmodern scholars promote obscurantism, are hostile to objective truth, and encourage relativism (in culture, morality, knowledge) to an extent that is epistemically and ethically crippling. Criticism of more artistic postmodern movements such as postmodern art or literature may include objections to a departure from beauty, lack of coherence or comprehensibility, deviating from clear structure and the consistent use of dark and negative themes.
Vagueness
Postmodernism has received significant criticism for its lack of stable definition and meaning. The term marks a departure from modernism, and may refer to an epoch of human history (see Postmodernity), a set of movements, styles, and methods in art and architecture, or a broad range of scholarship, drawing influence from scholarly fields such as critical theory, post-structuralist philosophy, and deconstructionism. There is substantial dispute about which features of postmodernism, if any, are essential to the concept, and its enigmatic meaning and related "perceived lack of political commitment, subjectivist interpretations, fragmentary nature, and nihilistic tendencies" have led to substantial academic frustration and criticism. The ineffability of postmodernism has been described as "a truism" and some claim it is a "buzzword". This "semantic instability" has been long acknowledged in scholarship.
Critics of postmodernism frequently charge that postmodern art/authorship is vague, obscurantist, or meaningless. Some philosophers, such as Jürgen Habermas, argue that postmodernism contradicts itself through self-reference, since its critique would be impossible without the concepts and methods that modern reason provides.
Christopher Hitchens in his book Why Orwell Matters advocates for simple, clear, and direct expression of ideas and argues that postmodernists wear people down by boredom and semi-literate prose. Hitchens also criticized a postmodernist volume, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism: "The French, as it happens, once evolved an expression for this sort of prose: la langue de bois, the wooden tongue, in which nothing useful or enlightening can be said, but in which various excuses for the arbitrary and the dishonest can be offered. (This book) is a pointer to the abysmal state of mind that prevails in so many of our universities."
In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins writes in a favorable review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures:
Dawkins then uses the following quotation from Félix Guattari as an example of this "lack of content" and of clarity:
Of the term itself
It has been suggested that the term "postmodernism" is a mere buzzword that means nothing. For example, Dick Hebdige, in Hiding in the Light, writes:
Postmodern-friendly intellectuals, such as British historian Perry Anderson defend the existence of the varied meanings assigned to "postmodernism", arguing that they only contradict one another on the surface, and that a postmodernist analysis can offer insight into contemporary culture. Kaya Yilmaz defends the lack of clarity and consistency in the term's definition, maintaining that because postmodernism is itself "anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist" it is fitting that the term cannot have any essential or fundamental meaning. Sokal has critiqued similar defenses of postmodernism by noting that replies like this only demonstrate the original point that postmodernist critics are making: that a clear and meaningful answer is always missing and wanting.
Relativism
Criticism of postmodernism has also been directed at its relativist positions, including the argument that it is self-contradictory. Partly in reference to post-modernism, conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton wrote, "A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't." In 2014, the philosophers Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn wrote: "[T]he statement that 'No unrestricted universal generalizations are true' is itself an unrestricted universal generalization. So if relativism in any of its forms is true, it's false."
Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has said "The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unliveable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that's not postmodernism; that's modernism!"
Analytic philosopher Daniel Dennett said, "Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster."
The historian Richard J. Evans argues that while postmodernists usually identify with the political left, denying the possibility of objective knowledge about the past is not necessarily left-wing or progressive, as it can legitimize far-right pseudohistory such as Holocaust denial.
H. Sidky pointed out what he sees as several inherent flaws of a postmodern antiscience perspective, including the confusion of the authority of science (evidence) with the scientist conveying the knowledge; its self-contradictory claim that all truths are relative; and its strategic ambiguity. He sees 21st-century anti-scientific and pseudo-scientific approaches to knowledge, particularly in the United States, as rooted in a postmodernist "decades-long academic assault on science:"
Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has been a prominent critic of postmodernism since 2017. In opposition to the relativism of postmodernism, Peterson argues for the existence of eternal Jungian archetypes.
Epistemology
Another line of criticism has argued that postmodernism has failed to provide a viable method for determining what can be considered knowledge.
Linguist Noam Chomsky has argued that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals won't respond like people in other fields when asked:
Richard Caputo, William Epstein, David Stoesz & Bruce Thyer consider postmodernism to be a "dead-end in social work epistemology." They write:
Marxist criticisms
Alex Callinicos denounces notable postmodern thinkers such as Baudrillard and Lyotard, arguing postmodernism "reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of 1968, (particularly those of May 1968 in France) and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right."
Art historian John Molyneux, who was a leading member of the Socialist Workers' Party, challenges postmodernists for "singing an old song long intoned by bourgeois historians of various persuasions".
Fredric Jameson, American literary critic and Marxist political theorist, questions postmodernism (or poststructuralism) for what he claims is "the cultural logic of late capitalism", for its refusal to critically engage with the metanarratives of capitalization and globalization. The refusal renders postmodernist philosophy complicit with the prevailing relations of domination and exploitation.
Daniel Morley and Hamid Alizadeh of Marxist.com called postmodernism a "bourgeois philosophy, permeating large parts, if not the majority, of academia today. It embodies the utter dead-end and pessimism of bourgeois philosophy given the senile decay of capitalist society."
Incompatibility with individual freedom
Michael Rectenwald argues that postmodernism "is incompatible with liberty, first because it sees the individual as a mere product, as constructed by language, social factors, and so on. As such, postmodernism effectively denies self-determination and individual agency. Second, the cultural obsession with social identity that is current today derives from the social constructivism of postmodern philosophy. Such social constructivism further denies individual agency." Rectenwald further argues that postmodernism's belief that "everything is a power struggle, the lack of objective constraints, the lack of belief in 'truth,' or any criteria for the judgment of facts, opens us up to the arbitrary imposition of beliefs—to authoritarianism."
American historian Richard Wolin traces the origins of postmodernism to intellectual roots in fascism, writing "postmodernism has been nourished by the doctrines of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, and Paul de Man—all of whom either prefigured or succumbed to the proverbial intellectual fascination with fascism."
Artistic criticism
In the April 1999 edition of Art Review, Brian Ashbee criticized the influence of postmodernism on the arts, particularly for making art dependent on verbal explanations in order to have meaning, and for creating a situation where "There is no aspect of the work of art, however banal, that can't be 'spun'."
American academic and aesthete Camille Paglia has said:
Private Eye magazine also satirized postmodernist discourse in art in a November 2018 edition, with an imaginary interview of Tracey Emin by an unduly fawning Alan Yentob.
Sokal affair
Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University, formulated the Sokal affair, a hoax in which he wrote a deliberately nonsensical article in a style similar to postmodernist articles. The article was accepted for publication by the journal Social Text despite the obvious lampooning of postmodernists' view of science. Sokal liberally used vague post-modernist concepts and lingo all the while criticising empirical approaches to knowledge. On the same day of the release he published another article in a different journal explaining the Social Text article. This was turned into a book, Fashionable Nonsense, which offered a critique of the practices of postmodern academia. In the book he and Jean Bricmont point out the misuse of scientific terms in the works of postmodern philosophers but they state that this does not invalidate the rest of the work of those philosophers to which they suspend judgement.
The philosopher Thomas Nagel has supported Sokal and Bricmont, describing their book Fashionable Nonsense as consisting largely of "extensive quotations of scientific gibberish from name-brand French intellectuals, together with eerily patient explanations of why it is gibberish," and agreeing that "there does seem to be something about the Parisian scene that is particularly hospitable to reckless verbosity."
Mumbo Jumbo
Francis Wheen's book How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World broadly critiques a variety of non-critical paradigms with a significant critique of cultural relativism and the use of postmodern tropes to explain all modern geo-political phenomena. According to Wheen, postmodern scholars tend to critique certain power structures in the west including issues of race, class, patriarchy, the effect of radical capitalism and political oppression. Where he finds fault in these tropes is when the theories go beyond evidence-based critical thinking and use vague terminology to support obscurantist theories. An example is Luce Irigaray's assertion, cited by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont in their book Fashionable Nonsense, that the equation "E=mc2" is a "sexed equation", because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us". Relativism, according to Wheen becomes a sort of wall which shields non western cultures from the same sustained critiques. While inherent sexism in North America is open to hostile critique (as it should be according to Wheen), according to postmodern thought it is taboo to critique honour killings and female genital mutilation in North Africa and the Middle East. Relativism will defend such taboos by claiming such cultures are out of the sphere of shared Western values and that we cannot judge other cultures by our own standards or it is defended through diminishing the severity of sexism by either denying its prominence (as Western propaganda/misunderstanding) or blaming it on menacing Western factors (imperialism, globalization, Western hegemony, resource exploitation and Western interference in general). Wheen admits that, while some of this may have merit, its case is highly exaggerated by relativism. Wheen reserves his strongest critique for those who defend even the most appalling systemic mistreatment of women, even in countries where Western contact and influence is minimal.
Counter-criticism
Patrick West, writing for Spiked magazine, argued that postmodernism's proponents "exhorted us to question orthodoxies. They preached scepticism, autonomy, anti-authoritarianism and liberation." West contrasted this with "Today's woke warriors [who] preach obedience. When it comes to dissenters, they seek only to discipline and punish." West also disputed accusations of postmodernism being a Marxist ideology:
Ephrat Livni, writing for Quartz, argued that postmodernists did not create the era of post-truth and fake news that we live in today, but "merely described it. The French academics of the 1970s ... saw the flaws in modernist thought — that old-timey Enlightenment-era notion that we all shared values, approved the same truths, and agreed on the facts. Instead, they acknowledged that reality is complicated. They recognized the changes happening in the late 20th century — the erosion of authority, the ascendance of individual perspective — and developed the vocabulary to describe it." Livni adds that while there are still facts about occurrences that "make up reality.", what these facts mean "is up for dispute. There is no objective, universal truth we all agree upon when it comes to interpretation." Livini concludes by saying:
See also
Postmodernism Generator
Thinkers of the New Left
External links
Postmodernism Paradox
References
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Populuxe | Populuxe was a consumer culture and aesthetic in the United States popular in the 1950s and 1960s. The term populuxe is a portmanteau of popular and luxury.
Description
The style evoked a sense of luxury with the design of consumer goods such as radios and clocks typically featuring pastel-colored plastic in curved and angular shapes and metalized plastic trim that simulated chrome. Structures commonly used pastels, geometric shapes, and surfaces of stucco, sheet metal, and often stainless steel.
Populuxe emerged after people began seeing semi-luxury commodities as luxury ware and mass consumer goods. It is also interpreted as a mass culture that desired luxury finishes on everyday material goods. It is said to be an offshoot of Fordism in the early 20th century and was also facilitated by the start of the emulative celebrity culture.
The work of various artists, designers, graphic designers, furniture designers, interior designers, and architects is associated with the populuxe movement. Populuxe is associated with consumerism and overlaps with mid-century modern architecture, Streamline Moderne, Googie architecture (Doo Wop architecture), and other futuristic and Space Age influenced design aesthetics that were futurist, technology-focused, and optimistic in nature.
See also
Mass affluent
Mass luxury
Raygun Gothic
References
American architectural styles
Futurist architecture
Modernist architecture
Modernist architecture in the United States
20th-century architectural styles
Googie architecture | 0.770864 | 0.981233 | 0.756397 |
Social commentary | Social commentary is the act of using rhetorical means to provide commentary on social, cultural, political, or economic issues in a society. This is often done with the idea of implementing or promoting change by informing the general populace about a given problem and appealing to people's sense of justice. Social commentary can be practiced through all forms of communication, from printed form, to conversations to computerized communication.
Two examples of strong and bitter social commentary are the writings of Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift and German priest Martin Luther. Swift decried the appalling conditions faced by Irish Catholics under the rule of the Protestant Ascendancy in A Modest Proposal, while Martin Luther decried corruption in the Catholic Church in his Ninety-five Theses. Examples of social commentators from the lower social strata are Charles Dickens and Will Rogers.
Forms
This list is far from exhaustive. Examples of social commentary may be found in any form of communication. Artistic works of all mediums are often defined by what they say about society. Despite being wordless, the memorable image of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 may be considered one of the most profound commentaries of the power of the individual.
Visual artwork
Inspiration for some artists can come from issues that are present today. Deborah Silverman, Professor of History and Art History at the University of California in Los Angeles, states that the "Analysis of particular visual forms expands to an interpretation of art and artists as carriers of cultural history in the crucible of modernity." This notion has been present in art throughout time. An example is Vincent Van Gogh's 1885 painting 'The Potato Eaters'. This picture depicts a group of poverty stricken people gathered in a small room around a table. Vincent Van Gogh created this piece of artwork in order to present a confronting time to the viewer. A modern example is street art, also known as graffiti. With an international reputation, artist and political activist Banksy is known to produce street art that raises public issues such as slave Labour, loss of childhood and the effects of war.
Photography
Social commentary photography's purpose is to "expose social issues on ethics, society, religious, the way of life, how people live and other similarities." Sometimes this includes the harsh reality of society such as homelessness, discrimination, war and defenceless children. "Social Commentary artists try their best to create artworks in order to convey messages to the community." Due to the fact that the photos are of real life situations, the contents can be perceived to be more confronting than other visual forms of social commentary. An example are the works of photojournalist and war photographer James Nachtwey. James Nachtwey's works include the Rwanda Genocide (1994), the Somalia famine (1992) and the Jakarta Riots (1998) and the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Direct publication
Public speaking
Most public speaking constitutes social commentary of some form. Many sermons will describe the ills of society and offer religious solutions. Many politicians may speak in a similar fashion – in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar one can see Mark Antony's funeral speech as a commentary. The larger audience offered by radio and television has diminished the significance of public speaking as a means of social commentary.
The United Nations General Assembly is one of the biggest global organisations that focus of planet Earth and humans. The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) strive to make the Earth a better place, however without the input of many passionate individuals the UNGA would not be able to achieve this. Influential public speakers such as Pope Francis, Malala Yousafzai, President Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II, comment of society's issues. This allows the UNGA to directly listen to the issues at hand and address them accordingly.
Fiction
Allegorical fictional works such as Animal Farm clearly contain a social commentary and one can find some degree of social commentary in almost any novel. To Kill a Mockingbird can be interpreted as a commentary on racial issues, especially given the date of its publication (1960). Another example of social commentary is Thomas More's Utopia in which he uses the Utopia to satirize the values of 16th century Britain. Social commentaries have been searched for even in fantasy novels such as The Lord of the Rings, though such connections often require much conjecture, or in modern fables.
Non-fiction
Directly speaking to a topic in the social discourse in writing by defining the audience, the bounds of the topic, and the presenting facts and opinions based on the primarily author and possibly on another's perspective.
Radio, television and film
Fictional works in these mediums have a similar scope to that of their literary counterparts and documentaries to the non-fiction works described above. Television and films often use powerful images to enhance their message, for example, Michael Moore's films utilise this to great effect in promoting his political beliefs. Some examples of films include Food, Inc., The Story of Stuff featuring Annie Leonard, and Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. And to a lesser degree, the prominent Italian exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust uses graphic violence, shocking imagery, and underlying topics in anthropology to express Ruggero Deodato's distaste for modern society – more importantly – what it has become. West Indian calypsonians participate annually in songwriting competitions with the common use of double entendre, humour and metaphor as well as monikers to avoid legal complications (see Calypso Music). The slasher film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre also uses animal rights social commentary, in the form of the movie being a metaphor, the chainsaw victims being treated like animals in slaughterhouses and then put into fridges, tenderised, and hung on meat hooks and in an interview, Russel Simmons said: "The way that woman was screaming, ‘Aaaahhh,’ and she's running away—that's how every animal you eat is running for his or her life". The shockumentary Mondo Cane also provided social commentary, as in one frame, there are dogs being walked in San Francisco and in the other, in Papua New Guinea people are eating dog meat, using cultures different from Western culture to shock the viewer and make them feel uncomfortable. Mondo Cane was made to promote "being civil", and uses language in the film such as "savages".
Dystopian fiction
A lot of books and games from the Cyberpunk genre, including 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077 use social commentary usually as a means of questioning technology (ex: "Will technology make us selfish?") or questioning unethical megacorporations, as in most Cyberpunk plots the megacorporations are antagonised and demonised and Cyberpunk also sheds light on poverty-related issues. The video game series Watch Dogs, in which the protagonists are cyber vigilantes that rebel against an all-seeing government, uses social commentary against mass surveillance. 1999 film The Matrix and 1932 book Brave New World provide commentary on the Blissful ignorance effect, where in The Matrix, the protagonist named Neo can choose the red pill, a dark truth, or the blue pill, a blissful lie to stay in the Matrix or to wake up in the real world and in Brave New World the character has a choice whether or not to take soma, a drug used by the totalitarian government to keep the people happy and docile, both inspired by Plato's Cave which some consider a metaphor for life.
In a similar situation, the fascist government of video game We Happy Few use drugs to keep people in a state of mania, to forget a certain "incident" that occurred and secret police are dispatched to kill people who remember the event or don't take the pills and the citizens are forced to wear masks that mold faces in permanent smiles. The main character is presented with a choice at the start of the game: to take the "happiness pill" or to abstain. If the player takes the pill, the game ends and the credits roll, whereas if the player pick the latter, they begin the game. George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is also written as a critique of totalitarianism.
Rap music
A lot of hip hop associated with gangsta rap or conscious rap uses sociopolitical commentary, such as N.W.A's protest song "Fuck Tha Police" or Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bone's "Ridin", typically against black racial profiling and police brutality and music from gangsta rap artist 2Pac also speak of the poverty in inner cities and racism in the United States and 1991 2Pac song Trapped discusses an incident in which 2Pac was assaulted by a police officer and talks about police brutality in the United States. In a 1988 interview about societal perspective, rapper 2Pac said “More kids are being handed crack than being handed diplomas.” and "Society is like that. They’ll let you go as far as you want, but as soon as you start asking too many questions and you’re ready to change, boom, that block will come". In the interview, he also states his opinions on government action, requesting school classes on drugs, “real” sex education, scams, religious cults, police brutality, apartheid, American racism, poverty, and food insecurity. Other subjects such as foreign languages, are written off by 2Pac, saying that he doesn't need to learn German, he says he can hardly pay his rent, let alone book a flight to Germany.
Monologists
An early radio monologist was the American Will Rogers, with sharp and good-humored observations upon society during the 1920s and 1930s. Current American monologists include:
Jay Leno
Garrison Keillor
Jon Stewart
Stephen Colbert
Craig Ferguson
David Letterman
Conan O'Brien
Bill Maher
Jimmy Fallon
Lawrence O’Donnell
Discussion shows
There are a number of discussion shows that do not have a call in segments, but which sometimes have discussions (beyond mere interviews) with personages of current interest. In the United States of America, some such shows include:
Jay Leno
David Letterman
Oprah Winfrey
Steve Harvey
Talk shows (call-in)
In the late 20th century through the present, radio and television phone-in shows allow limited discussion and sometimes debate on such issues, although if involving politics or issues exploited for political purposes the discussion is often directed by the "moderator" toward a specific point of view, typically by terminating non-conforming phone calls.
In more balanced forums it is common that a panel of well-known social commentators or experts on aspects of a topic will respond to comments from listeners after an introductory interactive discussion directed by the moderator, with only the obstreperous or extreme caller summarily terminated.
Newspapers and comic books
What is probably the most common social commentary is that of the editorial section of newspapers, where columnists give their opinion on current affairs. The letters section of papers allows a similar platform for members of the public. Editorial cartoons, such as those in The New Yorker, perform a social commentary, often with a humorous slant.
The conventional comic section is more limited, but sometimes with social commentary, often subtle and oblique, or more bold, abrasive, and consistently pointed as in, Li'l Abner, Pogo, Doonesbury, Bloom County, and Boondocks or in pulp comics such as Howard the Duck. Many other even more explicitly provocative comics (usually with a far left of center point of view) appear in various free weekly newspapers such as the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the East Bay Express (in the San Francisco Bay Area) and the Village Voice (in New York City), and similarly in many other locals, often those with a strong university or college presence.
The Internet
The web performs a similar function to the letters section described above. It is ripe with social commentary because it allows the dissemination of ideas by anyone with a computer to a potentially enormous audience, as well as instant comment and discussion. Its international scope is particularly attractive, with language the only major barrier to communication. Discussion and debate occurs in many forums and chat rooms.
Famous social commentators
Alison Bechdel
Adam Smith
Bill Hicks
Mike Davis
Bob Dylan
Brian Merriman
Miguel de Cervantes
Charlie Chaplin
Confucius
Charles Dickens
Frank Zappa
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Carlin
George Orwell
Jean-Luc Godard
John Lennon
John Locke
JK Rowling
Karl Marx
Rex Murphy
Lenny Bruce
Lewis Black
Mark Twain
Martin Luther
Martin Luther King Jr.
Michael Moore
Oscar Wilde
Plato
Camille Paglia
Fran Lebowitz
Ann Coulter
Christopher Hitchens
Roger Waters
Rush Limbaugh
Socrates
Thomas More
Virginia Woolf
Voltaire
Will Rogers
Banksy
Ayn Rand
See also
Satire
Sources
References | 0.765262 | 0.988413 | 0.756396 |
Types of nationalism | Among scholars of nationalism, a number of types of nationalism have been presented. Nationalism may manifest itself as part of official state ideology or as a popular non-state movement and may be expressed along civic, ethnic, language, religious or ideological lines. These self-definitions of the nation are used to classify types of nationalism, but such categories are not mutually exclusive and many nationalist movements combine some or all of these elements to varying degrees. Nationalist movements can also be classified by other criteria, such as scale and location.
Some political theorists, like Umut Özkirimli, make the case that any distinction between forms of nationalism is false. In all forms of nationalism, the populations believe that they share some kind of common culture. Arguably, all types of nationalism merely refer to different ways academics throughout the years have tried to define nationalism. Similarly, Yael Tamir has argued that the differences between the oft-dichotomized ethnic and civic nationalism are blurred.
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric (and in some cases an ethnocratic) approach to various political issues related to national affirmation of a particular ethnic group.
The central tenet of ethnic nationalists is that "nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry". Those of other ethnicities may be classified as second-class citizens.
Ethnic nationalism was traditionally the determinant type of nationalism in Eastern Europe.
Expansionist nationalism
Expansionist nationalism is an aggressive radical form of nationalism or ethnic nationalism (ethnonationalism) that incorporates autonomous, heightened ethnic consciousness and patriotic sentiments with atavistic fears and hatreds focused on "other" or foreign peoples, framing a belief in expansion or recovery of formerly owned territories through militaristic means.
Romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism, also known as organic nationalism and identity nationalism, is the form of ethnic nationalism in which the state derives political legitimacy as a natural ("organic") consequence and expression of the nation, race, or ethnicity. It reflected the ideals of Romanticism and was opposed to Enlightenment rationalism. Romantic nationalism emphasized a historical ethnic culture which meets the Romantic Ideal; folklore developed as a Romantic nationalist concept. The Brothers Grimm were inspired by Herder's writings to create an idealized collection of tales which they labeled as ethnically German. Historian Jules Michelet exemplifies French romantic-nationalist history.
Liberal ethnonationalism
Generally, "liberal nationalism" is used in a similar sense to "civic nationalism"; liberal nationalism is a kind of nationalism defended recently by political philosophers who believe that there can be a non-xenophobic form of nationalism compatible with liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights. However, not all "liberal nationalism" is always "civic nationalism"; there are also liberals who advocate moderate nationalism that affirm ethnic identity, it is also called "liberal ethno-nationalism".
Xenophobic movements in long-established Western European states indeed often took a 'civic national' form, rejecting a given group's ability to assimilate with the nation due to its belonging to a cross-border community (Irish Catholics in Britain, Ashkenazic Jews in France). On the other hand, while liberal subnational separatist movements were commonly associated with ethnic nationalism; such nationalists as the Corsican Republic, United Irishmen, Breton Federalist League or Catalan Republican Party could combine a rejection of the unitary civic-national state with a belief in liberal universalism.
During Taiwan's KMT one-party dictatorship, the Kuomintang (KMT) defended Chinese state nationalism, in opposition to which liberal/progressives, including the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), defended Taiwanese-based "liberal [ethnic] nationalism" (自由民族主義). South Korea prioritized South Korean-based "state nationalism" (국가주의) over Korean ethnic nationalism during the right-wing dictatorship, in response, political liberals and leftists defended "liberal [ethnic] nationalism" (자유민족주의), a moderate version of Korean ethnic nationalism. Even today, major left-liberal and progressive nationalists in Taiwan and South Korea advocate anti-imperialistic minzu-based nationalism (民族主義) and are critical of right-wing state nationalism (國家主義).
In 19th century Europe, liberal movements often affirmed ethnic nationalism in the modern sense along with to topple classical conservatism; István Széchenyi was a representative liberal ethnic nationalist.
Left-wing ethnonationalism
While left-wing nationalism has a weaker ethnic nationalist component than right-wing nationalism, but some national liberation movements have also combined with ethnic nationalism; Northeast Asia and Vietnam's "national liberation" (民族解放, Minzu jiefang) are representative.
Civic nationalism
Civic nationalism, sometimes known as democratic nationalism and liberal nationalism, is a political identity built around shared citizenship within the state, with emphasis on political institutions and liberal principles, which its citizens pledge to uphold. It aims to adhere to traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights, and is not based on ethnocentrism. Civic nationalists often defend the value of national identity by arguing that individuals need it as a partial shared aspect of their identity to lead meaningful, autonomous lives and that democratic polities need a national identity to function properly.
Membership in the civic nation is open to every person by citizenship, regardless of culture or ethnicity; those who share these values can be considered members of the nation. In theory, a civic nation or state does not aim to promote one culture over another. German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has argued that immigrants to a liberal-democratic state need not assimilate into the host culture but only accept the principles of the country's constitution (constitutional patriotism).
Donald Ipperciel argues civic nationalism historically was a determining factor in the development of modern constitutional and democratic state. The 20th-century revival of civic nationalism played a key role in the ideological war against racism. However, as the Turkish political scientist Umut Özkirimli states, "civic" nations can be as intolerant and cruel as the so-called "ethnic" nations, citing French Jacobin techniques of persecution that were used by 20th-century fascists.
State nationalism
State nationalism, state-based nationalism, state-led nationalism, or "statism" equates 'state identity' with 'national identity' and values state authority. State nationalism is classified as civic nationalism by the dichotomy that divides nationalism into "civic" and "ethnic", but it is not necessarily liberal and has something to do with authoritarian politics. Soviet nationalism, Shōwa Statism, Kemalism, Francoism, and Communist-led Chinese state nationalism are classified as state nationalism.
Ideological nationalism
Revolutionary nationalism
Revolutionary nationalism is a broad label that has been applied to many different types of nationalist political movements that wish to achieve their goals through a revolution against the established order. Individuals and organizations described as being revolutionary nationalist include some political currents within the French Revolution, Irish republicans engaged in armed struggle against the British crown, the Can Vuong movement against French rule in 19th century Vietnam, the Indian independence movement in the 20th century, some participants in the Mexican Revolution, Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascists, the Autonomous Government of Khorasan, Augusto Cesar Sandino, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement in Bolivia, black nationalism in the United States, and some African independence movements.
Liberation nationalism
Many nationalist movements in the world are dedicated to national liberation in the view that their nations are being persecuted by other nations and thus need to exercise self-determination by liberating themselves from the accused persecutors. Anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninism is closely tied with this ideology, and practical examples include Stalin's early work Marxism and the National Question and his Socialism in One Country edict, which declares that nationalism can be used in an internationalist context i.e. fighting for national liberation without racial or religious divisions.
Left-wing nationalism
Left-wing nationalism, also occasionally known as socialist nationalism, refers to any political movement that combines left-wing politics or socialism with nationalism. Notable examples include Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement that launched the Cuban Revolution that ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Ireland's Sinn Féin, Labor Zionism in Israel and the African National Congress in South Africa.
Schools of anarchism which acknowledge nationalism
Anarchists who see value in nationalism typically argue that a nation is first and foremost a people; that the state is parasite upon the nation and should not be confused with it; and that since in reality states rarely coincide with national entities, the ideal of the nation state is actually little more than a myth. Within the European Union, for instance, they argue there are over 500 ethnic nations within the 25 member states, and even more in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Moving from this position, they argue that the achievement of meaningful self-determination for all of the world's nations requires an anarchist political system based on local control, free federation, and mutual aid. There has been a long history of anarchist involvement with left-nationalism all over the world. Contemporary fusions of anarchism with anti-state left-nationalism include some strains of Black anarchism and indigenism.
In the early to mid 19th century Europe, the ideas of nationalism, socialism, and liberalism were closely intertwined. Revolutionaries and radicals like Giuseppe Mazzini aligned with all three in about equal measure. The early pioneers of anarchism participated in the spirit of their times: they had much in common with both liberals and socialists, and they shared much of the outlook of early nationalism as well. Thus Mikhail Bakunin had a long career as a pan-Slavic nationalist before adopting anarchism. He also agitated for a United States of Europe (a contemporary nationalist vision originated by Mazzini). In 1880–1881, the Boston-based Irish nationalist W. G. H. Smart wrote articles for a magazine called The Anarchist. Similarly, anarchists in China during the early part of the 20th century were very much involved in the left-wing of the nationalist movement while actively opposing racist elements of the anti-Manchu wing of that movement.
Pan-nationalism
Pan-nationalism is usually an ethnic and cultural nationalism, but the 'nation' is itself a cluster of related ethnic groups and cultures, such as Slavic peoples. Occasionally pan-nationalism is applied to mono-ethnic nationalism, when the national group is dispersed over a wide area and several states – as in Pan-Germanism.
Trans-nationalism
Transnationalism puts nations within an overarching concept, such as global citizenry, seeing shared overarching institutions, for example such as institutions for continental union or globalising society.
Religious nationalism
Religious nationalism is the relationship of nationalism to a particular religious belief, church, Hindu temple or affiliation. This relationship can be broken down into two aspects; the politicization of religion and the converse influence of religion on politics. In the former aspect, a shared religion can be seen to contribute to a sense of national unity, by the citizens of the nation. Another political aspect of religion is the support of a national identity, similar to a shared ethnicity, language or culture. The influence of religion on politics is more ideological, where current interpretations of religious ideas inspire political activism and action; for example, laws are passed to foster stricter religious adherence. Hindu nationalism is common in many states and union territories in India which joined the union of India solely on the basis of religion and post-colonial nationalism.
Post-colonial nationalism
Since the process of decolonisation that occurred after World War II, there has been a rise of Third World nationalisms. Third world nationalisms occur in those nations that have been colonized and exploited. The nationalisms of these nations were forged in a furnace that required resistance to colonial domination to survive. As such, resistance is part and parcel of such nationalisms and their very existence is a form of resistance to imperialist intrusions. Third World nationalism attempts to ensure that the identities of Third World peoples are authored primarily by themselves, not colonial powers.
Examples of third world nationalist ideologies are African nationalism and Arab nationalism. Other important nationalist movements in the developing world have included the ideas of the Mexican Revolution and Haitian Revolution. Third world nationalist ideas have been particularly influential among governments elected in South America.
Multi-ethnic nationalism
Multi-ethnic nationalism, as in a multinational state.
Chinese nationalism is a representative multi-ethnic nationalism. The concept of "Zhonghua minzu" ("Chinese ethnicity") includes many indigenous minorities in China who already live on Chinese territory, but does not include immigrants who are not part of the traditional Chinese ethnic group (ex, Japanese Chinese, European Chinese, African Chinese, etc). Therefore, Chinese nationalism is multi-ethnic nationalism, but it is distinct from civic nationalism.
Taiwanese nationalism and India's composite nationalism is also considered a multi-ethnic nationalism.
Multi-ethnic nationalism may be similar to civic nationalism. However multi-ethnic nationalism tends to embrace multi-ethnic elements without embracing the core elements of civic nationalism.
Diaspora nationalism
Diaspora nationalism, or as Benedict Anderson terms it, "long-distance nationalism", generally refers to nationalist feeling among a diaspora such as the Irish in the United States, Jews around the world after the expulsion from Jerusalem (586 BCE), the Lebanese in the Americas and Africa, or Armenians in Europe and the United States. Anderson states that this sort of nationalism acts as a "phantom bedrock" for people who want to experience a national connection, but who do not actually want to leave their diaspora community. The essential difference between pan-nationalism and diaspora nationalism is that members of a diaspora, by definition, are no longer resident in their national or ethnic homeland. In some instances, 'Diaspora' refers to a dispersal of a people from a (real or imagined) 'homeland' due to a cataclysmic disruption, such as war, famine, etc. New networks – new 'roots' – form along the 'routes' travelled by diasporic people, who are connected by a shared desire to return 'home'. In reality, the desire to return may be eschatological (i.e. end times orientation), or may not occur in any foreseeable future, but the longing for the lost homeland and the sense of difference from circumambient cultures in which Diasporic people live becomes an identity unto itself.
See also
Anti-nationalism
Integral nationalism
Postnationalism
Jingoism
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Altermodern | Altermodern, a blend word defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, is an attempt at contextualizing art made in today's global context as a reaction against standardisation and commercialism. It is also the title of the Tate Britain's fourth Triennial exhibition curated by Bourriaud.
Concept
In his keynote speech to the 2005 Art Association of Australia & New Zealand Conference, Nicolas Bourriaud explained:
Artists are looking for a new modernity that would be based on translation: What matters today is to translate the cultural values of cultural groups and to connect them to the world network. This “reloading process” of modernism according to the twenty-first-century issues could be called altermodernism, a movement connected to the creolisation of cultures and the fight for autonomy, but also the possibility of producing singularities in a more and more standardized world.
Altermodern can essentially be read as an artist working in a hypermodern world or with supermodern ideas or themes.
Exhibitions
Tate Britain 2009
The Tate exhibition includes a series of four one-day events (called "Prologues"), aiming to "introduce and provoke debate" around the Triennial's themes. Each Prologue includes lectures, performances, film and a manifesto text and attempts to define what the curator sees as the four main facets of Altermodern:
The end of postmodernism
Cultural hybridisation
Travelling as a new way to produce forms
The expanding formats of art
References
External links
Guardian.co.uk
Tate.org.uk
Tate Website: Altermodern
Interview with Nicolas Bourriaud
Visual arts genres
Contemporary art exhibitions
Criticism of postmodernism
Modernity
Art movements
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East–West dichotomy | In sociology, the East–West dichotomy is the perceived difference between the Eastern and the Western worlds. Cultural and religious rather than geographical in division, the boundaries of East and West are not fixed, but vary according to the criteria adopted by individuals using the term.
Used in discussing such studies as management, economics, international relations, and linguistics, the concept is criticized for overlooking regional hybridity.
Divisions
Conceptually, the boundaries are cultural, rather than geographical, as a result of which Australia and New Zealand are typically grouped in the
West (despite being geographically in the east), while Islamic nations are, regardless of location, grouped in the East. However, there are a few Muslim-majority regions in Europe which do not fit this dichotomy. The culture line can be particularly difficult to place in regions of cultural diversity such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose citizens may themselves identify as East or West depending on ethnic or religious background. Further, residents of different parts of the world perceive the boundaries differently; for example, some European scholars define Russia as East, but most agree that it is the West's second complementary part, and Islamic nations regard it and other predominantly Christian nations as the West. Another unanswered question is whether Siberia (North Asia) is "Eastern" or "Western."
Historical concepts
The concept has been used in both "Eastern" and "Western" nations. Japanese sinologist Tachibana Shiraki, in the 1920s, wrote of the need to unify Asia—East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia but excluding Central Asia and West Asia—and form a "New East" that might combine culturally in balancing against the West. Japan continued to make much of the concept, known as Pan-Asianism, throughout World War II, in propaganda. In China, it was encapsulated during the Cold War in a 1957 speech by Mao Zedong, who launched a slogan when he said, "This is a war between two worlds. The West Wind cannot prevail over the East Wind; the East Wind is bound to prevail over the West Wind."
To Western writers, in the 1940s, it became bound up with an idea of aggressive, "frustrated nationalism", which was seen as "intrinsically anti- or non-Western"; sociologist Frank Furedi wrote, "The already existing intellectual assessment of European nationalism adapted to the growth of the Third World variety by developing the couplet of mature Western versus immature Eastern nationalism.... This East-West dichotomy became an accepted part of Western political theory."
The 1978 book Orientalism, by Edward Said, was highly influential in further establishing concepts of the East–West dichotomy in the Western world, bringing into college lectures a notion of the East as "characterized by religious sensibilities, familial social orders, and ageless traditions" in contrast to Western "rationality, material and technical dynamism, and individualism."
More recently, the divide has also been posited as an Islamic "East" and an American and European "West." Critics note that an Islamic/non-Islamic East–West dichotomy is complicated by the global dissemination of Islamic fundamentalism and by cultural diversity within Islamic nations, moving the argument "beyond that of an East-West dichotomy and into a tripartite situation."
Applications
The East–West dichotomy has been used in studying a range of topics, including management, economics and linguistics. Knowledge Creation and Management (2007) examines it as the difference in organizational learning between Western cultures and the Eastern world. It has been widely used in exploring the period of rapid economic growth that has been termed the "East-Asian miracle" in segments of East Asia, particularly the Asian Tigers, following World War II. Some sociologists, in line with the West as a model of modernity posited by Arnold J. Toynbee, have perceived the economic expansion as a sign of the "Westernization" of the region, but others look for explanation in cultural/racial characteristics of the East, embracing concepts of fixed Eastern cultural identity in a phenomenon described as "New Orientalism". Both approaches to the East–West dichotomy have been criticized for failing to take into account the historical hybridity of the regions.
The concept has also been brought to bear on examinations of intercultural communication. Asians are widely described as embracing an "inductive speech pattern" in which a primary point is approached indirectly, but Western societies are said to use "deductive speech" in which speakers immediately establish their point. That is attributed to a higher priority among Asians in harmonious interrelations, but Westerners are said to prioritize direct communication. 2001's Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach described the East–West dichotomy linguistically as a "false dichotomy", noting that both Asian and Western speakers use both forms of communication.
Criticism
In addition to difficulties in defining regions and overlooking hybridity, the East–West dichotomy has been criticized for creating an artificial construct of regional unification that allows one voice to claim authority to speak for multitudes. In "The Triumph of the East?", Mark T. Berger speaks to the issue as relates to examination of the "East-Asian miracle":
The historical power of the East-West dichotomy, and the fixed conceptions of culture/race to which it is linked, have increasingly allowed the national elites of the region to speak not only for their 'nations,' but even for Asia and Asians.... There are numerous instances of Western scholars, intent on challenging North American and/or Western hegemony in both material and discursive terms, ending up uncritically privileging the elite narratives of power-holders in Asia as authentic representatives of a particular non-Western nation or social formation (and also contributing to the
See also
Clash of Civilizations
East-west cultural debate in early 20th century China
Global North and Global South
Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world
Oriental Despotism
Orientalism
References
Further reading
Balancing the East, Upgrading the West; U.S. Grand Strategy in an Age of Upheaval by Zbigniew Brzezinski January/February 2012 Foreign Affairs
Cultural regions
Dichotomies
International relations theory
Political theories | 0.762574 | 0.991855 | 0.756363 |
Americanization | Americanization or Americanisation (see spelling differences) is the influence of the American culture and economy on other countries outside the United States, including their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, technology and political techniques. Some observers have described Americanization as synonymous with progress and innovation.
The cinema of the United States has dominated most of the world's medias markets since the 1910s, and is the chief medium by which the international community sees American fashions, customs, scenery, and way of life. The top 50 highest-grossing films of all time were all made either entirely or partially in the United States or were financed by U.S. production companies, even with limited or no artistic involvement. The top 50 constituents set and filmed entirely in the United Kingdom, like some of the Harry Potter franchise, or with deliberately and quintessentially British source material, like the Lord of the Rings series, count as American productions for solely financial reasons. This coopting of the works of other nations and cultures into "American" works (and the hegemonic ability to do as such) forms part of many critical definitions of Americanization.
United States–based commercial enterprises operating internationally are also associated with Americanization. Notably, the Coca-Cola Company was previously the top global company by revenue, giving rise to the term "Coca-Cola diplomacy" for anything emblematic of U.S. soft power. U.S.-based fast food franchises such as McDonald's, Subway, Starbucks, Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC and Domino's Pizza, among others, have numerous outlets around the world. Of the top ten global brands (2017) by revenue, seven are based in the United States: Apple Inc., Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Amazon, Facebook, and IBM.
During the Cold War, Americanization was the primary soft power method chosen to counter the more hard power-orientated polar process of Sovietization around the world. Education, schools, and particularly universities became the main target for Americanization. Resistance to Americanization within the university community restrained its effectiveness, though it was still much more successful than Sovietization. Americanization has become more prevalent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which left America as the world's sole superpower (the full soft power of China as a potential competing influence has yet to manifest within Occidental pop culture). Americanization found yet another gear with the advent of widespread high-speed Internet use in the mid-2000s (notably heavily censored in China).
Criticism of Americanization has included opposition to U.S. investments in Europe during the 1960s, which subsided by the 1970s. A new dimension of anti-Americanism is fear of the pervasiveness of American Internet technology.
Definitions
Like many concepts in social sciences, the term has been called ambiguous, however, a rough consensus on its meaning exists. Harm G. Schröter who focused on the economic dimension of the process, defined it as "an adapted transfer of values, behaviours, institutions, technologies, patterns of organization, symbols and norms from the [United States] to the economic life of other states". Mel van Elteren defined this in a negative way, as "a process in which economic, technological, political, social, cultural and/or socio–psychological influences emanating from America or Americans impinge on values, norms, belief systems, mentalities, habits, rules, technologies, practices, institutions and behaviors of non-Americans".
Media and popular culture
Hollywood, the American film and television industry, has since the 1910s dominated most of the world's media markets. It is the chief medium by which people across the globe see American fashions, customs, scenery, and way of life. The major film studios of the United States are the primary source of the most commercially successful and most ticket selling movies in the world. The top 50 highest-grossing films of all time were all made entirely or partially in the United States.
In general, the U.S. government plays only a facilitating role in the dissemination of films, television, books, journals etc. However, after the occupation of the former Axis countries during World War II, the U.S. government played a major role in restructuring the media in those countries to eliminate totalitarianism and to promote democracy against fascism and Nazism. For example, in Germany, the American occupation headquarters, Office of Military Government (OMGUS), began its own newspaper based in Munich in 1945. was edited by German and Jewish émigrés who had fled to the United States before the war. Its mission was to destroy Nazi cultural remnants and encourage democracy by exposing Germans to the ways American culture operated. There was great detail on sports, politics, business, Hollywood, fashions, and international affairs.
Despite the restrictions placed by communist authorities, Americanization would continue to spread out over the Iron Curtain even before the collapse of the Soviet Union and accelerated afterwards. The first McDonald's in Soviet Russia had a grand opening on Moscow's Pushkin Square on 31 January 1990 with approximately 38,000 customers waiting in hours long lines, breaking company records at the time. By 1997, there were 21 locations of the Russian chain.
The importation of Little Golden Books (Petits Livres d'Or) to France under the publisher Cocorico after World War II is discussed as a subtle way of implementing cultural productions that "presented the economic principles of American liberalism in a favorable light" in a study by Cécile Boulaire.
Foreign versions of American television programs are rebroadcast around the world, many of them through American broadcasters and their subsidiaries (such as HBO Asia, CNBC Europe and CNN International). Many of the distributors broadcast American programming on their television channels. In 2006, a survey of 20 countries by Radio Times found seven American shows in the ten most watched: CSI: Miami, Lost, Desperate Housewives, The Simpsons, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Without a Trace, and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
American films have been historically extremely popular around the world and often dominate cinemas as a result of a high demand of U.S. product exported to consumers to clear away the outlook of World War II. The top 50 highest-grossing films of all time were all made entirely or partially in the United States. Often, part of the negotiating in free trade agreements between the U.S. and other nations involves screen quotas. One such case is Mexico, which abolished screen quotas after the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the U.S. and Canada.
Many American musicians, such as Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, are popular worldwide and have sold over 500 million albums each. Michael Jackson's album Thriller, at 100 million sales, is the best-selling album of all time internationally.
By the study of vocabulary and spelling of English words in books and tweets, American English is more common in communities of the European Union than British English. This trend is more apparent in the events after World War II and the end of the Soviet Union.
Business and brands
Many of the world's largest companies, such as Alphabet (Google), Amazon, AT&T, Apple, Coca-Cola, Disney, General Motors, McDonald's, Nike, Meta, Microsoft, Pepsi, and Walmart, were founded and are headquartered in the United States. Of the world's 500 largest companies, 124 are headquartered in the U.S. Coca-Cola, which previously held the top spot, is often viewed as a symbol of Americanization, giving rise to the term "Coca-Cola diplomacy" for anything emblematic of U.S. soft power. The American fast food industry, the world's first and largest, is also often viewed as being a symbol of U.S. marketing dominance. Companies such as McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Domino's Pizza, among others, have numerous outlets around the world.
Many of the world's biggest computer companies are also U.S.-based, such as Microsoft, Apple, Intel, HP Inc., Dell, and IBM, and much of the software bought worldwide is created by U.S.-based companies. Carayannis and Campbell note, "The [United States] occupies, also in global terms, a very strong position in the software sector."
Even as far back as 1900, some observers saw "Americanization" as synonymous with progress and innovation. In Germany during the 1920s, the American efficiency movement was called "rationalization" and was a powerful social and economic force. In part, it looked explicitly at American models, especially Fordism. "Rationalization" meant higher productivity and greater efficiency and promised that science would bring prosperity. More generally, it promised a new level of modernity and was applied to economic production and consumption as well as public administration. Various versions of rationalization were promoted by industrialists and social democrats, by engineers and architects, by educators and academics, by middle-class feminists and social workers, by government officials and politicians of many parties. As ideology and practice, rationalization challenged and transformed not only machines, factories, and vast business enterprises but also the lives of middle-class and working-class Germans.
Department stores threatened the more local businesses, with low prices and chain-managed stores. The small businesses were determined and fought back to protect their source of income from the U.S. market.
During the Cold War, Americanization was the method to counter the processes of Sovietization around the world. Education, schools, and particularly universities became the main target for Americanization. However, resistance to Americanization of the university community restrained it, although it was still much more successful than Sovietization.
Visibility
From 1950 to 1965, American investments in Europe soared by 800% to $13.9 billion, and in the European Economic Community they rose ten times to $6.25 billion. Europe's share of American investments increased from 15% to 28%. The investments were of very high visibility and generated much talk of Americanization. Even so, American investments in Europe represented only 50% of the total European investment and American-owned companies in the European Economic Community employ only 2 or 3% of the total labor force. The basic reason for U.S. investments is no longer lower production costs, faster economic growth, or higher profits in Europe but the desire to maintain a competitive position based largely on American technological superiority. Opposition to U.S. investments was originally confined to France but later spread to other European countries. Public opinion began to resent American advertising and business methods, personnel policies, and the use of the English language by American companies. Criticism was also directed toward the international currency system which was blamed for inflationary tendencies as a result of the dominant position of the U.S. dollar. However, by the 1970s, European investments in the U.S. had increased even more rapidly than vice versa, and Geir Lundestad finds there was less talk of the Americans buying Europe.
Recent trends
Americanization has become more prevalent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Until the late 1980s, the communist press could be counted on to be especially critical of the United States. To some extent, Russia continued that role under Vladimir Putin, and there are similar tendencies in China. Putin in 2013 published an opinion piece in The New York Times that attacked the American tendency to see itself as an exceptional indispensable nation. "It is extremely dangerous," Putin warned, "to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation."
A new dimension of anti-Americanism is fear of the pervasiveness of American Internet technology. Americanization has arrived through widespread high-speed Internet and smartphone technology since 2008, with a large fraction of the new apps and hardware being designed in Silicon Valley. In Europe, there is growing concern about excess Americanization through Google, Facebook, Twitter, the iPhone, and Uber, among many other American Internet-based corporations. European governments have increasingly expressed concern about privacy issues, as well as antitrust and taxation issues regarding the new American giants. There is a fear that they are significantly evading taxes and posting information that may violate European privacy laws. The Wall Street Journal in 2015 reported "deep concerns in Europe's highest policy circles about the power of U.S. technology companies."
Historiography
The Americanization of the Navajo at Canyon de Chelly was carried out by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the late 1800s.
In 1902 the British journalist William Stead used this term in the title of his book, The Americanization of the World, in which he discussed the growing popularity of the "American ideas".
Berghahn (2010) analyzes the debate on the usefulness of the concepts of 'Americanization' and 'Westernization'. He reviews the recent research on the European–American relationship during the Cold War that has dealt with the cultural influence of the United States upon Europe. He then discusses the relevant work on this subject in the fields of economic and business history. Overall, the article tries to show that those who have applied the concept of 'Americanization' to their research on cultural or economic history have been well aware of the complexities of trans-Atlantic relations in this period, whether they were viewed as a two-way exchange or as a process of circulation.
Criticism
Some critics believe that the result of the rivalry between Sinicization and Americanization may lead to the emergence of a third power or turn one of the two into the actor with the most bargaining power. In the midst of this competition, the interests and rights of local businesses may be violated. Others such as Francis Fukuyama argue that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 prompted a unipolar global capitalist reality that meant the "end of history". Some see this as a flawed view, mired in US exceptionalism. John Fousek said "the triumphalism embedded in Francis Fukuyama's view that the end of the Cold War marked the end of history, constitutes a new, historically contingent variation on the ideology that framed conflict in the beginning". Instead Americanisation, in the eyes of Mary Nolan, is not an all consuming force and what emerged during 1990 was "a multipolar global order". Therefore, the actual impact the U.S. and Americanisation has on the globe is hotly debated and runs deep into modern political policymaking. The traditional exceptional image of U.S. complete hegemonic power can be "quite dangerous" because it prompted American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, which just like in Vietnam, proved to show the limitations of American power across the globe.
See also
References
Further reading
Abdulrahim, Masoud A., Ali A. J. Al-Kandari, and Mohammed Hasanen, “The Influence of American Television Programs on University Students in Kuwait: A Synthesis,” European Journal of American Culture 28 (no. 1, 2009), 57–74.
Andrew Anglophone (Ed.), "Californication and Cultural Imperialism: Baywatch and the Creation of World Culture", 1997, Point Sur: Malibu University Press, .
Campbell, Neil, Jude Davies and George McKay, eds. Issues in Americanisation and Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.
DeBres, Karen. "A Cultural Geography of McDonald's UK," Journal of Cultural Geography, 2005
Fehrenbach, Heide, and Uta G. Poiger. "Americanization Reconsidered," in idem, eds., Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan (2000)
Glancy, Mark. Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain, from the 1920s to the present (I.B. Tauris, 2013), 340 pages,
Glancy, Mark. "Temporary American citizens? British audiences, Hollywood films and the threat of Americanization in the 1920s." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (2006) 26#4 pp. 461–84.
Gräser, Marcus Model America, EGO - European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: March 8, 2021.
Haines, Gerald K. The Americanization of Brazil: A Study of U.S.Cold War Diplomacy in the Third World, 1945–54, Scholarly Resources, 1993
Hendershot, Robert M. Family Spats: Perception, Illusion, and Sentimentality in the Anglo-American Special Relationship (2008)
Hilger, Susanne: The Americanisation of the European Economy after 1880, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2012, retrieved: June 6, 2012.
Kroes, Rob. "American empire and cultural imperialism: A view from the receiving end." Diplomatic History 23.3 (1999): 463-477 online.
Martn, Lawrence. Pledge of Allegiance: The Americanization of Canada in the Mulroney Years, Mcclelland & Stewart Ltd, 1993,
Malchow, H.L. Special Relations: The Americanization of Britain? (Stanford University Press; 2011) 400 pages; explores American influence on the culture and counterculture of metropolitan London from the 1950s to the 1970s, from "Swinging London" to black, feminist, and gay liberation. excerpt and text search
Moffett, Samuel E. The Americanization of Canada (1907) full text online
Nolan, Mary. Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (1995)
Nolan, Mary. "Housework Made Easy: the Taylorized Housewife in Weimar Germany's Rationalized Economy," Feminist Studies. Volume: 16. Issue: 3. pp. 549+
Pells, Richard. Not like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated and Transformed American Culture since World War II (1997) online
Reynolds, David. Rich relations: the American occupation of Britain, 1942-1945 (1995)
Rydell, Robert W., Rob Kroes: Buffalo Bill in Bologna. The Americanization of the World, 1869–1922, University of Chicago Press, 2005,
Willett, Ralph. The Americanization of Germany, 1945–1949 (1989)
Zenklusen, Stefan: A Look Back at a Quarter Century of Globalization - Verifying the Thesis of Anglo-Americanization, Göttingen 2020,
Historiography
Berghahn, Volker R. "The debate on 'Americanization' among economic and cultural historians," Cold War History, Feb 2010, 10#1, pp. 107–30
Kuisel, Richard F. "The End of Americanization? or Reinventing a Research Field for Historians of Europe" Journal of Modern History 92#3 (Sept 2020) pp 602–634 online.
Cultural assimilation
Culture of the United States
Western culture | 0.760893 | 0.993995 | 0.756324 |
Cultural relations | Cultural relations are reciprocal, non-coercive transnational interactions between two or more cultures, encompassing a range of activities that are conducted both by state and non-state actors within the space of cultural and civil society. The overall outcomes of cultural relations are greater connectivity, better mutual understanding, more and deeper relationships, mutually beneficial transactions and enhanced sustainable dialogue between states, peoples, non-state actors and cultures.
Through public policy tools such as public diplomacy and cultural diplomacy (state to people relations), strategic communication and conditionality (including policies of mass persuasion and propaganda), countries and state sponsored institutions rely on non-state actors and culture with the aim of promoting and strengthening their foreign policy interests and influencing perceptions and preferences.
Cultural relations can be distinguished from state led activities such as public diplomacy; cultural diplomacy and nation branding, in that they do not originate only from policies of state actors; through the range of institutions and non-state actors involved pursuing their own goals as transnational actors and by their reciprocity. They are, however, a tangible component of International Relations in the sense that they encompass the space in which a wide range of non-state actors engage in the fostering of intercultural dialogue which can be either in favour of, or against, the national interests of state actors.
Cultural relations and theory
This definition follows Chrisine Silvester's concept of critical imaginations (see the book Critical Imaginations in International Relations, 2016) as she argues that traditional International Relations imagines worlds mostly through the linking of concepts or data points, leaving the field with a certain social hollowness at the core of the canon, an emptiness where people, who are going about their lives experiencing and influencing international relations, should be. She argues that much of International Relations lacks the creativity necessary to place itself in the world of people. The concept of cultural relations fills that void. As cultural relations are engaged in the shaping of preferences of others through appeal and attraction, this distinct field fits into Joseph Nye’s popular theoretical concept of soft power (see Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, 1990) denoting the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce (using force or giving money as a means of persuasion).
Culture
Consisting of both direct and indirect interactions between cultures, cultural relations do not fit as comfortably into an academic field as state actors do into International Relations, Economics and Politics. Direct cultural interactions denote both physical and virtual encounters with people and objects of another culture. Indirect cultural interactions involve ideas, values and beliefs proper to a specific culture and often featured in philosophy, literature, music, and art that are acting as cross-national tools, which can foster and strengthen intercultural dialogue. An understanding of cultural relations therefore requires an understanding of contemporary cultures, at both the global and local levels. These cultures include the range of activities and practices of those engaged in cultural governance and policy, production, dissemination and economics. This includes the political, economic and social roles of culture in cultural markets, development, institutions and specific contexts.
Cultural relations and digital communications media
Due to the increasing pervasiveness of ongoing developments in digital communication and social media networks, which greatly facilitate these processes of global cultural production, participation and dialogue, the importance of direct and indirect cultural relations is growing and developing. Digital media enable cultural and civic societies to engage in cultural relations beyond the boundaries of traditional non-hard state power, i.e. cultural and public diplomacy.
The range of practitioners of cultural relations
Cultural relations both produce and diffuse (soft) power, which varies depending on who is engaging with it. First and foremost, cultural relations are conducted through the enormous range of non-state actors engaged transnationally. The range includes cities, global civil society, educational institutions, cultural and arts organisations, research institutes, corporations and businesses, even down to individuals who can engage via the Internet. This does not mean, however, that state actors are excluded from the field of cultural relations. There is necessarily an ongoing interaction between the field of cultural relations and a state's foreign policy, given the scale and importance of cultural relations activity, which dwarfs state driven policies in quantity, frequency, inclusiveness and speed. These characteristics of scale, the prominence of the digital, the range from formal to informal actors, generate a need for new forms of evidence, descriptions and theorisation.
Categorization
Soft power – public diplomacy – cultural diplomacy – International Relations
References
Further reading
Giulio Gallarotti. "Soft Power: What it is, Why It's Important, and the Conditions Under Which it Can Be Effectively Used" Journal of Political Power (2011).
Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (Cambridge: Perseus Books, 2004).
Justin Hart, Empire of Ideas: The Origins of Public Diplomacy and the Transformation of US Foreign Policy. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Michael J. Waller (ed.) Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare, (Washington, DC: Institute of World Politics Press, 2009).
Werner Meissner, “Cultural Relations between China and the Member States of the European Union”, in The China Quarterly (special issue: China and Europe since 1978: A European Perspective) 169 (2002), 181–203.
Martin Rose and Nick Wadham-Smith, "Mutuality, trust and cultural relations" (British Council, Counterpoint, 2004).
Diplomacy | 0.802186 | 0.942827 | 0.756322 |
Agonism | Agonism (from Greek ἀγών agon, "struggle") is a political and social theory that emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of certain forms of conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict in the political sphere, but seeks to show how individuals might accept and channel this conflict positively. Agonists are especially concerned with debates about democracy, and the role that conflict plays in different conceptions of it. The agonistic tradition to democracy is often referred to as agonistic pluralism. A related political concept is that of countervailing power. Beyond the realm of the political, agonistic frameworks have similarly been utilized in broader cultural critiques of hegemony and domination, as well as in literary and science fiction.
Theory of agonism
There are three elements shared by most theorists of agonism: constitutive pluralism, a tragic view of the world, and a belief in the value of conflict. Constitutive pluralism holds that there is no universal measure of adjudicating between conflicting political values. For example, Chantal Mouffe argues, following Carl Schmitt, that politics is built on the distinction of "us" and "them." Based on this, agonists also believe in "a tragic notion of the world without hope of final redemption from suffering and strife," which cannot find a lasting political solution for all conflicts. Instead, agonists see conflict as a political good. For example, Mouffe argues that "In a democratic polity, conflicts and confrontations, far from being a sign of imperfection, indicate that democracy is alive and inhabited by pluralism.”
Agonism is not simply the undifferentiated celebration of antagonism:
Bonnie Honig, an advocate of agonism, writes: "to affirm the perpetuity of the contest is not to celebrate a world without points of stabilization; it is to affirm the reality of perpetual contest, even within an ordered setting, and to identify the affirmative dimension of contestation." In her book Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, she develops this notion through critiques of consensual conceptions of democracy. Arguing that every political settlement engenders remainders to which it cannot fully do justice, she draws on Nietzsche and Arendt, among others, to bring out the emancipatory potential of political contestation and of the disruption of settled practices. Recognizing, on the other hand, that politics involves the imposition of order and stability, she argues that politics can neither be reduced to consensus, nor to pure contestation, but that these are both essential aspects of politics.
William E. Connolly is one of the founders of this school of thought in political theory. He promotes the possibility of an "agonistic democracy," where he finds positive ways to engage certain aspects of political conflict. Connolly proposes a positive ethos of engagement, which could be used to debate political differences. Agonism is based on contestation, but in a political space where the discourse is one of respect, rather than violence. Unlike toleration, agonistic respect actively engages adversaries in political contests over meaning and power. Unlike antagonism, it shows respect by admitting the ultimate contestability of even one's own deepest held commitments. Agonism is a practice of democratic engagement that destabilizes appeals to authoritative identities and fixed universal principles. Connolly's critical challenges to John Rawls's theory of justice and Jürgen Habermas's theory on deliberative democracy have spawned a host of new literature in this area. His work Identity\Difference (1991) contains an exhaustive look at positive possibilities via democratic contestation.
Liberalism
Agonistic pluralism
Agonistic pluralism, also referred to as "agonistic democracy," is primarily framed as an agonistic alternative to Habermasian models of deliberative democracy. Theorists of agonistic pluralism, including post-modernist thinkers Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, and William E. Connolly, reject the Habermasian notion of a rational universal consensus that can be reached through deliberation alone. In order for a singular rational consensus to be reached, this would require that all parties endorse the same starting ethico-political principles. Yet, in multicultural pluralist societies, agonistic pluralists contend that this will never truly be the case, since divergent social identities will create irreconcilable differences between individuals. It is argued that Habermasian models of deliberative democracy are ill-equipped for pluralist societies, since they simply purport new paradigms of liberal democratic theory, which rely on the same rationalistic, universalistic, and individualistic theoretical frameworks.
Furthermore, agonistic pluralists argue that power cannot be relegated solely to the private sphere, and power hierarchies will necessarily be replicated in public deliberative processes. This makes it such that any "consensus" relies on forms of social domination and necessitates the exclusion of certain interests. Many of these agonistic thinkers point to the ideological entrenchment of global neoliberalism as evidence of how presumed consensus can reinforce hegemony and preclude opposition. The strong influence of Antonio Gramsci in agonistic theory can be seen here, primarily with his theory of cultural hegemony and his claim that any established consensus or norm is reflective of broader structures of power. Thus, for agonistic pluralists, if reason alone cannot yield a legitimate uniform consensus, and power imbalances can never truly be removed from the public sphere, then one must accept the inevitability of conflict in the political realm.
Rather than attempting to wholly eliminate conflict in the political, which agonistic pluralists maintain is conceptually impossible, agonistic pluralism is the model of democracy which attempts to mobilize these passions "towards the promotion of democratic designs." Agonistic pluralists emphasize how the construction of group identities relies on a continuous "other"; this us/them conflict is inherent to politics, and it should be the role of democratic institutions to mitigate such conflicts. The role of agonistic pluralism is to transform antagonistic sentiments into agonistic ones. As Mouffe writes, "this presupposes that the 'other' is no longer seen as an enemy to be destroyed, but somebody with whose ideas we are going to struggle but whose right to defend those ideas we will not put into question." Agonistic pluralists view this conversion of "enemies" into "adversaries" as being fundamental to well-functioning democracies and the only way to properly limit domination.
Criticisms of agonistic pluralism
One criticism of agonistic pluralism is that, in its rejection of deliberative democracy, it inadvertently relies on the same fundamental presuppositions of rational consensus. Andrew Knops argues that agonistic pluralists, such as Chantal Mouffe, assert a "single, universal characterization of the political" in their depiction of the political as a realm of ineradicable antagonism and conflict. For Knops, this universalistic description of the political undermines agonistic pluralists' post-structuralist critiques of rational argumentation. Others build on this criticism, arguing that agonists' focus on passions, power, and the limits of reason ultimately reduces the persuasive capacity of their political and social theories, which remain largely reliant on the process of rationalization.
Another criticism of agonistic pluralism is its failure to provide a real avenue through which antagonism can be transformed into agonism, or enemies into adversaries. Agonistic pluralists maintain that, in order to mediate antagonism, all parties must share some ethico-political principles. For instance, a successful agonistic pluralism requires that all parties share commitments to democratic ideals such as "equality" and "liberty," although the contents of these normative conceptions can vary greatly across groups. Yet, it is argued by critics of agonistic pluralism that, on the one hand, if parties share the same ethico-political principles, then a consensus need not be prohibited through ineradicable conflict. On the other hand, if individuals do not share the ethico-political principles needed to reach a consensus, then critics argue there is little reason to conceive that antagonism can be reduced into anything less. Under a framework under which there are no shared ethico-political commitments, there is also no normative basis for prohibiting the use of political violence. Finally, critics contend that this lack of common understanding not only problematizes the transformation of antagonism into something else, but it further contradicts the essence of antagonism itself. It is argued that deliberation is constitutive of conflict, insofar as antagonism requires a certain degree of understanding of the "other" and an ability to use shared speech acts to explain points of divergence with opposing parties; this becomes difficult to do under an agonistic framework.
Critical conceptions
Other works have invoked conceptions of agonism and the agon in a more critical sense beyond that of political counter-hegemony. This usage of agonism has been explored at some length by Claudio Colaguori in his book Agon Culture: Competition, Conflict and the Problem of Domination. According to Colaguori, "the agon is literally the arena of competition, the scene of contest, and the locus of adversarial conflict." He continues, writing "The philosophy of agonism affirms the idea that transcendence, truth, and growth are generated from the outcome of the contest...the concept of agonism is often understood in an affirmative sense as the generative principle of economy, society and even natural ecology and personal growth... The ambivalent character of agonism is that it is often seen as a mode of transcendence, while its instrumental relation to the mode of destruction is rarely acknowledged."
For Theodor Adorno, agonism is also about the "theodicy of conflict" where opponents "want to annihilate one another... to enter the agon, each the mortal enemy of each." Agonism forms part of the instituted social order where society "produces and reproduces itself precisely from the interconnection of the antagonistic interests of its members." Adorno also sees agonism as the underlying principle in Hegel's dialectic of history where "dialectics" (i.e., growth through conflict) is the ontology of the wrong state of things. The right state of things would be free of them: "neither a system nor a contradiction." Colaguori reconstructs the concept of the agon to invoke this critical, destructive aspect as a way of extending Adorno's critique of modern domination and to identify how the normalization and naturalization of conflict is used as an ideology to justify various forms of domination and subjugation. The agonistic ideology that has been appropriated by popular culture for example makes use of agonistic themes to celebrate competition as the wellspring of life in such a way as to normalize "a military definition of reality."
The critical conception of agonism developed by Colaguori and Adorno emphasizes how aspects of competition can be utilized to reinforce the project of domination that is evident in the geopolitics of modernity. Colaguori suggests that a critical conception of agonism can be applied to the study of "numerous forms of social conflict in gender, class and race relations where the competitive mode of interaction prevails in the formation of social hierarchies based on competition as a form of exclusion." Colaguori further states that, "after 100 years of technological progress, human societies are trapped in a perpetual dynamic of conflict and crisis, with modernization at a standstill. While this dialectic of development and destruction has been analysed from political and economic perspectives, Agon Culture offers an analysis of the human condition through an examination of the way in which the cultural ideology of competition operates as a mode of rationality that underpins the order of domination."
Agonism in fiction
The science fiction novel Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder depicts a post-human future where "agonistics" is the ruling principle of the solar system. The story explains agonistics by writing, "You can compete, and you can win, but you can never win once-and-for-all." A character gives two examples of agonism: a presidency with term limits, and laws aimed at preventing corporate monopolies.
See also
Moral relativism
Pluralism
Value pluralism
Radical democracy
Gaetano Mosca
References
Political theories
Conflict (process)
Pluralism (philosophy) | 0.76758 | 0.985333 | 0.756322 |
Cleavage (politics) | In political science and sociology, a cleavage is a historically determined social or cultural line which divides citizens within a society into groups with differing political interests, resulting in political conflict among these groups. Social or cultural cleavages thus become political cleavages once they get politicized as such. Cleavage theory accordingly argues that political cleavages predominantly determine a country's party system as well as the individual voting behavior of citizens, dividing them into voting blocs. These blocs are distinguished by similar socio-economic characteristics, who vote and view the world in a similar way. It is distinct from other common political theories on voting behavior in the sense that it focuses on aggregate and structural patterns instead of individual voting behaviors.
Classical cleavage theories have generally been focused on the persistence of dominant conflicts within national political systems over the course of history. Political sociologists Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967) for example used the term in their often cited essay on cleavage structures in West European politics. In their essay, the authors argue how the European party systems at their time of writing were still largely based on the social and cultural cleavages that characterized European societies a century earlier. They therefore argue that these 'frozen party systems' can be seen as political expressions of historically determined societal divisions.
Although some authors have claimed that the cleavages in Lipset and Rokkan's theory are still dominant for contemporary voting behaviors in Western Europe, others have argued that these traditional cleavages have become less important and new conflict lines have emerged. Conflicts that have emerged around several new political cleavages are for example cultural, such as conflicts over integration and multiculturalism, or environmental, such as ongoing politics over climate change.
Frozen party systems
The cleavages in Lipset and Rokkan's classical theory have its origins in two developments in 19th century Western Europe. On the one hand, European societies at the time saw a period of so-called national revolutions. These events were revolutionary as the centralized state came to take over political roles that had formerly been assigned to decentralized and/or religious communities. According to Lipset and Rokkan, these historical national revolutions gave rise to the following two societal and political cleavages:
between elites in the central administrative areas and those in more outlying areas. This usually expresses itself in terms of regional nationalism. For example, in Spain many regions have regionalist or separatist parties. This division is, according to Lipset and Rokkan, caused by the creation of modern nation-states, where some states were better than others at assimilating other cultures into the majority nation.
between religious and secular voters. In the Netherlands until the 1970s there were five major parties: the Catholic People's Party (KVP), the Protestant Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) and Christian Historical Union (CHU), the social democratic Labour Party (PvdA), and the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the last two being secular.
On the other hand, the authors claim that the Industrial Revolution also generated two persistent cleavages:
a class cleavage, causing the formation of parties of the left and parties of the right. This cleavage was particularly present in Western countries. It concerned mostly economical conflicts, such as the choice between Keynesian economics and Liberal economics. Sometimes it is argued that this cleavage represents a conflict between the rich and poor. Various parties have claimed to represent either interest, though this may or may not be genuine. Socialist parties such as the British Labour Party, Argentinian Socialist Party and the Swedish Democratic Workers' Party represent the left while the British Conservative Party and the Republican Party in the United States represent the right.
Conflict between industrial and agricultural sectors on trade policies such as continued state exercise of control over tariffs, against freedom of control for industrial enterprise. This creates agrarian and peasant parties such as the Australian County Party, Finnish Centre Party and Polish Peasants People's Party.
Lipset and Rokkan claim that the political parties that emerged in Western Europe during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century were formed on the base of these structural cleavages in societies. At the time of writing their essay (1967), they observed that these party systems had, for the biggest part, not changed. Parties then still seemed to be based on the aforementioned four cleavages, making many European party systems seem 'frozen'. The main explanation they give for this is that with the development of labor parties as well as the introduction of universal suffrage at the beginning of the 20th century all groups of civil society were in a way represented in the political arenas of these states. According to Paul Pierson, the account by Lipset and Rokkan typifies path dependence, as cleavages at particular critical junctures led to stable party systems. Barbara Geddes extended Lipset and Rokkan's argument to Latin American states, finding that Lipset and Rokkan's argument did not successfully explain the party systems there even though the cases were consistent with the initial conditions outlined by Lipset and Rokkan in their study of mostly European party stems.
There have been noteworthy exceptions to Lipset and Rokkan's theory of Western European party systems, however. As the authors claim, the fascist or national-socialist authoritarian politics of for example Spain, Italy and Germany were not based on these historical cleavages. Thus, not all Western European states had had 'frozen party systems' for the period concerned.
New cleavages
From the 1960s onwards, the party systems discussed in Lipset and Rokkan's theory partially 'unfroze' as the traditional cleavages seemed to become less deterministic for voting behaviors than before. In political science, this is termed dealignment. The arguments for the causes of dealignment are varied. One argument is that the importance of the religious cleavage, for example, has significantly declined because of widespread secularization. A second theory is one linked to class affiliations. Historically, those who identify as working class would tend to vote for left or left leaning parties, while those in a stronger economic position would vote for parties on the right of the political spectrum. Ronald Inglehart argues that the rise of affluence, particularly in the middle classes, has led to voting behaviour and party affiliations no longer being primarily based on class. While this brings into question the continued existence of the Left-Right cleavage, it also leaves room for voters to based their vote on factors other than class, such a concerns regarding the environment or immigration.
A third explanation for dealignment of cleavages is a top-down approach. Rather than voters being the cause of the breaking down of the Left-Right divide, it is actually caused by political parties themselves. In an attempt to appeal to a wider variety of voters it has been argued that parties on both sides of the political spectrum have consciously moved their policy further toward the centre ground, ensuring the support of a wider variety of voters that transcends class divisions. As a result of this, some authors argue that from this period onwards cleavages have therefore lost their overall importance for political outcomes.
However, other scholars have argued that new cleavages have replaced the traditional ones and have become determinants for political outcomes (realignment), emphasizing the persisting value of cleavage theory for political science and sociology. As argued by several scholars, the following new political cleavages have seemed to gain importance in the late 20th and early 21st century:
Winners versus losers of globalization: a cleavage introduced by political sociologist Hanspeter Kriesi. This cleavage has emerged because globalization supposedly affects citizens within Western European states differently. Due to the increased global circulation of goods and services, migration rates have increased and low-income jobs have partially been relocated to low-income settings. Accordingly, globalization creates a distinction between those in the post-industrial sectors that profit from a globalized economy and the opening of labor markets (the 'winners') versus those in sectors negatively affected by cheap labor influxes (the 'losers'). This new cleavage differs from the traditional class cleavage in the sense that it is not about a division between who owns the means of production (capitalist) versus who does not (laborer). Rather, it is a cleavage between who is part of the sector that profits from globalization and open borders versus who is excluded from these sectors. Kriesi et al. (2008) therefore argue that this cleavage has largely become politicized over conflicts such as integration, Europeanization, open border policies and multiculturalism. For the 'losers', this new cleavage may for instance translate itself into welfare chauvinism, which could reinforce support for populist protest parties that favor trade barriers to protect local manufacturing and 'locals first' policies in the labor market. This ideology is represented by political parties such as the UK Independence Party, National Rally in France and Danish People's Party.
Materialism versus post-materialism: this cleavage stems from post-materialist theory by political scientist Ronald Inglehart. In his theory, Inglehart hypothesizes that a political cleavage emerges between generations over policy priorities due to different sets of values. On the one hand Inglehart claims that mostly younger generations, such as the 'generation X', have developed post-materialist values such as belonging, self-expression and the overall quality of life. These values can for example be translated politically in policies for fair trade, peace, environmental protection and solidarity for low-income countries, resulting in potential support for political parties such as Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens) in Germany, Pirate Party UK and Women's Equality Party in the UK. Such post-materialism ideology contradicts the materialist values of physical sustenance and safety, which is supposedly held by older generations. These values could be translated into policies in favor of national security, protection of private property, tradition and authority within the family and the state.
In some 21st century Western European countries like Austria, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland, a new cultural divide is suggested to have arisen, challenging the old primary political cleavage over economic conflicts. This transformation has occurred since the late 1960s, with the New Left that arose in this period espousing libertarian and universalistic values, and a populist right reaction arising from the 1980s espousing traditionalist and communitarian ones. This is known as Populism and many examples from the 2020s can be highlighted: the election of several populist presidents and parties (Erdogan in Turkey, Trump in the US, The Five Stars Movement in Italy), the vote of citizens (the 2016-UK-referendum leading to the Brexit). This can be explained by the rise of the influence of values upon voting behavior. Citizens do not only take into account economics parameters, but also cultural ones. This new trend, the Authoritarian populist-Libertarian pluralist cleavage, is slowly replacing the former Western-countries political cleavage which is the Left-Right fight. The term for this new cleavage was coined by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. It has been argued that the pattern that can be seen emerging in terms of election outcomes in America and across Europe is as a result of this new cleavage.
Authoritarian Populists: Those who align with this cleavage share are usually socially conservative and working class, leading them to lean towards voting for right wing parties. Authoritarian populists share a view of elites as untrustworthy and hold their leadership in very high regard. In terms of political values, this cleavage puts emphasis on conformity, nationalism and security.
Liberal Pluralists: Liberal pluralists also tend to be working class but hold core liberal values. In contrast to the authoritarian populists, liberal pluralists are usually in favour of immigration and diversity and hold experts in high esteem. In a British context, a liberal pluralist would be pro-membership of the European Union. Supporting marginalised groups and minority rights are of high importance.
In terms of electoral outcomes and emerging patterns in voting behaviour, Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart argue that both the rise of populism, and this new cleavage can be used to explain why the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in 2016, and President Donald Trump's successful bid for the American presidency the same year.
According to Robert Ford and Will Jennings, new cleavages are forming in Western democracies around education, age, geography, and attitudes to immigration. These cleavages were made politically salient due to increased ethnic diversity and certain structural economic changes for advanced economies in the last decades. However, Raul Gomez argues that, while structural changes can increase the salience of cultural issues, their actual political consequences will depend on how individual political parties respond to them.
See also
Class conflict
Cross-cutting cleavage
Psephology
Urban–rural political divide
Wedge issue
Political party
Voting blocs
Further reading
Ford, Robert, and Will Jennings. 2020. "The Changing Cleavage Politics of Western Europe". Annual Review of Political Science 23(1).
Norris, Pippa; Inglehart, Ronald. (2019) Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism
References
Elections
Psephology
Voting
Political terminology
Demographics
Identity politics | 0.766495 | 0.986638 | 0.756253 |
Creative class | The creative class is the posit of American urban studies theorist Richard Florida for an ostensible socioeconomic class. Florida, a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, maintains that the creative class is a key driving force for economic development of post-industrial cities in the United States.
Overview
Florida describes the creative class as comprising 40 million workers (about 30 percent of the U.S. workforce). He breaks the class into two broad sections, derived from Standard Occupational Classification System codes:
Super-creative core: This group comprises about 12 percent of all U.S. jobs. It includes a wide range of occupations (e.g. science, engineering, education, computer programming, research), with arts, design, and media workers forming a small subset. Florida considers those belonging to this group to "fully engage in the creative process" (2002, p. 69). The Super-Creative Core is considered innovative, creating commercial products and consumer goods. The primary job function of its members is to be creative and innovative. "Along with problem solving, their work may entail problem finding" (Florida, 2002, p. 69).
Creative professionals: These professionals are the classic knowledge-based workers and include those working in healthcare, business and finance, the legal profession, and education. They "draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems" using higher degrees of education to do so (Florida, 2002).
In addition to these two main groups of creative people, the usually much smaller group of Bohemians is also included in the creative class.
In his 2002 study, Florida concluded that the creative class would be the leading force of growth in the economy expected to grow by over 10 million jobs in the next decade, which would in 2012 equal almost 40% of the population.
Background
The social theories advanced by Florida have sparked much debate and discussion. Florida's work proposes that a new or emergent class—or demographic segment made up of knowledge workers, intellectuals and various types of artists—is an ascendant economic force, representing either a major shift away from traditional agriculture- or industry-based economies or a general restructuring into more complex economic hierarchies.
The theses developed by Florida in various publications were drawn from, among other sources, U.S. Census Bureau demographic data, focusing first on economic trends and shifts apparent in major U.S. cities, with later work expanding the focus internationally.
A number of specific cities and regions (including California's Silicon Valley, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Boston's Route 128, The Triangle in North Carolina, Austin, Seattle, Bangalore, Dublin and Sweden) have come to be identified with these economic trends. In Florida's publications, the same places are also associated with large Creative Class populations.
Florida argues that the creative class is socially relevant because of its members' ability to spur regional economic growth through innovation (2002).
Walter Grünzweig, professor for American Studies at Technical University of Dortmund, has shown that the origin of the term “creative class” does not lie with Florida, but instead goes back to a passage in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Power" in his collection The Conduct of Life (1860).
Occupations
Florida says that the creative class is a class of workers whose job is to create meaningful new forms (2002). It is composed of scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects, and also includes "people in design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative content" (Florida, 2002, p. 8). The designs of this group are seen as broadly transferable and useful. Another sector of the Creative Class includes positions that are knowledge intensive; these usually require a high degree of formal education (Florida, 2002). Examples of workers in this sector are health professionals and business managers, who are considered part of the sub-group called Creative Professionals. Their primary job is to think and create new approaches to problems. Creativity is becoming more valued in today's global society. Employers see creativity as a channel for self-expression and job satisfaction in their employees. About 38.3 million Americans and 30 percent of the American workforce identify themselves with the creative class. This number has increased by more than 10 percent in the past 20 years.
The creative class is also known for its departure from traditional workplace attire and behavior. Members of the creative class may set their own hours and dress codes in the workplace, often reverting to more relaxed, casual attire instead of business suits and ties. Creative class members may work for themselves and set their own hours, no longer sticking to the 9–5 standard. Independence is also highly regarded among the creative class and expected in the workplace (Florida, 2002).
The global economy
The Creative Class is not a class of workers among many, but a group believed to bring economic growth to countries that can attract its members. The economic benefits conferred by the Creative Class include outcomes in new ideas, high-tech industry and regional growth. Even though the Creative Class has been around for centuries, the U.S. was the first large country to have a Creative Class dealing with information technology, in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1960s less than five percent of the U.S. population was part of the Creative Class, a number that has risen to 26 percent. Seeing that having a strong Creative Class is vital in today's global economy, Europe is now almost equal with America's numbers for this group. Inter-city competition to attract members of the Creative Class has developed.
Following an empirical study across 90 nations, Rindermann et al. (2009) argued that high-ability classes (or smart classes) are responsible for economic growth, stable democratic development, and positively valued political aspects (government effectiveness, rule of law, and liberty).
Places of high creative class populations
Florida's use of census and economic data, presented in works such as The Rise of the Creative Class (2002), Cities and the Creative Class (2004), and The Flight of the Creative Class (2007), as well as Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks (whose "bobos" roughly correspond to Florida's creative class), and NEO Power by Ross Honeywill, has shown that cities which attract and retain creative residents prosper, while those that do not stagnate. This research has gained traction in the business community, as well as among politicians and urban planners. Florida and other Creative Class theorists have been invited to meetings of the National Conference of Mayors and numerous economic development committees, such the Denver mayor's Task Force on Creative Spaces and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's Cool Cities Initiative.
In Cities and the Creative Class, Florida devotes several chapters to discussion of the three main prerequisites of creative cities (though there are many additional qualities which distinguish creative magnets). For a city to attract the Creative Class, he argues, it must possess "the three 'T's": Talent (a highly talented/educated/skilled population), Tolerance (a diverse community, which has a 'live and let live' ethos), and Technology (the technological infrastructure necessary to fuel an entrepreneurial culture). In Rise of the Creative Class, Florida argues that members of the Creative Class value meritocracy, diversity and individuality, and look for these characteristics when they relocate (2002).
As Florida demonstrates in his books, Buffalo, New Orleans and Louisville are examples of cities which have tried to attract the Creative Class but, in comparison to cities which better exemplify the "three 'T's", have failed. Creative Class workers have sought out cities that better accommodate their cultural, creative, and technological needs, such as Chapel Hill, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Austin, Seattle, Toronto, Ontario and Portland, Oregon. Florida also notes that Lexington and Milwaukee, Wisconsin have the ingredients to be a "leading city in a new economy".
The "Creativity Index" is another tool that Florida uses to describe how members of the Creative Class are attracted to a city. The Creativity Index includes four elements: "the Creative Class share of the workforce; innovation, measured as patents per capita; high tech industry, using the Milken Institute's widely accepted Tech Pole Index…; and diversity, measured by the Gay Index, a reasonable proxy for an area's openness" (2002, pp. 244–5). Using this index, Florida rates and ranks cities in terms of innovative high-tech centers, with San Francisco being the highest ranked (2002).
Florida and others have found a strong correlation between those cities and states that provide a more tolerant atmosphere toward culturally unconventional people, such as gays, artists, and musicians (exemplified by Florida's "Gay Index" and "Bohemian Index" developed in The Rise of the Creative Class), and the numbers of Creative Class workers that live and move there (2002).
Research involving the preferences and values of this new socioeconomic class has shown that where people choose to live can no longer be predicted according to conventional industrial theories (such as "people will go to where the jobs/factories are"). Creative workers are no longer bound by physical products, rather working with intellectual products. Their migration to metropolitan urban areas where creative work is available is more due to the attraction of leisure life and community rather than actual work. Although the Creative Class works towards the globalization of progressive and innovative ideas and products, they can also be considered to value local community and local autonomy. Sociologists and urban theorists have noted a gradual and broad shift of values over the past decade. Creative workers are looking for cultural, social, and technological climates in which they feel they can best "be themselves".
"The main assumption underlying this approach is that creative workers seek creative outlets in all aspects of their lives and therefore migrate to cities that actively support their preferred lifestyles" (Donegan et al., 2008, p. 181).
Each year Florida and the Martin Prosperity Institute release the Global Creativity Index, an international study of nations, ranking countries on the 3Ts of economic development - talent, technology, and tolerance. "The GCI is a broad-based measure for advanced economic growth and sustainable prosperity based on the 3Ts of economic development - talent, technology, and tolerance. It rates and ranks 139 nations worldwide on each of these dimensions and on our overall measure of creativity and prosperity" (Florida et al., 2015). The GCI takes into account the diversity of geographical locations noting their openness as the means for progressive ideas to prosper. "Tolerance and openness to diversity is part and parcel of the broad cultural shift toward post-materialist values... Tolerance—or, broadly speaking openness to diversity—provides an additional source of economic advantage that works alongside technology and talent" (Florida, 2012, p. 233). Diversity allows these locations to attract creative individuals and therefore stimulate economic growth. The findings from the 2015 GCI measured 139 countries on their creativity and prosperity. Ranked number one on the 2015 GCI is Australia.
Share of Gross National Product spent on Research and Development is constantly raising at world level. Creative activities are growing at a fast pace in most advanced countries. 60% of the products that will be sold in 2030 do not yet exist. Repetitive works are being robotized. The whole world is becoming a "Creational Society".
Lifestyle
The diverse and individualistic lifestyles enjoyed by the Creative Class involve active participation in a variety of experiential activities. Florida (2002) uses the term "Street Level Culture" to define this kind of stimulation. Street Level Culture may include a "teeming blend of cafes, sidewalk musicians, and small galleries and bistros, where it is hard to draw the line between participant and observer, or between creativity and its creators" (p. 166). Members of the Creative Class enjoy a wide variety of activities (e.g., traveling, antique shopping, bike riding, and running) that highlight the collective interest in being participants and not spectators (Florida, 2002).
Criticisms
Numerous studies have found fault with the logic or empirical claims of Florida's Creative Class theory. This body of critical empirical research demonstrates how the Creative Class thesis, and the associated creative city policy prescriptions, in fact exacerbate social and economic inequalities in cities in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Jamie Peck argues that the Creative Class theory offers no causal mechanism and suffers from circular logic. John Montgomery writes that "what Florida has devised is a set of indices which simply mirror more fundamental truths about creative milieux or dynamic cities." Montgomery also disagrees with the cities that Florida designates as most creative, writing that London, not Manchester and Leicester, should be one of the top in the U.K. A critique of Florida's research and theoretical framework has been developed by Matteo Pasquinelli (2006) in the context of Italian Operaismo.
Statistical indices and composition
Scholars in the disciplines of economics, geography, sociology, and related social sciences have challenged Florida's conception of the "creative class", particularly for the perceived fuzziness of the concept and the lack of analytical precision. A number of studies have found problems with Florida's statistical indices. Hoyman and Faricy, using Florida's own indices, find no statistical evidence that cities with higher proportions of Creative Class workers correlated with any type of economic growth from 1990–2004. By using metropolitan areas as the unit of analysis, the high degree of socio-spatial variation across the metropolitan region is ignored. Studies and popular accounts have questioned whether the creative class is more likely to live in the homogenous, low-density suburban periphery.
Social scientists have also identified problems with the occupational composition of the creative class. Economic geographer Stefan Kratke challenges the inclusion of financial and real estate professionals within the creative class on two accounts: 1) these individuals played a decisive role as the "dealer class" in the 2007 financial crises, and therefore cannot be considered a basis for sustainable urban and regional economic growth; and 2) the financial and real estate industries (especially in headquarter cities) are economically significant regional/urban players only because they are largely "reliant on inflows of wealth created by productive activities in other regions." Moreover, Kratke argues that the "political class" is also ill-suited to be included within creative class, as they are, in many cases, implicated in neoliberal financial deregulation and the rise in highly unstable urban and regional growth regimes evident through real estate bubbles across the United States and in other countries. In "Urban Development and the Politics of the Creative Class", Ann Markusen argues that workers qualified as being in the Creative Class have no concept of group identity, nor are they in occupations that are inherently creative. Markusen also notes that the definition of the Creative Class is based largely on educational attainment, suggesting that Florida's indices become insignificant after controlling for education. Markusen argues that Florida "does not seem to understand the nature of the occupational statistics he uses" and calls for the major occupational groups to be disaggregated. She questions the inclusion of particular occupations within these broad categories such as claim adjusters, funeral directors, tax collectors, yet argues that "[t]hese occupations may indeed be creative, but so too are airplane pilots, ship engineers, millwrights, and tailors – all of whom are uncreative in Florida's tally." Moreover, it is questioned whether human creativity can be conflated with education since "[p]eople at all levels of education exercise considerable inventiveness."
Economic growth
Research shows that economic growth is experienced when the significance of scientifically/technologically and artistically creative workers is taken into account, but this macro-level conclusion can be drawn without Florida's creative class theory, which provides more of an "affirmation of contemporary class relations." Other scholars have criticized the very basis for Florida's definition of "creativity" which many argue is conceived of narrowly and is only valued for the potential for financial and economic growth. Studies have too questioned Florida's argument that jobs and economic growth follow the creative class, and the migration patterns of the creative class have been challenged. Rather than validating Florida's causal logic that attracting the creative class will lead to economic growth, empirical research shows that successful regions pull and maintain human capital.
The creative class thesis—and Richard Florida himself—have been criticized for what appears to be a change in Florida's prognosis for America's ailing Rust Belt cities. Florida's message was so quickly and enthusiastically adopted by cities because he argued that any city had the potential to become a vibrant, creative city with the right infrastructure investments, policies, and consulting advice. A 2009 article, "The Ruse of the Creative Class", questions Florida's costly speaking engagements in struggling industrial cities in which he offered optimistic prognoses—and his more recent pronouncements that many American cities may never be saved in the wake of the Great Recession. The creative class thesis has also drawn criticisms for relying on inner city property development, gentrification, and urban labor markets reliant on low-wage service workers, particularly in the hospitality industry. Florida has called for service workers' wages to rise.
Grassroots resistance
Creative Class Struggle, a Toronto-based collective, has brought these criticisms outside academic circles, challenging Florida's Creative Class theories as well as their widespread adoption into urban policy. The group manages an online clearinghouse for information about creative city strategies and policies, publishes a newsletter and other materials, and works to engage the media and public in critical discussion. In June 2009, Creative Class Struggle and art magazine Fuse organized a public forum in Toronto to debate these issues.
See also
Creative city
Creative economy
Indigo Era (economics)
Integral theory
Netocracy
Quaternary sector of the economy
The Cultural Creatives
Thought leader
References
Notes
Cited works
Further reading
On the Poverty of Experts: Between Academization and Deprofessionalization. Hartmann, Heinz, Hartmann, Marianne. 1982, vol 34, iss 2, pg 193
Florida, R. (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it's transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life. New York: Perseus Book Group
Fussell, Paul. Class, especially chapter titled "Class X". 1983.
Long, Joshua. 2010. Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas. University of Texas Press.
Montgomery, J. (2005). Beware 'the Creative Class'. Creativity and Wealth Creation Revisited. Local Economy, Vol. 20, No. 4, 337–343, November 2005
Ray, Paul H. and Sherry Ruth Anderson. The Cultural Creative. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000
Web references
Cleveland, Harlan. "After Affluence, What?". October 1977. Aspen Instit Humanistic Studies November 3, 2005.
Saenz, Tara Keniry. "Portraits of U.S. High-Technology Metros: Income Stratification of Occupational Groups from 1980-2000". March 2005. U Texas, Austin November 31, 2005.
External links
CreativeClass.com
Fennville: A Haven for the Creative Class - An article about the city of Fennville, Mich., which is an example of a city being transformed by the "creative class."
Creative Class Codes - County-level measures of creative class from USDA's Economic Research Service.
Creative Cities Conference - Lexington KY
Business Lexington interviews Richard Florida (audio MP3)
1860s neologisms
Economics of the arts and literature
Urban economics
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Social class in the United States
Ralph Waldo Emerson | 0.76804 | 0.984638 | 0.756242 |
Theory of art | A theory of art is intended to contrast with a definition of art. Traditionally, definitions are composed of necessary and sufficient conditions, and a single counterexample overthrows such a definition. Theorizing about art, on the other hand, is analogous to a theory of a natural phenomenon like gravity. In fact, the intent behind a theory of art is to treat art as a natural phenomenon that should be investigated like any other. The question of whether one can speak of a theory of art without employing a concept of art is also discussed below.
The motivation behind seeking a theory, rather than a definition, is that our best minds have not been able to find definitions without counterexamples. The term "definition" assumes there are concepts, in something along Platonic lines, and a definition is an attempt to reach in and pluck out the essence of the concept and also assumes that at least some people have intellectual access to these concepts. In contrast, a 'conception' is an individual attempt to grasp at the putative essence behind this common term while nobody has "access" to the concept.
A theory of art presumes that each of us employs different conceptions of this unattainable art concept and as a result we must resort to worldly human investigation.
Aesthetic response
Theories of aesthetic response or functional theories of art are in many ways the most intuitive theories of art. At its base, the term "aesthetic" refers to a type of phenomenal experience, and aesthetic definitions identify artworks with artifacts intended to produce aesthetic experiences. Nature can be beautiful and it can produce aesthetic experiences, but nature does not possess the intentional function of producing those experiences. For such a function, an intention is necessary, and thus agency – the artist.
Monroe Beardsley is commonly associated with aesthetic definitions of art. In Beardsley's words, something is art just in case it is "either an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of affording an experience with marked aesthetic character or (incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type of arrangements that is typically intended to have this capacity" (The aesthetic point of view: selected essays, 1982, 299). Painters arrange "conditions" in the paint/canvas medium, and dancers arrange the "conditions" of their bodily medium, for example. According to Beardsley's first disjunct, art has an intended aesthetic function, but not all artworks succeed in producing aesthetic experiences. The second disjunct allows for artworks that were intended to have this capacity, but failed at it (bad art).
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain is the paradigmatic counterexample to aesthetic definitions of art. Such works are said to be counterexamples because they are artworks that do not possess an intended aesthetic function. Beardsley replies that either such works are not art or they are "comments on art" (1983): "To classify them [Fountain and the like] as artworks just because they make comments on art would be to classify a lot of dull and sometimes unintelligible magazine articles and newspaper reviews as artworks" (p. 25). This response has been widely considered inadequate (REF). It is either question-begging or it relies on an arbitrary distinction between artworks and commentaries on artworks. A great many art theorists today consider aesthetic definitions of art to be extensionally inadequate, primarily because of artworks in the style of Duchamp.
Formalist
The formalist theory of art asserts that we should focus only on the formal properties of art—the "form", not the "content". Those formal properties might include, for the visual arts, color, shape, and line, and, for the musical arts, rhythm and harmony. Formalists do not deny that works of art might have content, representation, or narrative--rather, they deny that those things are relevant in our appreciation or understanding of art.
Institutional
The institutional theory of art is a theory about the nature of art that holds that an object can only become art in the context of the institution known as "the art world".
Addressing the issue of what makes, for example, Marcel Duchamp's "readymades" art, or why a pile of Brillo cartons in a supermarket is not art, whereas Andy Warhol's famous Brillo Boxes (a pile of Brillo carton replicas) is, the art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto wrote in his 1964 essay "The Artworld":
According to Robert J. Yanal, Danto's essay, in which he coined the term artworld, outlined the first institutional theory of art.
Versions of the institutional theory were formulated more explicitly by George Dickie in his article "Defining Art" (American Philosophical Quarterly, 1969) and his books Aesthetics: An Introduction (1971) and Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (1974). An early version of Dickie's institutional theory can be summed up in the following definition of work of art from Aesthetics: An Introduction:
Dickie has reformulated his theory in several books and articles. Other philosophers of art have criticized his definitions as being circular.
Historical
Historical theories of art hold that for something to be art, it must bear some relation to existing works of art. For new works to be art, they must be similar or relate to previously established artworks. Such a definition raises the question of where this inherited status originated. That is why historical definitions of art must also include a disjunct for first art: Something is art if it possesses a historical relation to previous artworks, or is first art.
The philosopher primarily associated with the historical definition of art is Jerrold Levinson (1979). For Levinson, "a work of art is a thing intended for regard-as-a-work-of-art: regard in any of the ways works of art existing prior to it have been correctly regarded" (1979, p. 234). Levinson further clarifies that by "intends for" he means: "[M]akes, appropriates or conceives for the purpose of'" (1979, p. 236). Some of these manners for regard (at around the present time) are: to be regarded with full attention, to be regarded contemplatively, to be regarded with special notice to appearance, to be regarded with "emotional openness" (1979, p. 237). If an object is not intended for regard in any of the established ways, then it is not art.
Anti-essentialist
Some art theorists have proposed that the attempt to define art must be abandoned and have instead urged an anti-essentialist theory of art. In 'The Role of Theory in Aesthetics' (1956), Morris Weitz famously argues that individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions will never be forthcoming for the concept 'art' because it is an "open concept". Weitz describes open concepts as those whose "conditions of application are emendable and corrigible" (1956, p. 31). In the case of borderline cases of art and prima facie counterexamples, open concepts "call for some sort of decision on our part to extend the use of the concept to cover this, or to close the concept and invent a new one to deal with the new case and its new property" (p. 31 ital. in original). The question of whether a new artifact is art "is not factual, but rather a decision problem, where the verdict turns on whether or not we enlarge our set of conditions for applying the concept" (p. 32). For Weitz, it is "the very expansive, adventurous character of art, its ever-present changes and novel creations", that makes the concept impossible to capture in a classical definition (as some static univocal essence).
While anti-essentialism was never formally defeated, it was challenged, and the debate over anti-essentialist theories was subsequently swept away by seemingly better essentialist definitions. Commenting after Weitz, Berys Gaut revived anti-essentialism in the philosophy of art with his paper '"Art" as a Cluster Concept' (2000). Cluster concepts are composed of criteria that contribute to art status but are not individually necessary for art status. There is one exception: Artworks are created by agents, and so being an artifact is a necessary property for being an artwork. Gaut (2005) offers a set of ten criteria that contribute to art status:
(i) possessing positive aesthetic qualities (I employ the notion of positive aesthetic qualities here in a narrow sense, comprising beauty and its subspecies);
(ii) being expressive of emotion;
(iii) being intellectually challenging;
(iv) being formally complex and coherent;
(v) having a capacity to convey complex meanings;
(vi) exhibiting an individual point of view;
(vii) being an exercise of creative imagination;
(viii) being an artifact or performance that is the product of a high degree of skill;
(ix) belonging to an established artistic form; and
(x) being the product of an intention to make a work of art. (274)
Satisfying all ten criteria would be sufficient for art, as might any subset formed by nine criteria (this is a consequence of the fact that none of the ten properties is necessary). For example, consider two of Gaut's criteria: "possessing aesthetic merit" and "being expressive of emotion" (200, p. 28). Neither of these criteria is necessary for art status, but both are parts of subsets of these ten criteria that are sufficient for art status. Gaut's definition also allows for many subsets with less than nine criteria to be sufficient for art status, which leads to a highly pluralistic theory of art.
In 2021, the philosopher Jason Josephson Storm defended anti-essentialist definitions of art as part of a broader analysis of the role of macro-categories in the human sciences. Specifically, he argued that most essentialist attempts to answer Weitz's original argument fail because the criteria they propose to define art are not themselves present or identical across cultures. Storm went further and argued that Weitz's appeal to family resemblance to define art without essentialism is ultimately circular because it does not explain why similarities between "art" across cultures are relevant to defining it even anti-essentially. Instead, Storm applied a theory of social kinds to the category "art" that emphasized how different forms of art fulfill different "cultural niches."
The theory of art is also impacted by a philosophical turn in thinking, not only exemplified by the aesthetics of Kant but is tied more closely to ontology and metaphysics in terms of the reflections of Heidegger on the essence of modern technology and the implications it has on all beings that are reduced to what he calls 'standing reserve', and it is from this perspective on the question of being that he explored art beyond the history, theory, and criticism of artistic production as embodied for instance in his influential opus: The Origin of the Work of Art. This has had also an impact on architectural thinking in its philosophical roots.
Aesthetic creation
Zangwill describes the aesthetic-creation theory of art as a theory of "how art comes to be produced" (p. 167) and an "artist-based" theory. Zangwill distinguishes three phases in the production of a work of art:
[F]irst, there is the insight that by creating certain nonaesthetic properties, certain aesthetic properties will be realized; second, there is the intention to realize the aesthetic properties in the nonaesthetic properties, as envisaged in the insight; and, third, there is the more or less successful action of realizing the aesthetic properties in the nonaesthetic properties, an envisaged in the insight and intention. (45)
In the creation of an artwork, the insight plays a causal role in bringing about actions sufficient for realizing particular aesthetic properties. Zangwill does not describe this relation in detail, but only says it is "because of" this insight that the aesthetic properties are created.
Aesthetic properties are instantiated by nonaesthetic properties that "include physical properties, such as shape and size, and secondary qualities, such as colours or sounds." (37) Zangwill says that aesthetic properties supervene on the nonaesthetic properties: it is because of the particular nonaesthetic properties it has that the work possesses certain aesthetic properties (and not the other way around).
What is "art"?
Since art often depicts functional purposes and sometimes has no function other than to convey or communicate an idea, then how best to define the term "art" is a subject of constant contention; many books and journal articles have been published arguing over even the basics of what we mean by the term "art". Theodor Adorno claimed in his Aesthetic Theory (1969), "It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident." Artists, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, and programmers all use the notion of art in their respective fields and give it operational definitions that vary considerably. Furthermore, it is clear that even the basic meaning of the term "art" has changed several times over the centuries, and has continued to evolve during the 20th century as well.
The main recent sense of the word "art" is roughly as an abbreviation for "fine art". Here we mean that skill is being used to express the artist's creativity, engage the audience's aesthetic sensibilities, or draw the audience toward consideration of the "finer" things. Often, if the skill is being used in a functional object, people will consider it a craft instead of art, a suggestion that is highly disputed by many contemporary craft thinkers. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it may be considered design instead of art, or contrariwise, these may be defended as art forms, perhaps called applied art. Some thinkers, for instance, have argued that the difference between fine art and applied art has more to do with the actual function of the object than any clear definitional difference.
Even as late as 1912, it was normal in the West to assume that all art aims at beauty, and thus that anything that was not trying to be beautiful could not count as art. The cubists, dadaists, Stravinsky, and many later art movements struggled against this conception that beauty was central to the definition of art, with such success that, according to Danto, "Beauty had disappeared not only from the advanced art of the 1960s but from the advanced philosophy of art of that decade as well." Perhaps some notion like "expression" (in Croce's theories) or "counter-environment" (in McLuhan's theory) can replace the previous role of beauty. Brian Massumi brought back "beauty" into consideration together with "expression". Another view, as important to the philosophy of art as "beauty", is that of the "sublime", elaborated upon in the twentieth century by the postmodern philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. A further approach, elaborated by André Malraux in works such as The Voices of Silence, is that art is fundamentally a response to a metaphysical question ("Art", he writes, "is an 'anti-destiny'"). Malraux argues that, while art has sometimes been oriented toward beauty and the sublime (principally in post-Renaissance European art), these qualities, as the wider history of art demonstrates, are by no means essential to it.
Perhaps (as in Kennick's theory) no definition of art is possible anymore. Perhaps art should be thought of as a cluster of related concepts in a Wittgensteinian fashion (as in Weitz or Beuys). Another approach is to say that "art" is basically a sociological category, that whatever art schools, museums, and artists define as art is considered art regardless of formal definitions. This "institutional definition of art" (see also Institutional Critique) has been championed by George Dickie. Most people did not consider the depiction of a store-bought urinal or Brillo Box to be art until Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol (respectively) placed them in the context of art (i.e., the art gallery), which then provided the association of these objects with the associations that define art.
Proceduralists often suggest that it is the process by which a work of art is created or viewed that makes it art, not any inherent feature of an object, or how well received it is by the institutions of the art world after its introduction to society at large. If a poet writes down several lines, intending them as a poem, the very procedure by which it is written makes it a poem. Whereas if a journalist writes exactly the same set of words, intending them as shorthand notes to help him write a longer article later, these would not be a poem. Leo Tolstoy, on the other hand, claims in his What is art? (1897) that what decides whether something is art is how it is experienced by its audience, not by the intention of its creator. Functionalists like Monroe Beardsley argue that whether a piece counts as art depends on what function it plays in a particular context; the same Greek vase may play a nonartistic function in one context (carrying wine) and an artistic function in another context (helping us appreciate the beauty of the human figure).
Marxist attempts to define art focus on its place in the mode of production, such as in Walter Benjamin's essay The Author as Producer, and/or its political role in class struggle. Revising some concepts of the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, Gary Tedman defines art in terms of social reproduction of the relations of production on the aesthetic level.
What should art be like?
Many goals have been argued for art, and aestheticians often argue that some goal or another is superior in some way. Clement Greenberg, for instance, argued in 1960 that each artistic medium should seek that which makes it unique among the possible mediums and then purify itself of anything other than expression of its own uniqueness as a form. The Dadaist Tristan Tzara on the other hand saw the function of art in 1918 as the destruction of a mad social order. "We must sweep and clean. Affirm the cleanliness of the individual after the state of madness, aggressive complete madness of a world abandoned to the hands of bandits." Formal goals, creative goals, self-expression, political goals, spiritual goals, philosophical goals, and even more perceptual or aesthetic goals have all been popular pictures of what art should be like.
The value of art
Tolstoy defined art as the following: "Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them." However, this definition is merely a starting point for his theory of art's value. To some extent, the value of art, for Tolstoy, is one with the value of empathy. However, sometimes empathy is not of value. In chapter fifteen of What Is Art?, Tolstoy says that some feelings are good, but others are bad, and so art is only valuable when it generates empathy or shared feeling for good feelings. For example, Tolstoy asserts that empathy for decadent members of the ruling class makes society worse, rather than better. In chapter sixteen, he asserts that the best art is "universal art" that expresses simple and accessible positive feeling.
An argument for the value of art, used in the fictional work The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, proceeds that, if some external force presenting imminent destruction of Earth asked humanity what its value was—what should humanity's response be? The argument continues that the only justification humanity could give for its continued existence would be the past creation and continued creation of things like a Shakespeare play, a Rembrandt painting or a Bach concerto. The suggestion is that these are the things of value that define humanity. Whatever one might think of this claim — and it does seem to undervalue the many other achievements of which human beings have shown themselves capable, both individually and collectively — it is true that art appears to possess a special capacity to endure ("live on") beyond the moment of its birth, in many cases for centuries or millennia. This capacity of art to endure over time — what precisely it is and how it operates — has been widely neglected in modern aesthetics.
Set theory of art
A set theory of art has been underlined in according to the notion that everything is art. Here - higher than such states is proposed while lower than such states is developed for reference; thus showing that art theory is sprung up to guard against complacency.
Everything is art.
A set example of this would be an eternal set large enough to incorporate everything; with a work of art-example given as Ben Vautier's 'Universe'.
Everything and then some more is art (Everything+)
A set of this would be an eternal set incorporated in it a small circle; with a work of art-example given as Aronsson's 'Universe Orange' (which consists of a starmap of the universe bylining a natural-sized physical orange).
Everything that can be created (without practical use) is art (Everything-)
A set of this would be a shadow set (universe) much to the likelihood of a negative universe.
Everything that can be experienced is art (Everything--)
A set of this would be a finite set legally interacting with other sets without losing its position as premier set (the whole); with a work of art-example given as a picture of the 'Orion Nebula' (Unknown Artist).
Everything that exists, have been existing, and will ever exist is art (Everything++)
A set of this would be an infinite set consisting of every parallel universe; with a work of art-example given as Marvels 'Omniverse'.
References
Art
Concepts in aesthetics
Concepts in epistemology
Concepts in metaphysics | 0.765621 | 0.987695 | 0.7562 |
Personality change | Personality change refers to the different forms of change in various aspects of personality. These changes include how we experience things, how our perception of experiences changes, and how we react in situations. An individual's personality may stay somewhat consistent throughout their life. Still, more often than not, everyone undergoes some form of change to their personality in their lifetime.
Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns. Our personality is like a puzzle; each piece can come from internal or external factors. The many pieces can come from events, circumstances, genetics, or life experiences. Each piece creates a person's personality as a whole.
Every person has their own "individual differences in particular personality characteristics" that separate them from others. The overall study of personality focuses on two broad areas: understanding individual differences in personality characteristics, and understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole.
Social interactions, age, personal experiences, and significant events (especially traumatic events) can all alter a person's perceptions and cause their personality to change.
Each person has their own unique personality, and as a result, the many differences and changes that occur, may be confusing. Even psychologists are still studying and researching to fully understand what personality means and why personality changes. The development of personality is often dependent on the stage of life a person is in. Most development occurs in the earlier stages of life and becomes more stable as one grows into adulthood.
While still uncertain, research suggests that genetics play a role in the change and stability of certain traits in a personality. They have also discovered that environmental sources affect personality too. The debate over nature versus nurture have pervaded the field of psychology since its beginning. Cultural is also a large factor in personality trait differences as well.
Definition of personality
Personality, one's characteristic way of feeling, behaving and thinking, is often conceptualized as a person's standing on each Big Five personality trait (extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness). A person's personality profile is thus gauged from their standing on five broad concepts which predict, among other life outcomes, behavior and the quality of interpersonal relationships. Initially, it was believed that one's Big Five profile was static and dichotomous in that one was either at one extreme of each trait or another
For example, people are typically categorized as introverted or extraverted. Personality was therefore assessed in terms of generalities or averages. In noticing the strong inconsistencies in how people behaved across situations, some psychologists dismissed personality as nonexistent.
This school of thought attributes human behavior to environmental factors, relegating individual differences to situational artifacts and contesting the existence of individual predispositions. It was led by situationists like Walter Mischel (1968). Their contention held that personality was a fictitious concept. For them, the discrepancies observed across one's behaviors were evidence that inter-individual differences did not exist
Some aspects of the situationist perspective even suggest that all human beings are the same and that the differences we observe are simply illusory byproducts of the environment.
However, personality experts (sometimes referred to as personologists) soon integrated these inconsistencies into their conceptualization of personality. They modified the old, more monolithic construct by measuring how people differ across situations. Their new methods of personality assessment describe fluctuations in personality characteristics that are consistent and predictable for each person, based on his predispositions and the environment they are in. Some work suggests that people can adopt different levels of a personality dimension as the social situations and time of day change.
Therefore, someone is not conscientious all of the time, but can be conscientious at work and a lot less so when they are home. This work also suggests that intrapersonal variations on a trait can be even larger than interpersonal variations. Extraversion varies more within a person than across individuals, for example. This work was based on individual self-ratings during the day across a long period of time. This allowed for researchers to assess moment-to-moment and day to day variations on personality attributes.
The impact of social roles
In addition, social roles (e.g. employee) have been identified as potential sources of personality change. Researchers have found strong correspondences between the demands of a social role and one's personality profile.
If the role requires that the person enacting it be conscientious, her standing on this trait is more likely to be high. Conversely, once he leaves that role or takes on another which entails less conscientiousness, he will manifest a lower level standing on that trait. Longitudinal research demonstrates that people's personality trajectories can often be explained by the social roles they adopted and relinquished throughout their life stages. Thus social roles are often studied as fundamental predictors of personality.
The goals associated with them elicit the appropriation of certain personality profiles by the people enacting them. For example, employees judged effective by their peers and superiors are often described as conscientious.
Personality also changes through life stages. This may be due to physiological changes associated with development but also experiences that impact behavior. Adolescence and young adulthood have been found to be prime periods of personality changes, especially in the domains of extraversion and agreeableness. It has long been believed that personality development is shaped by life experiences that intensify the propensities that led individuals to those experiences in the first place, which is known as the Correspondence Principle.
Subsequent research endeavors have integrated these findings in their methods of investigation. Researchers distinguish between mean level and rank order changes in trait standing during old age.
Their study of personality trajectories is thus contingent on time and on age considerations. Mottus, Johnson and Geary (2012) found that instability engendered by aging does not necessarily affect one's standing within an age cohort. Hence, fluctuations and stability coexist so that one changes relative to one's former self but not relative to one's peers. Similarly, other psychologists found that Neuroticism, Extraversion (only in men), and Openness decreased with age after 70, but Conscientiousness and Agreeableness increased with age (the latter only in men). Moreover, they suggest that there is a decline on each trait after the age of 81.
Inconsistency as a trait
Personality inconsistency has become such a prevalent consideration for personologists that some even conceptualize it as a predisposition in itself. Fleisher and Woehr (2008) suggest that consistency across the Big Five is a construct that is fairly stable and contributes to the predictive validity of personality measures. Hence, inconsistency is quantifiable much like a trait, and constitutes an index of - and enhances - the fit of psychological models.
To accommodate the inconsistency demonstrated on personality tests, researchers developed the Frame Of Reference principle (FOR). Frame of Reference (FOR) refers to the set of conjectures an individual or group of individuals uses to judge ideas, actions, and experiences to create meaning. FOR's include beliefs, values, schemas, preferences and culture. This can lead to prejudice, biases, and stereotypes due to the limited view an individual has. According to this theory, people tend to think of their personality in terms of a specific social context when they are asked to rate them. Whichever environment is cognitively salient at the time of the personality measurement will influence the respondent's ratings on a trait measure.
If, for example, the person is thinking in terms of their student identity, then the personality ratings he reports will most likely reflect the profile he espouses in the context of student life. Accounting for the FOR principle aims at increasing the validity of personality measures. This demonstrates that the predictive validity of personality measures which specify a social context is a lot higher than those measures which take a more generic approach.
This point is substantiated by yet another body of work suggesting that FOR instructions moderated the link between extraversion and openness scores on manager ratings of employee performance
This research thus recognizes that the importance of intrapersonal fluctuations contingent on personality is context specific and is not necessarily generalizable across social domains and time.
There are several different FOR's:
Compensatory Frame of Reference
Rehabilitative Frame of Reference
Biomechanical Frame of Reference
Psychoanalytic Frame of Reference
Psychodynamic Frame of Reference: is based on Freud's theories of Interpersonal relationships and unconscious drives.
Developmental Frame of Reference
Behavioral Frame of Reference
Cognitive-Behavioral Frame of Reference
Psychospiritual Integration Frame of Reference: stresses the nature of spirituality, the expression of spirituality in professional/ work related behaviors, and how spirituality affects an individual's health and well being. There are six elements: becoming, meaning, being, centeredness, connectedness, and transcendence.
Occupational Adaptation Frame of Reference
Social Participation Frame of Reference
Acquisitional Frame of Reference
Process of change
If "Personality... is one of the strongest and most consistent predictors of subjective well-being," then does personality not change? In fact, "personality does change". But what makes that happen?
Most people, in their lifetime, will experience an event that opens their eyes to a new understanding of the world. For example, someone who is carefree and happy might become more serious and stern after experiencing abuse in a relationship. Another who is serious and stern might become more happy and interested in life after finding a religion that provides them with closure and answered questions. Each day of life is met with events and situations that result in a response from those who experience them - and sometimes, these events can change who we are and how we think at the core.
Research has found a correlation between being multilingual and personality, specifically how one may change personality based on the language currently being spoken. One who is raised bilingual or lived a number of years in a foreign country and learned the language of the land not only experience personality change but often adopt different personalities based on the language they are speaking. These changes are often based on cultural norms of the language's origin.
A study published in 2012 found that "personality does change and that the extent to which personality changes is comparable to other characteristics, such as income, unemployment and marital status". Some of the biggest concerns faced in life are the previously listed factors - how much money does one make (income)? Does one have a job or not (unemployment)? Does one have a lifelong companion (marital status)? These situations can lead to bigger, more complex situations. If one seeks to be married but is not, they may become cold. If one has no job but then gets hired somewhere, they may become grateful and filled with hope. When positive changes happen, "personality... meaningfully predicts changes to life satisfaction". Simply, when one experiences a personality change, it can strongly determine how that person will then feel about life.
Change over a lifetime
There are two very specific types of change that researchers tend to focus on: rank-order change and mean-level change. A rank-order change refers to a change in an individual's personality trait relative to other individuals; such changes do not occur very often.
A mean-level change refers to an absolute change in the individual's level of a certain trait over time. Longitudinal research shows that mean-level change does occur. However, some traits tend to change while some traits tend to stay stable.
During adolescence there are many increases or rapid changes in hormones, societal pressures, and environment factors, among other things. These things theoretically factor into significant personality changes as one progresses through adolescence. As a person progresses through adulthood, their personality becomes more stable and predictable because they establish patterns of thinking, behaving, and feeling.
Personality does not stop changing at a specific age. Biological and social transitions in life may also be a factor for change. Biological transitions are stages like puberty or giving birth for the first time. Social transitions might be changes in social roles like becoming a parent or working at a first job. These life transitions do not necessarily cause change, but they may be reasons for change. As humans we do not adapt just in our body. Our mind also makes changes to itself in order to thrive in our environment. One theory says that whether or not these life transitions cause personality change is based on whether the transition was expected based on age or was unforeseen. The events that are expected will cause personality change because those events have common scripts. However, events that are unexpected will give prominence to the traits that already exist for the individual. Historical context also affects personality change. Major life events can lead to changes in personality that can persist for more than a decade. A longitudinal study followed women over 30 years and found that they showed increases in individualism. This may have been due to the changes that were occurring in their country at the time.
Stressful life events and trauma
Negative life events, long-term difficulties, and deteriorated life quality, all predict small but persistent increases in neuroticism, while positive life events, and improved life quality, predict small but persistent decreases in neuroticism. There appears to be no point during the lifespan that neuroticism is immutable, which is known as the Plasticity Principle.
While extreme, traumatic brain injury can impact a person's personality, even having an effect throughout the rest of their life.
Mechanisms of change
There are multiple ways for an individual's personality to change. Individuals will change their behavior based on the ideas in their environment that emit rewards and punishments. Some of these ideas might be implicit, like social roles. The individual changes his or her personality to fit into a social role if it is favorable. Other ideas might be more explicit like a parent trying to change a child's behavior.
An individual may decide to actively try to change his or her own behavior/ personality after thinking about his or her own actions. Therapy involves the same type of introspection. The individual, along with the therapist, identifies the behaviors that are inappropriate, and then self-monitors to change them. Eventually, the individual internalizes the behavior they want to attain, and that trait will generalize to other areas of the individual's life.
Personality change also occurs when individuals observe the actions of others. Individuals may mimic the behaviors of others and then internalize those behaviors. Once the individual internalizes those behaviors, they are said to be a part of that person's personality.
Individuals also receive feedback from other individuals or groups about their own personality. This is a driving force of change because the individual has social motivations to change his or her personality; people often act a certain way based on the popular/majority vote of the people they are around. For example, a girl who likes country music may say she hates country music when she learns that all her peers don't like country music. It has also been shown that major positive and negative life events can predict changes in personality. Some of the largest changes are observed in individuals with psychiatric or neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. A meta-analysis found consistent evidence that large increases in neuroticism and large declines in the other major personality traits are observed in individuals with dementia. Similar changes were also found in a prospective study (N = 22,611) of self-rated personality.
Meditation
Studies have shown that mindfulness-meditation therapies have a positive effect of personality maturity.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been tested and proved to be effective in the treatment of adults with anxiety disorders.
Psilocybin Therapy
Following psilocybin therapy one study communicates that Neuroticism scores lowered substantially while Extraversion increased.
The Big Five personality traits
The Big Five personality traits are often used to measure change in personality. There is a mean-level change in the Big Five traits from age 10 to 65.
The trends seen in adulthood are different from trends seen in childhood and adolescence. Some research suggests that during adolescence rank-order change does occur and therefore personality is relatively unstable. Gender differences are also shown before adulthood. Conscientiousness drops from late childhood to adolescence, but then picks back up from adolescence into adulthood. As well, a meta-analysis done by Melissa C. O'Connor and Sampo V. Paunonen, "Big Five Personality Predictors of Post-Secondary Academic Performance", 2006, showed that "... conscientiousness, in particular, [is] most strongly and consistently associated with academic success". Agreeableness also drops from late childhood to adolescence, but then picks back up from adolescence into adulthood. Neuroticism shows a different trend for males and females in childhood and adolescence. For females, Neuroticism increases from childhood to adolescence. Then Neuroticism levels from adolescence into adulthood and continues the adult trend of decreasing. Males however, tend to gradually decrease in Neuroticism from childhood to adolescence into adulthood. Extraversion drops from childhood to adolescence and then does not significantly change. Openness to experience also shows a different trend for different genders. Females tend to decrease in Openness to experience from childhood to early adulthood and then gradually increases all throughout adulthood. Males tend to decrease in Openness to experience from childhood to adolescence, then it tends to increase through adulthood. In the same study done by O'Connor and Paunonen, "Openness to Experience was sometimes positively associated with scholastic achievement..." In adulthood, Neuroticism tends to decrease, while Conscientiousness and Agreeableness tend to increase. Extraversion and Openness to experience do not seem to change much during adulthood. These trends seen in adulthood are different from trends seen in childhood and adolescence. Cross-cultural research shows that German, British, Czech, and Turkish people show similar trends of these personality traits. Similar trends seem to exist in other countries.
In a study done by Deborah A. Cobb-Clark and Stefanie Schurer, "The Stability of Big-Five Personality Traits," done in 2011, showed that "On average, individuals report slightly higher levels of agreeableness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness than extraversion and openness to experience. [On top of that], women report higher scores on each trait except for openness to experience". For clarification, openness to experience can be referred to simply as openness. It is often seen as one's willingness to embrace new things, new ideas, and new activities.
The Big Five personality traits can also be broken down into facets. Different facets of each personality trait are often correlated with different behavioral outcomes. Breaking down the personality traits into facets is difficult and not yet at a consensus. However, it is important to look at change in facets over a lifetime separate from just the change in traits because different facets of the same trait show different trends. For example, openness with values decreases substantially with age, while openness with aesthetics is more stable. Neuroticism can be broken into the two facets of anxiety and depression. Anxiety has the same trend as Neuroticism for both males and females. For females, anxiety increases from childhood to adolescence, at emerging adulthood it levels out, and then starts to decrease into and throughout middle age. Anxiety in males tends to decrease from late childhood through adulthood. Depression (not clinical depression, but rather susceptibility to negative affect) shows two peaks in females. Females tend to have higher levels of this kind of depression in adolescence and then again in early adulthood. Depression does, however, have a negative trend through adulthood. For males, depression tends to show an increase from childhood to early adulthood and then shows a slight decrease through middle age. There are four facets that accompany Extraversion. They are social self-esteem, liveliness, social boldness, and sociability. Social Self-esteem, liveliness, and social boldness starts to increase during our mid-teens and continually increases throughout early adulthood and into late adulthood. Sociability seems to follow a different trend that is pretty high during our early teens but tends to decrease in early-adulthood and then stabilize around the age of 39.
Late life changes
Although there is debate surrounding whether or not personality can change in the late stages of life, more evidence is being discovered about how the environmental factors affect people of all ages. Changes in health are regarded as an influential source of personality stability and change. Across multiple facets of health which include cognitive, physical, and sensory functioning, older adults' ability to maintain their everyday routine and lifestyle is being challenged. There are noticeable finds on reverse trends in maturity-related traits, such as increases in neuroticism and declines in conscientiousness. Mainly the debate in this area revolves around whether the health consequences of old age can be linked to changes in traits and whether these changes can, in turn, impair health and functioning.
References
Further reading
Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and assessment. Hoboken, NJ US: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Boyce, C.J., Wood, A.M. & Powdthavee, N. Is Personality Fixed? Personality Changes as Much as “Variable” Economic Factors and More Strongly Predicts Changes to Life Satisfaction. Soc Indic Res 111, 287–305 (2013).
Personality | 0.771355 | 0.980312 | 0.756168 |
Cultural competence | Cultural competence, also known as intercultural competence, is a range of cognitive, affective, behavioural, and linguistic skills that lead to effective and appropriate communication with people of other cultures. Intercultural or cross-cultural education are terms used for the training to achieve cultural competence.
Effective intercultural communication comprises behaviors that accomplish the desired goals of the interaction and parties involved. It includes behaviors that suit cultural expectations, situational characteristics, and characteristics of relationship.
Characteristics
Individuals who are effective and appropriate in intercultural situations display high levels of cultural self-awareness and understand the influence of culture on behavior, values, and beliefs. Cognitive processes imply the understanding of situational and environmental aspects of intercultural interactions and the application of intercultural awareness, which is affected by the understanding of the self and own culture. Self-awareness in intercultural interactions requires self-monitoring to censor anything not acceptable to another culture. Cultural sensitivity or cultural awareness leads the individual to an understanding of how their own culture determines feelings, thoughts, and personality.
Affective processes define the emotions that span during intercultural interactions. These emotions are strongly related to self-concept, open-mindedness, non-judgmentalism, and social relaxation. In general, positive emotions generate respect for other cultures and their differences. Behavioral processes refer to how effectively and appropriately the individual directs actions to achieve goals. Actions during intercultural interactions are influenced by the ability to clearly convey a message, proficiency with the foreign language, flexibility and management of behavior, and social skills.
Creating intercultural competence
Intercultural competence is determined by the presence of cognitive, affective, and behavioral abilities that directly shape communication across cultures. These essential abilities can be separated into five specific skills that are obtained through education and experience:
Mindfulness: the ability of being cognitively aware of how the communication and interaction with others is developed. It is important to focus more in the process of the interaction than its outcome while maintaining in perspective the desired communication goals. For example, it would be better to formulate questions such as "What can I say or do to help this process?" rather than "What do they mean?"
Cognitive flexibility: the ability of creating new categories of information rather than keeping old categories. This skill includes opening to new information, taking more than one perspective, and understanding personal ways of interpreting messages and situations.
Tolerance for ambiguity: the ability to maintain focus in situations that are not clear rather than becoming anxious and to methodically determine the best approach as the situation evolves. Generally, low-tolerance individuals look for information that supports their beliefs while high-tolerance individuals look for information that gives an understanding of the situation and others.
Behavioral flexibility: the ability to adapt and accommodate behaviors to a different culture. Although knowing a second language could be important for this skill, it does not necessarily translate into cultural adaptability. The individual must be willing to assimilate the new culture.
Cross-cultural empathy: the ability to visualize with the imagination the situation of another person from an intellectual and emotional point of view. Demonstrating empathy includes the abilities of connecting emotionally with people, showing compassion, thinking in more than one perspective, and listening actively.
Assessment
The assessment of cross-cultural competence is a field that is rife with controversy. One survey identified 86 assessment instruments for 3C. A United States Army Research Institute study narrowed the list down to ten quantitative instruments that were suitable for further exploration of their reliability and validity.
The following characteristics are tested and observed for the assessment of intercultural competence as an existing ability or as the potential to develop it: ambiguity tolerance, openness to contacts, flexibility in behavior, emotional stability, motivation to perform, empathy, metacommunicative competence, and polycentrism. According to Caligiuri, personality traits such as extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness have a favorable predictive value to the adequate termination of cross-cultural assignments.
Quantitative assessment instruments
Three examples of quantitative assessment instruments are:
the Intercultural Development Inventory
the Cultural Intelligence (CQ) Measurement
the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire
Qualitative assessment instruments
Research in the area of 3C assessment, while thin, points to the value of qualitative assessment instruments in concert with quantitative ones. Qualitative instruments, such as scenario-based assessments, are useful for gaining insight into intercultural competence.
Intercultural coaching frameworks, such as the ICCA (Intercultural Communication and Collaboration Appraisal), do not attempt an assessment; they provide guidance for personal improvement based upon the identification of personal traits, strengths, and weaknesses.
Healthcare
The provision of culturally tailored health care can improve patient outcomes. In 2005, California passed Assembly Bill 1195 that requires patient-related continuing medical education courses in California medical school to incorporate cultural and linguistic competence training in order to qualify for certification credits. In 2011, HealthPartners Institute for Education and Research implemented the EBAN Experience™ program to reduce health disparities among minority populations, most notably East African immigrants.
Cross-cultural competence
Cross-cultural competence (3C) has generated confusing and contradictory definitions because it has been studied by a wide variety of academic approaches and professional fields. One author identified eleven different terms that have some equivalence to 3C: cultural savvy, astuteness, appreciation, literacy or fluency, adaptability, terrain, expertise, competency, awareness, intelligence, and understanding. The United States Army Research Institute, which is currently engaged in a study of 3C has defined it as "A set of cognitive, behavioral, and affective/motivational components that enable individuals to adapt effectively in intercultural environments".
Organizations in academia, business, health care, government security, and developmental aid agencies have all sought to use 3C in one way or another. Poor results have often been obtained due to a lack of rigorous study of 3C and a reliance on "common sense" approaches.
Cross-cultural competence does not operate in a vacuum, however. One theoretical construct posits that 3C, language proficiency, and regional knowledge are distinct skills that are inextricably linked, but to varying degrees depending on the context in which they are employed. In educational settings, Bloom's affective and cognitive taxonomies serve as an effective framework for describing the overlapping areas among these three disciplines: at the receiving and knowledge levels, 3C can operate with near-independence from language proficiency and regional knowledge. But, as one approaches the internalizing and evaluation levels, the overlapping areas approach totality.
The development of intercultural competence is mostly based on the individual's experiences while he or she is communicating with different cultures. When interacting with people from other cultures, the individual experiences certain obstacles that are caused by differences in cultural understanding between two people from different cultures. Such experiences may motivate the individual to acquire skills that can help him to communicate his point of view to an audience belonging to a different cultural ethnicity and background.
Intercultural competence models
Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching Model. In response to the needs to develop EFL learners' ICC in the context of Asia, a theoretical framework, which is an instructional design (ISD) model ADDIE with five stages (Analyze – Design – Develop – Implement – Evaluate) is employed as a guideline in order to construct the ICLT model for EFL learners. The ICLT model is an on-going process of ICC acquisition. There are three parts: Language-Culture, the main training process.
(Input – Notice – Practice – Output), and the ICC, which are systematically integrated. The second part is the main part consisting of four teaching steps to facilitate learners' ICC development, and each step reflects a step of the knowledge scaffolding and constructing process to facilitate learners' ICC development.
Immigrants and international students
A salient issue, especially for people living in countries other than their native country, is the issue of which culture they should follow: their native culture or the one in their new surroundings.
International students also face this issue: they have a choice of modifying their cultural boundaries and adapting to the culture around them or holding on to their native culture and surrounding themselves with people from their own country. The students who decide to hold on to their native culture are those who experience the most problems in their university life and who encounter frequent culture shocks. But international students who adapt themselves to the culture surrounding them (and who interact more with domestic students) will increase their knowledge of the domestic culture, which may help them to "blend in" more. In the article it stated, "Segmented assimilation theorists argue that students from less affluent and racial and ethnic minority immigrant families face a number of educational hurdles and barriers that often stem from racial, ethnic, and gender biases and discrimination embedded within the U.S. public school system". Such individuals may be said to have adopted bicultural identities.
Ethnocentrism
Another issue that stands out in intercultural communication is the attitude stemming from ethnocentrism. LeVine and Campbell defines ethnocentrism as people's tendency to view their culture or in-group as superior to other groups, and to judge those groups to their standards. With ethnocentric attitudes, those incapable to expand their view of different cultures could create conflict between groups. Ignorance to diversity and cultural groups contributes to prevention of peaceful interaction in a fast-paced globalizing world. The counterpart of ethnocentrism is ethnorelativism: the ability to see multiple values, beliefs, norms etc. in the world as cultural rather than universal; being able to understand and accept different cultures as equally valid as ones' own. It is a mindset that moves beyond in-group out-group to see all groups as equally important and valid and individuals to be seen in terms of their own cultural context.
Cultural differences
According to Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory, cultural characteristics can be measured along several dimensions. The ability to perceive them and to cope with them is fundamental for intercultural competence. These characteristics include:
Individualism versus collectivism
Collectivism
Decisions are based on the benefits of the group rather than the individual;
Strong loyalty to the group as the main social unit;
The group is expected to take care of each individual;
Collectivist cultures include Pakistan, India, and Guatemala.
Individualism
Autonomy of the individual has the highest importance;
Promotes the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance;
Decisions prioritize the benefits of the individual rather than the group;
Individualistic cultures are Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States.
Masculinity versus femininity
Masculine Cultures
Value behaviors that indicate assertiveness and wealth;
Judge people based on the degree of ambition and achievement;
General behaviors are associated with male behavior;
Sex roles are clearly defined and sexual inequality is acceptable;
Masculine cultures include Austria, Italy, Japan, and Mexico.
Feminine Cultures
Value behaviors that promote the quality of life such as caring for others and nurturing;
Gender roles overlap and sexual equality is preferred as the norm;
Nurturing behaviors are acceptable for both women and men;
Feminine cultures are Chile, Portugal, Sweden, and Thailand.
Uncertainty avoidance
Reflects the extent to which members of a society attempt to cope with anxiety by minimizing uncertainty;
Uncertainty avoidance dimension expresses the degree to which a person in society feels comfortable with a sense of uncertainty and ambiguity.
High uncertainty avoidance cultures
Countries exhibiting high Uncertainty Avoidance Index or UAI maintain rigid codes of belief and behavior and are intolerant of unorthodox behavior and ideas;
Members of society expect consensus about national and societal goals;
Society ensures security by setting extensive rules and keeping more structure;
High uncertainty avoidance cultures are Greece, Guatemala, Portugal, and Uruguay.
Low uncertainty avoidance cultures
Low UAI societies maintain a more relaxed attitude in which practice counts more than principles;
Low uncertainty avoidance cultures accept and feel comfortable in unstructured situations or changeable environments and try to have as few rules as possible;
People in these cultures are more tolerant of change and accept risks;
Low uncertainty avoidance cultures are Denmark, Jamaica, Ireland, and Singapore.
Power distance
Refers to the degree in which cultures accept unequal distribution of power and challenge the decisions of power holders;
Depending on the culture, some people may be considered superior to others because of a large number of factors such as wealth, age, occupation, gender, personal achievements, and family history.
High power distance cultures
Believe that social and class hierarchy and inequalities are beneficial, that authority should not be challenged, and that people with higher social status have the right to use power;
Cultures with high power distance are Arab countries, Guatemala, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Low power distance cultures
Believe in reducing inequalities, challenging authority, minimizing hierarchical structures, and using power just when necessary;
Low power distance countries are Austria, Denmark, Israel, and New Zealand.
Short-term versus long-term orientation
Short-term or Monochronic Orientation
Cultures value tradition, personal stability, maintaining "face", and reciprocity during interpersonal interactions
People expect quick results after actions
Historical events and beliefs influence people's actions in the present
Monochronic cultures are Canada, Philippines, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the United States
Long-term or Polychronic Orientation
Cultures value persistence, thriftiness, and humility
People sacrifice immediate gratification for long-term commitments
Cultures believe that past results do not guarantee for the future and are aware of change
Polychronic cultures are China, Japan, Brazil, and India
Criticisms
Although its goal is to promote understanding between groups of individuals that, as a whole, think differently, it may fail to recognize specific differences between individuals of any given group. Such differences can be more significant than the differences between groups, especially in the case of heterogeneous populations and value systems.
Madison has criticized the tendency of 3C training for its tendency to simplify migration and cross-cultural processes into stages and phases.
See also
Allophilia
Anthropologist
Bennett scale
Cross-cultural communication
Cultural assimilation
Cultural behavior
Cultural diversity
Cultural identity
Cultural intelligence
Cultural pluralism
Cultural safety
Existential migration
Adab (Islamic etiquette)
Faux pas
Interaction
Intercultural communication
Intercultural communication principles
Intercultural relations
Interculturalism
Interpersonal communication
Montreal–Philippines cutlery controversy
Multiculturalism
Proxemics
Purnell Model for Cultural Competence
Social constructionism
Social identity
Transculturation
Worldwide etiquette
Xenocentrism
Footnotes
References
Groh, Arnold A. (2018) Research Methods in Indigenous Contexts. Springer, New York.
Hayunga, E.G., Pinn, V.W. (1999) NIH Policy on the Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research. 5-17-99
Macaulay, A.C., el. al. (1999) Responsible Research with Communities: Participatory Research in Primary Care. North America Primary Care Research Group Policy Statement.
Mercedes Martin & Billy E. Vaughn (2007). Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Management magazine, pp. 31–36. DTUI Publications Division: San Francisco, CA.
Moule, Jean (2012). Cultural Competence: A primer for educators. Wadsworth/Cengage, Belmont, California.
Nine-Curt, Carmen Judith. (1984) Non-verbal Communication in Puerto Rico. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sea, M.C., et al. (1994) Latino Cultural Values: Their Role in Adjustment to Disability. Psychological Perspectives on Disability. Select Press CA
Stavans, I. (1995) The Hispanic Condition: Reflections on Culture and Identity in America. HarperCollins
External links
National Center for Cultural Competence at Georgetown University
National Association of School Psychologists
Achieving Cultural Competence guidebook from Administration on Aging, Department of Health and Human Services, United States
University of Michigan Program For Multicultural Health
Cross Cultural Health Care Program
What is the Cost of Intercultural Silence?
Cultural anthropology
Cultural geography
Cultural studies
Etiquette
Human communication
Cultural politics
Cultural competence
Interculturalism
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Technological pedagogical content knowledge | The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework is an educational model that describes the intersections between technology, pedagogy, and content for the effective integration of technology into teaching. TPACK became popular in the early 2000s.
TPACK divides a teacher's contextual knowledge (XK) in teaching into three broad categories: content knowledge (CK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and technological knowledge (TK). At the intersection of two categories are more specific forms of knowledge: pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), technological content knowledge (TCK), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK). At the intersection of all three categories is technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). Contextual knowledge also includes information apart from the three categories, such as an awareness of school policies.
Researchers argue that effective technological integration involves an understanding of the relationships between all three forms of knowledge in a teaching context.
History
In the early 2000s, scholars noted a lack of theory and conceptual frameworks to inform and guide research and teacher preparation in technology integration. The classic definition of PCK proposed by Shulman included one dynamic and complex relationship between two different knowledge bodies: content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. Shulman defined PCK as the blend between content and pedagogy, highlighting the teacher's comprehension of how topics should be taught according to students' diverse interests and capabilities.
For five years, Mishra & Koehler conducted an experiment to understand educators’ development of rich technology uses as well as helping them develop their teaching with technology. As a result of this work, they arrived at the Technological, Pedagogical, Content Knowledge (TPCK) model in 2008, later renamed to TPACK. The questions of "what the teachers need to know in order to appropriately incorporate technology into their teaching... and how they might develop it" were key to the framework development. In 2019, the Mishra proposed an additional aspect of teacher knowledge, contextual knowledge (XK), which encompasses knowledge of not only the TPACK forms but also organisational and situational constraints, such as school policies and available technologies.
Educators found they needed new skills as new technologies entered the field. Consequently, technology knowledge became an essential feature of teacher knowledge. Scholars proposed different frames about TPACK to promote a particular view, including ways and diverse perspectives on understanding and working with technology in the classroom. TPACK-based research has led to the emergence of a significant literature body (TPACK Newsletter #44, 2021).
As Herring and colleagues described, the historical development of TPACK provided a conceptualization that both graphically and narratively explained what is studied, and presented the key concepts, factors, or variables and the presumed relationships found between them. Additionally, it scaffolds the application of findings to other contexts that theoreticians, researchers, and practitioners continue to examine.
Definition
TPACK domains and related subdomains address the complex nature of teaching effectively with appropriate technologies. While the different domains and subdomains can be explored as separate skill concepts, domains and subdomains were conceptualized to work in synergistic reciprocity meaning that the knowledge is not entirely separate indicating the intersectionality of each area. Accordingly, the TPACK model consists of three main domains, each containing one subdomain. The purpose of the subdomains is to unpack the broader domain concept by understanding intersections among the three primary knowledge anchors for the overall framework. The main domains are 1. Technological Content Knowledge (TCK); 2. Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), and 3. Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK). The three subdomains are 1. Technological Knowledge (TK); 2. Content Knowledge (CK); and 3. Pedagogical Knowledge (PK). In 2019, Mishra proposed a revised TPACK diagram to emphasize the context in which technology integration occurs by retitling the outer circle as Contextual Knowledge or XK.
Technological Knowledge (TK) addresses how teachers demonstrate professional knowledge of technology. TK considers what is required for teachers to integrate technology tools and resources into their course content and instructional practice. The technology component of TPaCK in Technology is most beneficial for learning when it brings a change in professional teaching practice and in designs for learning. For teachers, TK not only addresses knowledge about technology but also knowledge of the skills needed to use technology to effectively plan instruction, including with science teachers. TK involves understanding cross-platform applications and capabilities as well as how to configure those applications to realize instructional objectives and student learning outcomes. Content Knowledge (CK) is situated within the following definitional parameters of a teacher's knowledge about a particular subject matter and how it is taught and learned. As Shulman noted, CK would include knowledge of concepts, theories, ideas, organizational frameworks, knowledge of evidence and proof, as well as established practices and approaches toward developing such knowledge." For educators, effective content instruction that engages students in higher-order activities using authentic, real-world examples facilitated through technology is the cornerstone of teaching and learning in the 21st century. Thus, educators must not only be thoughtful in the instructional techniques they use to present content but also strategic in the technology selected to teach the subject matter as it may result in positive or negative results in long-term learning and knowledge retention. Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) addresses how teachers demonstrate professional knowledge of pedagogy. PK refers to the specific knowledge about teaching such as approaches or methods of how teachers teach a particular topic or how to scaffold a concept to the diverse interests and abilities of learners. For teachers and educators, an effective teaching method that engages students in higher-order activities using real-world examples facilitated through different learning styles is the cornerstone of teaching and learning in the current era. Accordingly, educators must be thoughtful in the instructional techniques to teach the subject matter as it may have a great impact on long-term learning and knowledge acquisition. Choosing the right technology to enable higher-order thinking within the content, long-term knowledge retention, and facilitate student learning outcomes are paramount within the CK construct. Finally, Context Knowledge (XK) is the umbrella domain that refers to how teachers contextualize implementation based on the overall teaching and learning context.
Strategies for building TPACK
A wide variety of strategies have been used to develop educators’ TPACK abilities, such as (a) collaborative, design-based lesson planning; (b) the use of technology mapping, game-based learning, and deep-play (c) scaffolding the design process; and (d) accounting for how teacher's beliefs influence their TPACK. Researchers have found collaborative strategies to be helpful to develop teachers’ TPACK, such as (a) faculty-wide mentoring programs, (b) professional collaboration and teacher talk, (c) collaborative reflection practices, and (d) professional learning communities. Teacher education leaders have used the Theory of Action to identify the critical areas as they plan for the effective integration of TPACK into their teacher education and faculty support programs.
Measures
Since its introduction, researchers and professional developers have created a variety of processes and instruments to assess an educator's TPACK, such as self-report measures, open-ended questionnaires, performance assessments, interviews, observations, and more. Widely-used measures such as the Survey of Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge of Teaching and Technology, the TPACK-21 questionnaire, and the TPACK leadership diagnostic tool, have been tested for reliability and validity and applied in a variety of educational settings.
Researchers have made considerable efforts to explore the details of educators’ TPACK through both quantitative and qualitative measures. Qualitative approaches for evaluating TPACK have included classroom observations, the analysis of lesson plans, classroom videos, and interviews. Furthermore, as researchers have sought to better address how the components of XK (including online learning environments and global contexts) influence the development of TPACK, measures of TPACK have begun to include educators’ future intentions to use technology. Additionally, researchers have also considered educators’ self-efficacy alongside TPACK.
Criticisms
The TPACK framework has received a number of criticisms, the majority of which are related to the lack of a precise definition. Similar to Shulman's Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), which serves as a foundation for TPACK, scholars have debated whether TPACK is integrative or transformative leading to varied and nuanced perspectives. Furthermore, scholars have debated precise definitions for the seven knowledge domains associated with the TPACK framework, and what differentiates one domain from another varies widely across studies. These challenges have led to what has been called "fuzzy boundaries" distinguishing TPACK domains that have resulted in even more variations or adaptations of TPACK including TPACK-W for web technologies, G-TPACK for geospatial, TPACK-CT for computational thinking, TPACK-P for TPACK practical, etc. These variations have been considered by some researchers to be misappropriations or conceptual dilution.
A second major area of criticism of TPACK is the lack of reliable assessment instruments, as well as difficulties with existing instruments. Some researchers have cited problems related to participant interpretation of survey items, while others have reported problems with convergence when multiple measures are used.
A third major area of criticism is related to the implications of TPACK for practice. Some scholars argue that the complexity of the framework makes it difficult to operationalize among both researchers and practitioners. Further, as a framework for teacher knowledge, it is not accompanied by specific recommendations or strategies for how to help develop this body of knowledge for teachers. Finally, scholars have noted that is unclear whether the TPACK framework promotes the type of reform-oriented teaching encouraged in new standards and curricula.
References
Pedagogy
Educational technology | 0.765372 | 0.987906 | 0.756116 |
Systematics | Systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees (synonyms: phylogenetic trees, phylogenies). Phylogenies have two components: branching order (showing group relationships, graphically represented in cladograms) and branch length (showing amount of evolution). Phylogenetic trees of species and higher taxa are used to study the evolution of traits (e.g., anatomical or molecular characteristics) and the distribution of organisms (biogeography). Systematics, in other words, is used to understand the evolutionary history of life on Earth.
The word systematics is derived from the Latin word of Ancient Greek origin systema, which means systematic arrangement of organisms. Carl Linnaeus used 'Systema Naturae' as the title of his book.
Branches and applications
In the study of biological systematics, researchers use the different branches to further understand the relationships between differing organisms. These branches are used to determine the applications and uses for modern day systematics.
Biological systematics classifies species by using three specific branches. Numerical systematics, or biometry, uses biological statistics to identify and classify animals. Biochemical systematics classifies and identifies animals based on the analysis of the material that makes up the living part of a cell—such as the nucleus, organelles, and cytoplasm. Experimental systematics identifies and classifies animals based on the evolutionary units that comprise a species, as well as their importance in evolution itself. Factors such as mutations, genetic divergence, and hybridization all are considered evolutionary units.
With the specific branches, researchers are able to determine the applications and uses for modern-day systematics. These applications include:
Studying the diversity of organisms and the differentiation between extinct and living creatures. Biologists study the well-understood relationships by making many different diagrams and "trees" (cladograms, phylogenetic trees, phylogenies, etc.).
Including the scientific names of organisms, species descriptions and overviews, taxonomic orders, and classifications of evolutionary and organism histories.
Explaining the biodiversity of the planet and its organisms. The systematic study is that of conservation.
Manipulating and controlling the natural world. This includes the practice of 'biological control', the intentional introduction of natural predators and disease.
Definition and relation with taxonomy
John Lindley provided an early definition of systematics in 1830, although he wrote of "systematic botany" rather than using the term "systematics".
In 1970 Michener et al. defined "systematic biology" and "taxonomy" (terms that are often confused and used interchangeably) in relationship to one another as follows:
Systematic biology (hereafter called simply systematics) is the field that (a) provides scientific names for organisms, (b) describes them, (c) preserves collections of them, (d) provides classifications for the organisms, keys for their identification, and data on their distributions, (e) investigates their evolutionary histories, and (f) considers their environmental adaptations. This is a field with a long history that in recent years has experienced a notable renaissance, principally with respect to theoretical content. Part of the theoretical material has to do with evolutionary areas (topics e and f above), the rest relates especially to the problem of classification. Taxonomy is that part of Systematics concerned with topics (a) to (d) above.
The term "taxonomy" was coined by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle while the term "systematic" was coined by Carl Linnaeus the father of taxonomy.
Taxonomy, systematic biology, systematics, biosystematics, scientific classification, biological classification, phylogenetics: At various times in history, all these words have had overlapping, related meanings. However, in modern usage, they can all be considered synonyms of each other.
For example, Webster's 9th New Collegiate Dictionary of 1987 treats "classification", "taxonomy", and "systematics" as synonyms. According to this work, the terms originated in 1790, c. 1828, and in 1888 respectively. Some claim systematics alone deals specifically with relationships through time, and that it can be synonymous with phylogenetics, broadly dealing with the inferred hierarchy of organisms. This means it would be a subset of taxonomy as it is sometimes regarded, but the inverse is claimed by others.
Europeans tend to use the terms "systematics" and "biosystematics" for the study of biodiversity as a whole, whereas North Americans tend to use "taxonomy" more frequently. However, taxonomy, and in particular alpha taxonomy, is more specifically the identification, description, and naming (i.e. nomenclature) of organisms,
while "classification" focuses on placing organisms within hierarchical groups that show their relationships to other organisms. All of these biological disciplines can deal with both extinct and extant organisms.
Systematics uses taxonomy as a primary tool in understanding, as nothing about an organism's relationships with other living things can be understood without it first being properly studied and described in sufficient detail to identify and classify it correctly. Scientific classifications are aids in recording and reporting information to other scientists and to laymen. The systematist, a scientist who specializes in systematics, must, therefore, be able to use existing classification systems, or at least know them well enough to skilfully justify not using them.
Phenetics was an attempt to determine the relationships of organisms through a measure of overall similarity, making no distinction between plesiomorphies (shared ancestral traits) and apomorphies (derived traits). From the late-20th century onwards, it was superseded by cladistics, which rejects plesiomorphies in attempting to resolve the phylogeny of Earth's various organisms through time. systematists generally make extensive use of molecular biology and of computer programs to study organisms.
Taxonomic characters
Taxonomic characters are the taxonomic attributes that can be used to provide the evidence from which relationships (the phylogeny) between taxa are inferred. Kinds of taxonomic characters include:
Morphological characters
General external morphology
Special structures (e.g. genitalia)
Internal morphology (anatomy)
Embryology
Karyology and other cytological factors
Physiological characters
Metabolic factors
Body secretions
Genic sterility factors
Molecular characters
Immunological distance
Electrophoretic differences
Amino acid sequences of proteins
DNA hybridization
DNA and RNA sequences
Restriction endonuclease analyses
Other molecular differences
Behavioral characters
Courtship and other ethological isolating mechanisms
Other behavior patterns
Ecological characters
Habit and habitats
Food
Seasonal variations
Parasites and hosts
Geographic characters
General biogeographic distribution patterns
Sympatric-allopatric relationship of populations
See also
Cladistics – a methodology in systematics
Evolutionary systematics – a school of systematics
Global biodiversity
Phenetics – a methodology in systematics that does not infer phylogeny
Phylogeny – the historical relationships between lineages of organism
16S ribosomal RNA – an intensively studied nucleic acid that has been useful in phylogenetics
Phylogenetic comparative methods – use of evolutionary trees in other studies, such as biodiversity, comparative biology. adaptation, or evolutionary mechanisms
References
Notes
Further reading
Brower, Andrew V. Z. and Randall T. Schuh. 2021. Biological Systematics: Principles and Applications, 3rd edn.
Simpson, Michael G. 2005. Plant Systematics.
Wiley, Edward O. and Bruce S. Lieberman. 2011. "Phylogenetics: Theory and Practice of Phylogenetic Systematics, 2nd edn."
External links
Society of Australian Systematic Biologists
Society of Systematic Biologists
The Willi Hennig Society
Evolutionary biology
Biological classification | 0.761751 | 0.992589 | 0.756105 |
The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture | The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture is a trilogy of books by sociologist Manuel Castells: The Rise of the Network Society (1996), The Power of Identity (1997), and End of Millennium (1998). The second edition was heavily revised; volume one is 40 percent different from the first edition.
Summary
The Information Age is an account of the role of information in contemporary society. Manuel Castells describes the shift from an industrial society to an informational society, which started in the 1970s. This Network Society is structured around networks instead of individual actors, and works through a constant flow of information through technology. Castells emphasises the interrelationship of social, economic and political features of society, and argues that the 'network' is the defining feature that marks our current epoch.
The Rise of the Network Society
In this volume Castells analyses the structural changes to the global economy that took place from the 1970s to 1990s. He describes the 'new economy', which he claims is based on 'a new mode of development, informationalism, of which networking is a critical attribute'. In this new 'Informational Economy' a firm's competitiveness is dependent on its knowledge of technology, information, and access to networks. The new economy is defined by a 'transformation of work and employment'. This concept implies that there is higher unemployment in countries where technology is scarce. The uneven development of new technology leads to 'social polarization and social exclusion'. This concept describes an increase in equality across nations due to globalization and an uneven distribution of technology, and thus networking opportunities and lower competitiveness.
This transition to an informational mode of development is enabled by the growth of information technology and changes in organizational structure based on networks. Castells examines statistical evidence of changes in work structure and labour patterns, and concludes that while the networked 'symbolic analyst' (or knowledge worker) may seek work globally, we cannot say that there is a true global labour force since the majority of workers are still geographically confined and immobile. Informationalism has not led to mass joblessness, but it has led to a structural change in the work force, that of instability: in highly developed countries, a majority of workers no longer have a traditional work pattern, but part-time and temporary employment has become the norm.
Castells then discusses new media and communication technologies based around networks, arguing that they are contributing to a fundamental change in culture. The new development is a 'culture of real virtuality', which describes a culture that is organized around electronic media. He says that 'the space of flows and timeless time are the material foundations of a new culture', that of the network society. The concept of 'timeless time' refers to the collapsing of time in global informational networks, for example automated financial transactions.
See also
Network society
Space of flows
Information Age
References
Further reading
Castells, Manuel (1996, second edition, 2009). The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. I. Malden, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell. .
Castells, Manuel (1997, second edition, 2009). The Power of Identity, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. II. Malden, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell. .
Castells, Manuel (1998, second edition, 2010). End of Millennium, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. III. Malden, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell. .
External links
A scholarly review of the Information Age trilogy (Wayback Machine copy)
1990s books
Information Age
Sociology books
Works about the information economy
Books in philosophy of technology | 0.780733 | 0.968454 | 0.756104 |
Allonormativity | Allonormativity is the concept that all humans experience sexual attraction and romantic attraction. It is the force which upholds compulsory sexuality, the social systems and structures which privilege or incentivize sexual relationships over single individuals.
The term could be considered an expansion of heteronormativity, the idea that heterosexuality is the default or normative sexuality. The term is often used when discussing the pathologization, erasure, and dehumanization of asexual and aromantic individuals in society, media, and within academic discourses.
Etymology
Allonormativity was derived from allosexual, which in term was derived from the Greek prefix allo-, meaning different or other, and -sexual, i.e., attraction directed towards a target outside the self. The second element, -normativity, refers to the societal worldview which deems allosexuality as normal or desired.
Effects
Allonormativity, by its definition, denies the existence of asexual identity in humans. Thus, growing up in an allonormative society may lead to asexual individuals feeling broken or isolated prior to or even after learning about asexuality. Because allonormativity presents asexuality as deviant, it also contributes to the pathologization of and discrimination against asexual people.
See also
Amatonormativity
Compulsory heterosexuality
Heteronormativity
References
Further reading
External links
Aromanticism
Asexuality
Sexual attraction
Sexuality and society
Anti-LGBTQ sentiment
LGBTQ erasure | 0.768033 | 0.984463 | 0.7561 |
Human communication | Human communication, or anthroposemiotics, is a field of study dedicated to understanding how humans communicate. Humans' ability to communicate with one another would not be possible without an understanding of what we are referencing or thinking about. Because humans are unable to fully understand one another's perspective, there needs to be a creation of commonality through a shared mindset or viewpoint. The field of communication is very diverse, as there are multiple layers of what communication is and how we use its different features as human beings.
Humans have communicatory abilities other animals do not. For example, humans are able to communicate about time and place as though they are solid objects. Humans communicate to request help, inform others, and share attitudes for bonding. Communication is a joint activity largely dependent on the ability to maintain common attention. We share relevant background knowledge and joint experience in order to communicate content and coherence in exchanges.
The evolution of human communication took place over a long period of time. Humans evolved from simple hand gestures to the use of spoken language. Most face-to-face communication requires visually reading and following along with the other person, offering gestures in reply, and maintaining eye contact throughout the interaction.
Category
The current study of human communication can be branched off into two major categories; rhetorical and relational. The focus of rhetorical communication is primarily on the study of influence; the art of rhetorical communication is based on the idea of persuasion. The relational approach examines communication from a transactional perspective; two or more people interact to reach an agreed perspective.
In its early stages, rhetoric was developed to help ordinary people prove their claims in court; this shows how persuasion is key in this form of communication. Aristotle stated that effective rhetoric is based on argumentation. As explained in the text, rhetoric involves a dominant party and a submissive party or a party that succumbs to that of the most dominant party. While the rhetorical approach stems from Western societies, the relational approach stems from Eastern societies. Eastern societies hold higher standards for cooperation, which makes sense as to why they would sway more toward a relational approach for that matter. "Maintaining valued relationships is generally seen as more important than exerting influence and control over others". "The study of human communication today is more diversified than ever before in its history".
Classification of human communication can be found in the workplace, especially for group work. Co-workers need to argue with each other to gain the best solutions for their projects, while they also need to nurture their relationships to maintain their collaboration. For example, in their group work, they may use the communication tactic of "saving face".
Spoken language involves speech, mostly human quality to acquire. For example, chimpanzees are humans' closest relatives, but they are unable to produce speech. Chimpanzees are the closest living species to humans. Chimpanzees are closer to humans, in genetic and evolutionary terms, than they are to gorillas or other apes. The fact that a chimpanzee will not acquire speech, even when raised in a human home with all the environmental input of a normal human child, is one of the central puzzles we face when contemplating the biology of our species. In repeated experiments, starting in the 1910s, chimpanzees raised in close contact with humans have universally failed to speak, or even to try to speak, despite their rapid progress in many other intellectual and motor domains. Each normal human is born with a capacity to rapidly and unerringly acquire their mother tongue, with little explicit teaching or coaching. In contrast, no nonhuman primate has spontaneously produced even a word of the local language.
Definition
Human communication can be defined as any Shared Symbolic Interaction.
Shared, because each communication process also requires a system of signification (the Code) as its necessary condition, and if the encoding is not known to all those who are involved in the communication process, there is no understanding and therefore fails the same notification.
Symbolic, because there is a need for a signifier or sign, which allows the transmission of the message.
Interaction, since it involves two or more people, resulting in a further increase of knowledge on the part of all those who interact.
Types
Human communication can be subdivided into a variety of types:
Intrapersonal communication (communication with oneself): This very basic form of information, is the standard and foundation, of all things communication. This communication with ourselves showcases the process in which we think on our previous and ongoing actions, as well as what we choose to understand from other types of communications and events. Our intrapersonal communication, may be shown and expressed to others by our reactions to certain outcomes, through simple acts of gestures and expressions.
Interpersonal communication (communication between two or more people) - Communication relies heavily on understanding the processes and situations that you are in, in order to communicate effectively. It is more than simple behaviors and strategies, on how and what it means to communicate with another person. Interpersonal communication reflects the personality and characteristics, of a person, seen through the type of dialect, form, and content, a person chooses to communicate with. As simple as this is, interpersonal communication can only be correctly done if both persons involved in the communication, understand what it is to be human beings, and share similar qualities of what it means to be humans. It involves acts of trust and openness, as well as a sense of respect and care towards what the other person is talking about.
Nonverbal communication: The messages we send to each other, in ways that cover the act of word-by-mouth. These actions may be done through the use of our facial features and expressions, arms and hands, the tone of our voice, or even our very appearance can display a certain type of message.
Speech: Allowing words to make for an understanding as to what people are feeling and expressing. It allows a person to get a direct thought out to another by using their voice to create words that then turn into a sentence, which in turn then turns into a conversation to get a message across. "What is spoken or expressed, as in conversation; uttered or written words: seditious speech. A talk or public address, or a written copy of this: The senator gave a speech. The language or dialect of a nation or region: American speech. One's manner or style of speaking: the mayor's mumbling speech. The study of oral communication, speech sounds, and vocal physiology".
Conversation: Allows however many people to say words back and forth to each other that will equal into a meaningful rhythm called conversation. It defines ideas between people, teams, or groups. To have a conversation requires at least two people, making it possible to share the values and interests of each person. Conversation makes it possible to get messages across to other people, whether that be an important message or just a simple message. "Strong conversation skills will virtually guarantee that you will be better understood by most people"
Visual communication: The type of communication where it involves using your eyes that allow you to read signs, charts, graphs, and pictures that have words or phrases and or pictures showing and describing what needs to be portrayed to get information across. Using visual communication allows for people to live daily lives without constantly needing to speak. A simple example is driving in a car and seeing a red sign that says "stop" on it; as a driver, you are using visual communication to read the sign understand what is being said and stop your car to not get into an accident. "If carried out properly, visual communication has various benefits. In the information era and fast-paced society in which time is limited, visual communication help to communicate ideas faster and better. Generally speaking, it offers these benefits: instant conveyance, ease of understanding, cross-cultural communication and generation of enjoyment".
Writing: What I am forming together right now is called writing where it revolves around putting words together to create a sentence that flows into a sentence of meaning. Words are letters that are put together to transform a word that allows the person to understand and follow along with what is being portrayed. Writing requires us to use our hands and paper to form words and letters to create the flow of a message or conversation. Writing can also be done in the form of typing which is what you are seeing here, forming words together on a computer. "Writing" is the process of using symbols (letters of the alphabet, punctuation, and spaces) to communicate thoughts and ideas in a readable form".
Mail: This is in the form of postage which is in a letter or package. When someone uses the post office service requiring them to send a letter that they wrote with pencil and paper or they are using the postage service to send an object to someone out of state. Makes for an easier process to send a loved one messages or objects that do not live next to you or within a 20 min drive distance. "Material (such as letters and packages) sent or carried in a postal system". For an example a loved one is in the military and is out of state, to let them know what is going on in your life and to also ask how they are doing you send them a letter via the postal service to get that message to them at their location. Workers at the postal service get the letters and packages across states and countries.
Mass media: "The means of communication reaching a large number of people such as the population of a nation through certain channels like film, radio, books, music, or television in that the consumer participation stays passive with comparison to interactive network platforms". The television allows for getting messages to a lot of people in different locations in a matter of minutes making it for the fastest communication skill.
Telecommunication: A style of communication that allows humans to understand conversation, speech, and or visual communication through technology. Whether you are listening to the radio, using your eyes to watch television, or reading words in an email that is Telecommunication. This type of communication allows for a faster and more efficient process for a message to get across to another one from anywhere you are. Location is not a problem for this type of communication. "The transmission media in telecommunication have evolved through numerous stages of technology, from beacons and other visual signals (such as smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs), to electrical cable and electromagnetic radiation, including light. Such transmission paths are often divided into communication channels, which afford the advantages of multiplexing multiple concurrent communication sessions. Telecommunication is often used in its plural form".
Organizational communication (communication within organizations): Defined by structure and planning, making words, phrases, and images flow into direction and meaning. "The construct of organizational communication structure is defined by its 5 main dimensions: relationships, entities, contexts, configuration, and temporal stability". Making it easier to work into groups of different culture and thoughts.
Mass communication: This type of communication involves the process of communicating with known and unknown audiences, through the use of technology or other mediums. There is hardly ever an opportunity for the audience to respond directly to those who sent the message, there is a divide/separation between the sender and receiver. There are typically four players in the process of mass communication, these players are those who send the message, the message itself, the medium in which the message is sent, and those who receive the message. These four components come together to be the communication we see and are a part of the most, as the media helps in distributing these messages to the world every day.
Group dynamics (communication within groups): Allows ideas to be created within a group of people, allowing many minds to think together to form and create meaning. "The interactions that influence the attitudes and behavior of people when they are grouped with others through either choice or accidental circumstances".
Cross-cultural communication (communication across cultures): This allows different people from different locations, gender, and culture, in a group to feed off of each other's ideas to form something much bigger and better. "Culture is a way of thinking and living whereby one picks up a set of attitudes, values, norms, and beliefs that are taught and reinforced by other members in the group".
Face-to-Face Communication
Face-to-face interaction is social communication carried out with other present individuals without any mediating technology. It is defined as the mutual influence of individuals’ direct physical presence with their body language and verbal language. It is one of the basic elements of a social system, forming a significant part of socialization and experience throughout an individual's lifetime. It is also central to the development of groups and organizations composed of those individuals. Face-to-face interaction not only allows people to communicate more directly, but has been shown to improve mental health and can reduce various mental illnesses, most commonly, depression and anxiety.
Studies on Face-to-Face Communication
Most research and studies on face-to-face interaction is done via direct observation; the goal is to explain the regularities in the actions observed in these interactions. The study of face-to-face interaction examines its organization, rules, and strategy. It has been of interest to scholars since at least the early 20th century. One of the earliest social science scholars to analyze this type of interaction was sociologist Georg Simmel. He defined a society as a number of individuals intertwined by various interactions. In his 1908 book, he observed that sensory organs play an important role in interaction, discussing examples of human behavior such as eye contact. His insights were soon developed by others, including Charles Cooley and George Herbert Mead. Their theories became known as symbolic interactionism; and have since opened the door to a variety and wide range of other theories. Symbolic interactionists are more concerned with subjective meaning rather than objective structure. They focus on how individuals interpret subjective meaning, which leads them to understand how that individual views the world as well as how the repetition of meaningful interactions among individuals is the groundwork to define the formation of society. By the mid-20th century, there was already a sizable scholarly literature on various aspects of face-to-face interaction. Works on this topic have been published by scholars such as Erving Goffman and Eliot Chapple.
Mediated Communication
Historically, mediated communication was much rarer than face-to-face. Even though humans have possessed the technology to communicate in space and time (e.g. writing) for millennia, the majority of the world's population lacked the necessary skills, such as literacy, to use them. This began to change with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg that led to the spread of printed texts and rising literacy in Europe from the 15th century. Since then, face-to-face interaction has begun to steadily lose ground to mediated communication.
Compared with Mediated Communication
Face-to-face communication has been however described as less preferable to mediated communication in some situations, particularly where time and geographical distance are an issue. For example, in maintaining a long-distance friendship, face-to-face communication was only the fourth most common way of maintaining ties, after telephone, email, and instant messaging.
Despite the advent of many new information and communication technologies, face-to-face interaction is still widespread and popular and has a better performance in many different areas. Nardi and Whittaker (2002) pointed that face-to-face communication is still the golden standard among the mediated technologies based on many theorists, particularly in the context of the media richness theory where face-to-face communication is described as the most efficient and informational one. This is explained because face-to-face communication engages more human senses than mediated communication. Face-to-face interaction is also a useful way for people when they want to win over others based on verbal communication, or when they try to settle disagreements. Besides, it does help a lot for teachers as one effective teaching method. It is also easier to keep a stronger and more active political connection with others by face-to-face interaction.
In the end, there are both pros and cons to each form of communication. Several studies compared the two groups in order to determine the advantages and disadvantages of each. One group was communicating only through face-to-face communication, while the other was communicating only through computer-mediated communication. These studies found that computer-mediated groups perform better than face-to-face groups on idea generation tasks, while face-to-face groups excel in social emotional exchange. This is because face-to-face groups have more tension release and agreement statements, while computer-mediated groups have a tendency of giving more suggestions, opinions, and formal expressions. There is a greater equality of participation in computer-mediated groups, but there's also a higher rate of uninhibited behaviour because computer-mediated groups induce a greater loss of self-awareness. There is generally a reduced sense of social pressure in computer-mediated groups, but there is a stronger perception and sense of understanding in face-to-face groups.
Face-to-Face Interactions Versus Social Media
Talking to someone face to face gives a person non-verbal cues, such as smiling, physical movement, and body positions that help people communicate. However, since social media lacks face-to-face communication, some individuals have adapted to blind communication when speaking online, seen through texting, commenting, and sending/receiving messages.
By nature, humans are social. Social interaction is essential to survival. With recent advances in technology, such as the Internet, instant messaging, and smartphones, forms many channels and ways to interact with others. However, the human brain has evolved to adapt and keep up with this flood of mass communication. While face-to-face communication is predicted to improve quality of life, Internet and social media communication did not. The Internet opens a new realm of possibilities in connecting with people around the globe with inherent factors in online communication that limit its ability to promote the same level of social satisfaction as traditional face-to-face communication. There are significant differences between online and face-to-face communication, leading to online communication being less emotionally satisfying and fulfilling than face-to-face communication. Social interaction on the internet and through social media platforms makes the interaction considerably difficult to distinguish nonverbal cues. Transitive memory development is also brought by face-to-face communication, which is more effective than online communication.
While technology has been able to bring communities and people closer together, humans have a responsibility to cultivate those connections and nurture them through old-fashioned face-to-face communication. As a human species, continuing to connect with others without hiding behind electronic screens is crucial.
Cross Multicultures
Although there are increasingly virtual communications in large transnational companies with the development of Internet, face-to-face interaction is still a crucial tool in communication between employees and staff workers. Face-to-face interaction is beneficial to understand underlying truths that are presented through emotion and body language, especially when there are language and cultural differences present amongst individuals.
Cooperation in a multicultural team requires knowledge sharing. Ambiguous knowledge which arises frequently in a multicultural team is inevitable because of the different language habits. Face-to-face communication is better than other virtual communications for the ambiguous information. The reason is that face-to-face communication can provide non-verbal messages including gestures, eye contact, touch, and body movement. However, the virtual communications, such as email, only have verbal information which will make team members more misunderstanding of the knowledge due to their different comprehension of the same words. On the other hand, the understanding of professional standards shows no difference between face-to-face interaction and virtual communications.
Van der Zwaard and Bannink (2014) examined the effect of video call compared with face-to-face communication on the negotiation of meaning between native speakers and non-native speakers of English. Face-to-face interaction provides individuals who use English as the second language both intentional and unintentional actions which could enhance the comprehension of the chat in English. Individuals are more honest in understanding when they are in face-to-face interaction than in video call due to the potential loss of face issues for the non-native language speakers during the video call. As a result, face-to-face interaction has a more positive influence on the negotiation of meaning than virtual communications such as the video call.
Important figures
See also
General semantics
History of communication
Mass communication
Mass media
Outline of communication
Pragmatics
Intercultural communication
Cross-cultural communication
Proactive communications
References
Further reading
Richard Budd & Brent Ruben, Human Communication Handbook.
Budd & Ruben, Approaches to Human Communication.
How Human Communication Fails (Tampere University of Technology)
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Cultural diplomacy | Cultural diplomacy is a type of soft power that includes the "exchange of ideas, information, art, language and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples in order to foster mutual understanding". The purpose of cultural diplomacy is for the people of a foreign nation to develop an understanding of the nation's ideals and institutions in an effort to build broad support for economic and political objectives. In essence "cultural diplomacy reveals the soul of a nation", which in turn creates influence. Public diplomacy has played an important role in advancing national security objectives.
Definition
In a 2006 article in the Brown Journal of World Affairs, Cynthia P. Schneider wrote: "Public diplomacy consists of all a nation does to explain itself to the world, and cultural diplomacy – the use of creative expression and exchanges of ideas, information, and people to increase mutual understanding – supplies much of its content."
Culture is a set of values and practices that creates meaning for society. This includes both high culture (literature, art, and education, which appeals to elites) and popular culture (appeals to the masses). This is what governments seek to show foreign audiences when engaging in cultural diplomacy. It is a type of soft power, which is the "ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from a country's culture, political ideals and policies." This indicates that the value of culture is its ability to attract foreigners to a nation. Cultural diplomacy is also a component of public diplomacy. Public diplomacy is enhanced by a larger society and culture, but simultaneously public diplomacy helps to "amplify and advertise that society and culture to the world at large". It could be argued that the information component of public diplomacy can only be fully effective where there is already a relationship that gives credibility to the information being relayed. This comes from knowledge of the other's culture. Cultural diplomacy has been called the "linchpin of public diplomacy" because cultural activities have the potential to demonstrate the best of a nation.
Richard T. Arndt, a former State Department cultural diplomacy practitioner, said: "Cultural relations grow naturally and organically, without government intervention – the transactions of trade and tourism, student flows, communications, book circulation, migration, media access, inter-marriage – millions of daily cross-cultural encounters. If that is correct, cultural diplomacy can only be said to take place when formal diplomats, serving national governments, try to shape and channel this natural flow to advance national interests." It is important to note that, while cultural diplomacy is, as indicated above, a government activity, the private sector has a very real role to play because the government does not create culture, therefore, it can only attempt to make a culture known and define the impact this organic growth will have on national policies. Cultural diplomacy attempts to manage the international environment by utilizing these sources and achievements and making them known abroad. An important aspect of this is listening- cultural diplomacy is meant to be a two-way exchange. This exchange is then intended to foster a mutual understanding and thereby win influence within the target nation. Cultural diplomacy derives its credibility not from being close to government institutions, but from its proximity to cultural authorities.
Objectives
Ultimately, the goal of cultural diplomacy is to influence a foreign audience and use that influence, which is built up over the long term, as a good will reserve to win support for policies. It seeks to harness the elements of culture to induce foreigners to:
have a positive view of the country's people, culture and policies,
induce greater cooperation between the two nations,
aid in changing the policies or political environment of the target nation,
prevent, manage and mitigate conflict with the target nation.
In turn, cultural diplomacy can help a nation better understand the foreign nation it is engaged with and it fosters mutual understanding. Cultural diplomacy is a way of conducting international relations without expecting anything in return in the way that traditional diplomacy typically expects. Cultural exchange programs work as a medium to relay a favourable impression of the foreign country in order to gain outsiders' understanding and approval in their cultural practices and naturalize their social norms among other cultures.
Generally, cultural diplomacy is more focused on the longer term and less on specific policy matters. The intent is to build up influence over the long term for when it is needed by engaging people directly. This influence has implications ranging from national security to increasing tourism and commercial opportunities. It allows the government to create a "foundation of trust" and a mutual understanding that is neutral and built on people-to-people contact. Another unique and important element of cultural diplomacy is its ability to reach youth, non-elites and other audiences outside of the traditional embassy circuit. In short, cultural diplomacy plants the seeds of ideals, ideas, political arguments, spiritual perceptions and a general view point of the world that may or may not flourish in a foreign nation. Therefore, ideologies spread by cultural diplomacy about American values enables those that seek a better life to look towards the Western world where happiness and freedom are portrayed as desirable and achievable goals.
Connections to national security
Cultural diplomacy is a demonstration of national power because it demonstrates to foreign audiences every aspect of culture, including wealth, scientific and technological advances, competitiveness in everything from sports and industry to military power, and a nation's overall confidence. The perception of power has important implications for a nation's ability to ensure its security. Furthermore, because cultural diplomacy includes political and ideological arguments, and uses the language of persuasion and advocacy, it can be used as an instrument of political warfare and be useful in achieving traditional goals of war. A Chinese activist was quoted as saying "We've seen a lot of Hollywood movies – they feature weddings, funerals and going to court. So now we think it's only natural to go to court a few times in your life."
In terms of policy that supports national security goals, the information revolution has created an increasingly connected world in which public perceptions of values and motivations can create an enabling or disabling environment in the quest for international support of policies. The struggle to affect important international developments is increasingly about winning the information struggle to define the interpretation of states' actions. If an action is not interpreted abroad as the nation meant to it be, then the action itself can become meaningless.
Participants in cultural diplomacy often have insights into foreign attitudes that official embassy employees do not. This can be used to better understand a foreign nation's intentions and capabilities. It can also be used to counter hostile propaganda and the collection of open-source intelligence.
Tools and examples
Cultural diplomacy relies on a variety of mediums, including:
Arts including films, dance, music, painting, sculpture, among others.
Exhibitions which offer the potential to showcase numerous objects of culture
Educational programs such as universities and language programs abroad
Exchanges – scientific, artistic, educational etc.
Literature – the establishment of libraries abroad and translation of popular and national works
Broadcasting of news and cultural programs
Gifts to a nation, which demonstrates thoughtfulness and respect
Religious diplomacy, including inter-religious dialogue
Promotion and explanation of ideas and social policies
Goodwill tours
All of these tools seek to bring understanding of a nation's culture to foreign audiences. They work best when they are proven to be relevant to the target audience. The tools can be utilized by working through NGOs, diasporas and political parties abroad, which may help with the challenge of relevance and understanding.
Arts
In the 1950s the Soviet Union had a reputation that was associated with peace, international class solidarity and progress due to its sponsorship of local revolutionary movements for liberation. The United States was known for its involvement in the Korean War and for preserving the status quo. In an effort to change this perception, the United States Information Agency (USIA) sponsored a photographic exhibition titled The Family of Man. The display originally showed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, but then USIA helped the display to be seen in 91 locations in 39 countries. The 503 photographs by 237 professional and amateur photographers were curated and put together by Edward Steichen. The images showed glimpses of everyday human life in its various stages; courtship, birth, parenting, work, self-expression, etc., including images from the Great Depression. The images were multi-cultured and only a few were overtly political serving to show the eclecticism and diversity of American culture, which is America's soft power foundation. The display was extremely popular and attracted large numbers of crowds, in short America "showed the world, the world and got credit for it".
A similar effort was carried out by the United States Department of State in February 2002 entitled Images from Ground Zero. The display included 27 images, detailing the September 11 attacks by Joel Meyerowitz that circulated, with the backing of embassies and consulates, to 60 nations. The display was intended to shape and maintain the public memory of the attack and its aftermath. The display sought to show the human side of the tragedy, and not just the destruction of buildings. The display was also intended to show a story of recovery and resolution through documenting not only the grief and pain, but also the recovery efforts. In many countries where the display was run, it was personalized for the population. For example, relatives of those who died in the Towers were often invited to the event openings.
Dance
The positioning of the performing arts throughout history shows that dance was a tool for showing power, promoting national pride, and maintaining international relations. During the Cold War, the plot and choreography choices used in dance demonstrated Socialist vs. Capitalist values. Through this, countries were able to share their ideas. In 1955, the United States state department sent the Martha Graham Dance Company to many countries affected by the Cold War. Some of these countries included Burma, India, Pakistan, Japan, the Philippines, and Thailand which were all a concern to the United States because they could be easily lost to Communism as predicted in Eisenhower's Domino Theory. The choreography mixed Asian aesthetics with American values, creating an innovative performance that showed what the United States and a capitalist society was capable of producing. Her performances were received with praise and repositioned the image of the United States in the eyes of the international community.
Cultural diplomacy through the arts was also used by the Soviet Union due to the high value they placed on culture and the belief it could unite people. The "New Soviet Man" was expected to have an understanding of the arts and be able to contribute to society. In 1959, the Soviet Union decided to send one of its highly regarded ballet companies, the Bolshoi, to tour the United States. Their goal was to demonstrate the artistic and physical abilities of their citizens. The repertoire included Romeo and Juliet, Sawn Lake, Giselle, and The Stone Flower. There were also two mixed bills that included both pre and post-revolutionary content. Swan Lake and its composer, P. I. Tchaikovsky, were considered Russian classics that fit into Marxist ideology and were therefore accepted in the Communist repertoire. Other classic ballets were redesigned to demonstrate this ideology. While Americans were extremely excited to see the ballets and praised the ballerinas, the repertoire was not received as well. This was a tool critics used to express the joy of seeing the ballet company while critiquing Soviet politics. The complaint that Communism was an old-fashioned ideology was given life as most of the ballets performed were classical pieces. Dance produced in the United States, for example Balanchine and Martha Graham, was seen as modern with an individualistic style.
A later example of dance during the Cold War was the Soviet Union and the United States exchanging ballet companies for a time in order to improve cultural relations. In October 1962, the New York City Ballet (NYCB) toured the Soviet Union. In New York City, the Bolshoi was performing Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian. This ballet was meant to excite American audiences and prove that the Soviet Union could produce new, action-packed performances. The Soviet Union's creation was still not considered innovative because the Hollywood film Spartacus by Stanley Kubrick had been released prior to this performance. At the same time, seventeen ballets by George Balanchine, who is considered a very influential figure in American ballet though he was born in Russia, were being performed in the Soviet Union. Once again ballet was used to showcase artistry and power while bettering international affairs. Many factors made this tour a pinnacle in Cold war exchanges. The tour occurred at the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also, NYCB making an appearance in the Soviet Union was questionable because reviews of Balanchine's ballets had been censored. Instead of feelings of hostility, the company received a warm welcome. Both the United States and the Soviet Union agreed with Balanchine’s decision to emphasize music throughout his choreography. There was still a fundamental disagreement to this as Balanchine often declared that music has no meaning and Soviet society did not have the same ideology. Because each company's ballets were being judged with preconceived notions about society and the arts, opinions clashed and interpretations were different. The United States was mainly known for producing abstract modern pieces which align with Capitalist and individualistic thinking. On the other hand, the Soviet Union was producing narrative ballets which were meant to reeducate citizens and emphasize the importance of society. These exchanges were also seen as a battle between Capitalism and Communism, with each showing off its values and power. These are only a few examples of dance being used to showcase artistry and power while bettering international affairs.
Exhibitions
Exhibitions were often used during the Cold War to demonstrate culture and progress by both the United States and the Soviet Union.
In 1959, the American National Exhibition was held on Sokolniki Park in Moscow. The exhibition was opened by Vice President Richard Nixon and attended by Walt Disney, Buckminster Fuller, William Randolph Hearst, and senior executives from Pepsi, Kodak and Macy's. It featured American consumer goods, cars, boats, RCA color TVs, food, clothing, etc., and samples of American products such as Pepsi. There was a typical American kitchen set up inside in which spectators could watch a Bird's Eye frozen meal be prepared. An IBM RAMAC computer was programmed to answer 3,500 questions about America in Russian. The most popular question was "what is the meaning of the American Dream?" The Soviets tried to limit the audience by only giving tickets to party members and setting up their own rival exhibition. But ultimately people came, and the souvenir pins that were given out turned up in every corner of the country. The Soviets banned printed material, but the Americans gave it out anyway. The most popular items were the Bible and a Sears catalogue. The guides for the exhibition were American graduate students, including African Americans and women, who spoke Russian.
This gave Russians the ability to speak to real Americans and ask difficult questions. The ambassador to Moscow, Llewellyn Thompson, commented that "the exhibition would be 'worth more to us than five new battleships."
Exchanges
The usefulness of exchanges is based on two assumptions- some form of political intent lies behind the exchange and the result will have some sort of political effect. The idea is that exchanges will create a network of influential people abroad that will tie them to their host country and will appreciate their host country more due to their time spent there. Exchanges generally take place at a young age, giving the host country the opportunity to create an attachment and gain influence at a young impressionable age.
An example of exchanges is the United States' Fulbright Program.
The US and Soviet Union hosted a range of educational exchange programs during the Cold War.
TV, music, film
Popular entertainment is a statement about the society which it is portraying. These cultural displays can carry important messages regarding individualism, consumer choices and other values. For example, Soviet audiences watching American films learned that Americans owned their own cars, did not have to stand in long lines to purchase food, and did not live in communal apartments. These observations were not intended to be political messages when Hollywood created the films, but they nonetheless carried them.
Cultural programming featuring Latin Jazz music and the Bolero was already recognized by the United States Department of State as an important diplomatic tool during the World War II period. In the early 1940s, Nelson Rockefeller at the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs collaborated with Edmund A. Chester of the CBS to showcase leading musicians from both North and South America for audiences on both continents. Musical artists such as Alfredo Antonini, Terig Tucci, John Serry Sr., Miguel Sandoval, Juan Arvizu, Elsa Miranda, Eva Garza, Manuolita Arriola, Kate Smith and Nestor Mesta Chayres participated in this truly international effort to foster peace throughout the Americas through shared musical performances (See Viva América).
In the post World War II era, the United States Army also acknowledged the importance of cultural programming as a valuable diplomatic tool amidst the ruins in Europe. In 1952 the U.S. Seventh Army enlisted the expertise of the young conductor Samuel Adler to establish the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart, Germany in order to demonstrate the shared cultural heritage of America and Europe. Performances of classical music by the orchestra continued throughout Europe until 1962. They showcased the talents of several noted conductors and musicians including: James Dixon, John Ferritto, Henry Lewis and Kenneth Schermerhorn.
As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated in the 1950s, the Department of State also supported the performance of classical music as an indispensable diplomatic tool. With this in mind, President Dwight D. Eisenhower established an Emergency Fund for International Affairs in 1954 to stimulate the presentation of America's cultural achievements to international audiences in the realms of dance, theatre and music. In 1954, the State Department's Cultural Presentations program established a cooperative relationship with the Music Advisory Panel of the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA) to evaluate potential musical performers who could best represent America at performance venues throughout the world. Members of the advisory panel included such noted American composers and academics as: Virgil Thomson, Howard Hanson at the Eastman School of Music, William Schuman at the Juilliard School, Milton Katims, and the music critic Alfred Frankenstein. In addition, the State Department selected Hanson's Eastman Philharmonia Orchestra to perform during a sweeping international cultural exchange tour in 1961. Concert performances by this elite group of students from the Eastman School of Music were received to critical acclaim by enthusiastic audiences in thirty four cities in sixteen countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Russia. Similarly, the bass-baritone William Warfield was recruited by the Department of State to perform in six separate European tours during the 1950s which featured productions of the opera Porgy and Bess
Jazz played a critical role during the Cold War in establishing political ties. Producer Willis Conover explained jazz as an embodiment of an anti-ideology or an alternative way of living by introducing a new style of music with a loose structure and improvisation. In November 1955, The New York Times declared Louis Armstrong as America's most effective ambassador. What American diplomats could not do, Armstrong and his jazz music did. This article claimed that musicians, such as Armstrong, created a universal language to communicate.
Jazz originally surfaced in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, but quickly faded. After World War II, jazz began to reemerge, but was condemned by Andrei Zhdanov. He considered jazz as corrupt and capitalistic due to the fact that it grew out of the United States during a time of political unrest. During the 1950s to 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement, the decolonization of Africa and Asia, and the cultural and political rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union created the need for cultural exchange. As a result, the United States government sent a jazz band composed of African American musicians abroad to tour places, including the Middle East and Africa, with the goal of the black musicians establishing connections with their African heritage.
Duke Ellington, B.B. King, and Dizzy Gillespie all made trips to Africa that fostered connections with the African diaspora. In 1956, Dizzy Gillespie took on the role as a musical ambassador during his trip to the Middle East. He reported to President Eisenhower that he and his jazz band were effective against Red propaganda. With their interracial group, the jazz band was able to communicate across social and language barriers. During the band's trip to Athens, Greece, a performance transformed an audience of Anti-American students angered by the U.S. stance on Greece's right-wing dictatorship. By the end of the performance, Gillespie said the audience loved the music and threw him up on their shoulders after the performance. Diplomats emphasized the positive effects of musical diplomacy on the public.
From 1955 to 1996, jazz producer Willis Conover hosted a music program called "Music USA," for the Voice of America to assist in the emergence of jazz musicians as U.S. ambassadors. Conover explained: "Jazz is a cross between total discipline and anarchy," for the way the musicians agree on tempo, key, and chord, but is distinguishable by its freedom of expression. As many as thirty million listeners worldwide, including millions in the Soviet Union, listened to the forty-five minutes of pop music and forty-five minutes of jazz with a newscast preceding each. Many critics have stated that Conover's program played a major role in the resurgence of jazz within the Soviet Union after the WWII.
The effect The Beatles had in Russia during the Cold War is an example of how music artists and their songs can become political. During this time, rock music channelled liberal "Western" ideas as a progressive and modernized art form. The Beatles symbolized the Western culture in a way that introduced new ideas that many believe assisted in the collapse of communism. As a result, the Beatles served as cultural diplomats through their popularity in the Soviet Union. Their music fostered youth communication and united people with a common spirit of popular culture.
Kolya Vasin, the founder of The Beatles museum and the Temple of Love, Peace and Music in St. Petersburg, commented that The Beatles "were like an integrity test. When anyone said anything against them, we knew just what that person was worth. The authorities, our teachers, even our parents, became idiots to us." Despite the attempts of the Soviet Union's government to prevent the spread of the Beatles' popularity amongst their citizens, the band proved to be as popular in the USSR as it was in Britain. The government went as far as censoring the expression of all Western ideals, including the Beatles' bourgeois eccentricity, limiting the Soviet citizens' access to their music. Leslie Woodland, a documentary film maker, commented regarding what the Russian people were told about the West – "Once people heard the Beatles' wonderful music, it just didn't fit. The authorities' prognosis didn't correspond to what they were listening to. The system was built on fear and lies, and in this way, the Beatles put an end to the fear, and exposed the lies." Pavel Palazchenko, Mikhail Gorbachev's conference interpreter, stated that the Beatles' music was a "source of musical relief. They helped us create a world of our own, a world different from the dull and senseless ideological liturgy that increasingly reminded me of Stalinism...". Like Gorbachev, many Russian youth agreed that the Beatles were a way to overcome the cultural isolation imposed by the Cold War and reinforced by their current political system.
In this way the music of The Beatles struck a political chord in the Soviet Union, even when the songs were not meant to be political.
This contact went both ways. In 1968, when the song "Back in the USSR" was released, the album included a quote on the cover from Paul McCartney that read "In releasing this record, made especially and exclusively for the USSR, I am extending a hand of peace and friendship to the Soviet people." During Paul McCartney's first trip to Russia in May 2003, nearly half a million fans greeted him. One Russian critic reported, "The only person in Red Square who wasn't moved was Lenin". This is an example of how products of culture can have an influence on the people they reach outside of their own country. It also shows how a private citizen can unintentionally become a cultural ambassador of sorts.
In September 2023, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken launched the Global Music Diplomacy Initiative in partnership with The Recording Academy at the U.S. Department of State.
There are growing calls for Australia to strengthen its music diplomacy activities.
Food
The US Embassy in Beijing leveraged food as a tool of diplomacy in 2023, when its public affairs section collected lunch photos from officers posted across the country and created a "photo montage video titled “What American Diplomats Have for Lunch,” which became one of the most-viewed and most-engaged posts on its WeChat and Weibo accounts.
Place branding
This Image and reputation has become an essential part of a "state's strategic equity". Place branding is "the totality of the thoughts, feelings, associations and expectations that come to mind when a prospect or consumer is exposed to an entity's name, logo, products, services, events, or any design or symbol representing them." Place branding is required to make a country's image acceptable for investment, tourism, political power, etc. As Joseph Nye commented, "in an information age, it is often the side which has the better side of the story that wins," this has resulted in a shift from old style diplomacy to encompass brand building and reputation management. In short, a country can use its culture to create a brand for itself which represents positive values and image.
Museum diplomacy
Museum diplomacy is a subset of cultural diplomacy concerned with museums and the cultural artifacts they exhibit. This can take the form of building/supporting museums, gifting art/antiquities, and travelling exhibitions.
France has led the way in using the return on art and artifacts looted during their colonial past to its home country for diplomatic means.
In 1974, People's Republic of China organized its first archaeological exhibition in the United States, The Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People’s Republic of China, held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. during the Cold War. This exhibition, showcasing 385 artifacts, was a strategic act of cultural diplomacy, aimed at improving China–United States relations while also promoting China's state ideology.
Panda diplomacy
China has been using panda diplomacy to advance its national interests.
Goodwill tours
A goodwill tour is a tour by someone or something famous to a series of places, with the purpose of expressing benevolent interest or concern for a group of people or a region, improving or maintaining a relationship between parties, and exhibiting the item or person to places visited.
Goodwill tours are meant to be friendly; however, in some cases, they may be intimidating to the people or the government at the place visited. At the same time, a visit by a goodwill tour might be used as a way of "reminding" the place and government visited of a friendship previously established or assumed.
Notable goodwill tours include the Latin America goodwill tour by President-elect Herbert Hoover in November–December 1928, the goodwill tour to Japan by the San Francisco Seals (baseball) in 1949,Jacqueline Kennedy's 1962 goodwill tour of India and Pakistan, and the worldwide GIANTSTEP-APOLLO 11 Presidential Goodwill Tour by the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969.
Complications
Cultural diplomacy presents a number of unique challenges to any government attempting to carry out cultural diplomacy programs. Most ideas that a foreign population observes are not in the government's control. The government does not usually produce the books, music, films, TV programs, consumer products, etc. that reaches an audience. The most the government can do is try to work to create openings so the message can get through to mass audiences abroad. To be cultural relevant in the age of globalization, a government must exercise control over the flows of information and communication technologies, including trade. This is also difficult for governments that operate in a free market society where the government does not control the bulk of information flows. What the government can do is work to protect cultural exports where they flourish, by utilizing trade agreements or gaining access for foreign telecommunication networks.
It is also possible that foreign government officials may oppose or resist certain cultural exports while the people cheer them on. This can make support for official policies difficult to obtain. Cultural activities may be both a blessing and a curse to a nation. This may be the case if certain elements of a culture are offensive to the foreign audience. Certain cultural activities can also undermine national policy objectives. An example of this was the very public American dissent to the Iraq War while official government policy still supported it. Simultaneously the prevalence of the protest may have attracted some foreigners to the openness of America.
Sample institutions
Brazilian Cultural Center, Brazil
Confucius Institute, People's Republic of China
Caro and Cuervo Institute, Colombia
Czech Centres, Czech Republic
Danish Cultural Institute, Denmark (1940– )
European Union National Institutes for Culture, European Union
Alliance Française, France
Institut Français, France
Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes, Finland
Goethe-Institut, Germany
Center for the Greek Language, Greece
Hellenic Foundation for Culture, Greece
Balassi Institute, Hungary (1927– )
Indian Council for Cultural Relations, India
Culture Ireland, Ireland
Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Italy
Dante Alighieri Society, Italy
EMMA for Peace, Italy
Jewish Agency for Israel, Israel
Japan Foundation, Japan
Korean Friendship Association, North Korea
Sentro Rizal, Philippines
Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Poland
Polish Institute, Poland
Instituto Camões, Portugal
Romanian Cultural Institute, Romania
Russkiy Mir Foundation, Russia
Korean Cultural Center, South Korea
Korean Foundation, South Korea
Instituto Cervantes, Spain
Swedish Institute, Sweden
Ukrainian Institute, Ukraine
British Council, United Kingdom (1934– )
Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, United States
United States Information Agency, United States (1953–99)
Yunus Emre Institute, Turkey
See also
Culinary diplomacy
Digital diplomacy
Panda diplomacy
Paradiplomacy
Public diplomacy
Science diplomacy
Soft power
Twin towns and sister cities
References
Further reading
Ang, Ien, Yudhishthir Raj Isar, and Phillip Mar. "Cultural diplomacy: beyond the national interest?" International Journal of Cultural Policy 21.4 (2015): 365–381. online
Arndt, R. The first resort of kings. American cultural diplomacy in the twentieth century (Potomac Books, 2006). excerpt
Barghoorn, Frederick C. The Soviet cultural offensive : the role of cultural diplomacy in Soviet foreign policy (1976) online
Becard, Danielly Silva Ramos, and Paulo Menechelli. "Chinese Cultural Diplomacy: instruments in China’s strategy for international insertion in the 21st Century." Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 62 (2019) online.
Brown, John. "Arts diplomacy: The neglected aspect of cultural diplomacy." in Routledge handbook of public diplomacy (Routledge, 2020) pp. 79–81.
Carta, Caterina, and Richard Higgott. "Cultural Diplomacy in Europe." in Between the Domestic and the International (2020) org/10.1007/978-3-030-21544-6 online
Chan, Shing-Kwan. "Relics and rapprochement: The intricacies of culturaldiplomacy in China’s first archaeological exhibition inthe U.S. during the Cold War era." Museum History Journal 17.1 (2023): 76–94 online.
Clarke, David, and Paweł Duber. "Polish cultural diplomacy and historical memory: the case of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk." International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 33.1 (2020): 49–66 online.
Davidson, Lee, and Leticia Pérez-Castellanos, eds. Cosmopolitan Ambassadors: International exhibitions, cultural diplomacy and the polycentral museum (Vernon Press, 2019) online.
DeCarli, Ashley M. Topics Performing arts, International relations, Multiculturalism in art (Naval Postgraduate School, 2010) online
Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E. Transmission impossible : American journalism as cultural diplomacy in postwar Germany, 1945–1955 (1999) online
Goff, Patricia M. "Cultural diplomacy." in Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy (Routledge, 2020) pp. 30–37.
Isar, Y. R. "Cultural diplomacy: an overplayed hand?" Public diplomacy magazine, 3, Winter 2010. online
Lane, Philippe. French scientific and cultural diplomacy (2013) online
Lee, Seow Ting. "Film as cultural diplomacy: South Korea’s nation branding through Parasite (2019)." in Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 18.2 (2022): 93–104. online
Liu, Xin. China's Cultural Diplomacy: A Great Leap Outward? (Routledge, 2019) online.
Mitchell, J. M. International cultural relations (Allen and Unwin, 1986).
Ninkovich, Frank A. U.S. information policy and cultural diplomacy (1996) online
Paschalidis, G., "Exporting national culture: histories of cultural institutes abroad" International journal of cultural policy, (2009) 15 (3), 275–289.
Pells, Richard. Not like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated and Transformed American Culture since World War II (1997) online
Prevots, Naima. Dance for export : cultural diplomacy and the Cold War (2001) online
Sadlier, Darlene J. Americans all : good neighbor cultural diplomacy in World War II (2012) online, in Latin America
Scott-Smith, Giles, and Hans Krabbendam, eds. The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–60 (Routledge 2004)
Singh, Rana PB, and Pravin S. Rana. "Cultural Diplomacy in India: Dispersal, Heritage Representation, Contestation, and Development." Transcultural Diplomacy and International Law in Heritage Conservation (Springer, Singapore, 2021) pp. 231–256.
Trommler, Frank, and Elliott Shore, eds. The German-American Encounter: Conflict and Cooperation Between Two Cultures, 1800–2000 (2001).
Tuch, Hans J. Communicating with the World: US Public Diplomacy Overseas (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, 1990).
Wagnleiter, Reinhold. Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the U.S. in Austria after the Second World War ( U of North Carolina Press, 1995).
Wieck, Randolph R. Ignorance Abroad: American Educational and Cultural Foreign Policy and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of State (Praeger, 1992).
10 Great Moments in Music Diplomacy, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, February 12, 2015.
Historiography and memory
Clarke, D., "Theorising the role of cultural products in cultural diplomacy from a cultural studies perspective" International journal of cultural policy (2014). doi:10.1080/10286632.2014.958481.
Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C.E., and Mark C. Donfried, eds. Searching for a cultural diplomacy (Berghahn Books, 2010).
Tomlinson, John. Cultural Imperialsm: A Critical Introduction (Pinter, 1991).
External links
Types of diplomacy
Diplomacy | 0.767386 | 0.985253 | 0.75607 |
Emerging church | The emerging church, sometimes wrongly equated with the "emergent movement" or "emergent conversation", is a Christian movement of the late 20th and early 21st century. Emerging churches can be found around the globe, predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. Members come from a number of Christian traditions. Some attend local independent churches or house churches while others worship in traditional Christian denominations.
The emerging church favors the use of simple story and narrative. Members of the movement often place a high value on good works or social activism, including missional living. Proponents of the movement believe it transcends labels such as "conservative" and "liberal"; it is sometimes called a "conversation" to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its range of standpoints, and commitment to dialogue. Participants seek to live their faith in what they believe to be a "postmodern" society. Disillusionment with the organized and institutional church has led participants to support the deconstruction of modern Christian worship and evangelism, and the nature of modern Christian community.
Definitions and terminology
Participants in the movement may be Protestant, post-Protestant, Catholic, or evangelical post-evangelical, liberal Christian, post-liberal, conservative, and post-conservative, anabaptist, adventist, reformed, charismatic, neocharismatic, and post-charismatic. Proponents, however, believe the movement transcends such "modernist" labels of "conservative" and "liberal," calling the movement a "conversation" to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its vast range of standpoints, and its commitment to dialogue. Participants seek to live their faith in what they believe to be a "postmodern" society. What those involved in the conversation mostly agree on is their disillusionment with the organized and institutional church and their support for the deconstruction of modern Christian worship, modern evangelism, and the nature of modern Christian community.
Some have noted a difference between the terms emerging and Emergent. While emerging is a wider, informal, church-based, global movement, Emergent refers to a specific, structured organization, the Emergent Village, associated with Brian McLaren, and has also been called the "Emergent stream".
Key themes of the emerging church are couched in the language of reform, Christian praxis-oriented lifestyles, post-evangelical thought, and incorporation or acknowledgment of Christian political and postmodern Christian elements. Many of the movement's participants use terminology that originates from postmodern literary theory, social network theory, narrative theology, and other related fields.
Stuart Murray states:
Ian Mobsby observes:
Similar labels
Although some emergent thinkers such as Brian McLaren and other Christian scholars such as D. A. Carson use emerging and emergent as synonyms, a large number of participants in the emerging church movement maintain a distinction between them. The term emergent church was coined in 1981 by Catholic political theologian, Johann Baptist Metz for use in a different context. Emergent is sometimes more closely associated with Emergent Village. Those participants in the movement who assert this distinction believe "emergents" and "emergent village" to be a part of the emerging church movement but prefer to use the term emerging church to refer to the movement as a whole while using the term emergent in a more limited way, referring to Brian McLaren and Emergent Village.
Many of those within the emerging church movement who do not closely identify with emergent village tend to avoid that organization's interest in radical theological reformulation and focus more on new ways of "doing church" and expressing their spirituality. Mark Driscoll and Scot McKnight have now voiced concerns over Brian McLaren and the "emergent thread." Other evangelical leaders such as Shane Claiborne have also come to distance himself from the emerging church movement, its labels and the "emergent brand".
Some observers consider the "emergent stream" to be one major part within the larger emerging church movement. This may be attributed to the stronger voice of the 'emergent' stream found in the US which contrasts the more subtle and diverse development of the movement in the UK, Australia and New Zealand over a longer period of time. In the US, some Roman Catholics have also begun to describe themselves as being part of the emergent conversation. As a result of the above factors, the use of correct vocabulary to describe a given participant in this movement can occasionally be awkward, confusing, or controversial. Key voices in the movement have been identified with Emergent Village, thus the rise of the nomenclature emergent to describe participants in the movement.
Marcus Borg defines the term "emerging paradigm" in his 2003 book The Heart of Christianity. He writes Borg provides a compact summary of this "emerging paradigm" as:
History
Although the history is little known in the US, there was a strong current of emerging churches in the UK and elsewhere that preceded the US Emergent organization. This began with Mike Riddell and Mark Pierson in New Zealand from 1989, and with a number of practitioners in the UK including Jonny Baker, Ian Mobsby, Kevin, Ana and Brian Draper, and Sue Wallace amongst others, from around 1992. The influence of the Nine O'Clock Service has is generally unacknowledged—perhaps owing to the abuse by its leader which led to the group's demise—yet much that was practised there was influential on early proponents of alternative worship. The US organization emerged in the late 1990s.
What is common to the identity of many of these emerging church projects that began in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, is that they developed with very little central planning on behalf of the established denominations. They occurred as the initiative of particular groups wanting to start new contextual church experiments, and are therefore very 'bottom up'. Murray says that these churches began in a spontaneous way, with informal relationships formed between otherwise independent groups and that many became churches as a development from their initial more modest beginnings.
Values and characteristics
Trinitarian-based values
Gibbs and Bolger interviewed a number of people involved in leading emerging churches and from this research have identified some core values in the emerging church, including desires to imitate the life of Jesus; transform secular society; emphasise communal living; welcome outsiders; be generous and creative; and lead without control. Ian Mobsby suggests Trinitarian ecclesiology is the basis of these shared international values.
Mobsby also suggests that the emerging church is centred on a combination of models of church and of contextual theology that draw on this Trinitarian base: the Mystical Communion and Sacramental models of church, and the Synthetic and Transcendent models of contextual theology.
According to Mobsby, the emerging church has reacted to the missional needs of postmodern culture and re-acquired a Trinitarian basis to its understanding of church as worship, mission and community. He argues this movement is over and against some forms of conservative evangelicalism and other reformed ecclesiologies since the enlightenment that have neglected the Trinity, which has caused problems with certainty, judgementalism and fundamentalism and the increasing gap between the church and contemporary culture.
Post-Christendom mission and evangelism
According to Stuart Murray, Christendom is the creation and maintenance of a Christian nation by ensuring a close relationship of power between the Christian church and its host culture. Today, churches may still attempt to use this power in mission and evangelism. The emerging church considers this to be unhelpful. Murray summarizes Christendom values as: a commitment to hierarchy and the status quo; the loss of lay involvement; institutional values rather than community focus; church at the centre of society rather than the margins; the use of political power to bring in the Kingdom; religious compulsion; punitive rather than restorative justice; marginalisation of women, the poor, and dissident movements; inattentiveness to the criticisms of those outraged by the historic association of Christianity with patriarchy, warfare, injustice and patronage; partiality for respectability and top-down mission; attractional evangelism; assuming the Christian story is known; and a preoccupation with the rich and powerful.
The emerging church seeks a post-Christendom approach to being church and mission through: renouncing imperialistic approaches to language and cultural imposition; making 'truth claims' with humility and respect; overcoming the public/private dichotomy; moving church from the center to the margins; moving from a place of privilege in society to one voice amongst many; a transition from control to witness, maintenance to mission and institution to movement.
While some Evangelicals emphasize eternal salvation, many in the emerging church emphasize the here and now. In the face of criticism, some in the emerging church respond that it is important to attempt a "both and" approach to redemptive and incarnational theologies. Some Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are perceived as "overly redemptive" and therefore in danger of condemning people by communicating the gospel in aggressive and angry ways. A more loving and affirming approach is proposed in the context of post-modernity where distrust may occur in response to power claims. It is suggested that this can form the basis of a constructive engagement with 21st-century post-industrial western cultures. According to Ian Mobsby, the suggestion that the emerging church is mainly focused on deconstruction and the rejection of current forms of church should itself be rejected.
Postmodern worldview and hermeneutics
The emerging church is a response to the perceived influence of modernism in Western Christianity. As some sociologists commented on a cultural shift that they believed to correspond to postmodern ways of perceiving reality in the late 20th century, some Christians began to advocate changes within the church in response. These Christians saw the contemporary church as being culturally bound to modernism. They changed their practices to relate to the new cultural situation. Emerging Christians began to challenge the modern church on issues such as: institutional structures, systematic theology, propositional teaching methods, a perceived preoccupation with buildings, an attractional understanding of mission, professional clergy, and a perceived preoccupation with the political process and unhelpful jargon ("Christianese").
As a result, some in the emerging church believe it is necessary to deconstruct modern Christian dogma. One way this happens is by engaging in dialogue, rather than proclaiming a predigested message, believing that this leads people to Jesus through the Holy Spirit on their own terms. Many in the movement embrace the missiology that drives the movement in an effort to be like Christ and make disciples by being a good example. The emerging church movement contains a great diversity in beliefs and practices, although some have adopted a preoccupation with sacred rituals, good works, and political and social activism. Much of the Emerging Church movement has also adopted the approach to evangelism which stressed peer-to-peer dialogue rather than dogmatic proclamation and proselytizing.
A plurality of Scriptural interpretations is acknowledged in the emerging church movement. Participants in the movement exhibit a particular concern for the effect of the modern reader's cultural context on the act of interpretation echoing the ideas of postmodern thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Stanley Fish. Therefore a narrative approach to Scripture, and history are emphasized in some emerging churches over exegetical and dogmatic approaches (such as that found in systematic theology and systematic exegesis), which are often viewed as reductionist. Others embrace a multiplicity of approaches.
Generous orthodoxy
Some emerging church leaders see interfaith dialogue a means to share their narratives as they learn from the narratives of others. Some Emerging Church Christians believe there are radically diverse perspectives within Christianity that are valuable for humanity to progress toward truth and a better resulting relationship with God, and that these different perspectives deserve Christian charity rather than condemnation.
Centered set
The movement appropriates set theory as a means of understanding a basic change in the way the Christian church thinks about itself as a group. Set theory is a concept in mathematics that allows an understanding of what numbers belong to a group, or set. A bounded set would describe a group with clear "in" and "out" definitions of membership. The Christian church has largely organized itself as a bounded set, those who share the same beliefs and values are in the set and those who disagree are outside.
The centered set does not limit membership to pre-conceived boundaries. Instead, a centered set is conditioned on a centered point. Membership is contingent on those who are moving toward that point. Elements moving toward a particular point are part of the set, but elements moving away from that point are not. As a centered-set Christian membership would be dependent on moving toward the central point of Jesus. A Christian is then defined by their focus and movement toward Christ rather than a limited set of shared beliefs and values.
John Wimber utilized the centered-set understanding of membership in his Vineyard Churches. The centered set theory of Christian churches came largely from missional anthropologist Paul Hiebert. The centered-set understanding of membership allows for a clear vision of the focal point, the ability to move toward that point without being tied down to smaller diversions, a sense of total egalitarianism with respect for differing opinions, and an authority moved from individual members to the existing center.
Authenticity and conversation
The movement favors the sharing of experiences via testimonies, prayer, group recitation, sharing meals and other communal practices, which they believe are more personal and sincere than propositional presentations of the Gospel. Teachers in the emerging church tend to view the Bible and its stories through a lens which they believe finds significance and meaning for their community's social and personal stories rather than for the purpose of finding cross-cultural, propositional absolutes regarding salvation and conduct.
The emerging church claims they are creating a safe environment for those with opinions ordinarily rejected within modern conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Non-critical, interfaith dialog is preferred over dogmatically-driven evangelism in the movement. Story and narrative replaces the dogmatic:
Those in the movement do not engage in aggressive apologetics or confrontational evangelism in the traditional sense, preferring to encourage the freedom to discover truth through conversation and relationships with the Christian community.
Missional living
Participants in this movement assert that the incarnation of Christ informs their theology. They believe that as God entered the world in human form, adherents enter (individually and communally) into the context around them and aim to transform that culture through local involvement. This holistic involvement may take many forms, including social activism, hospitality and acts of kindness. This beneficent involvement in culture is part of what is called missional living. Missional living leads to a focus on temporal and social issues, in contrast with a perceived evangelical overemphasis on salvation.
Drawing on research and models of contextual theology, Mobsby asserts that the emerging church is using different models of contextual theology than conservative evangelicals, who tend to use a "translation" model of contextual theology (which has been criticized for being colonialist and condescending toward other cultures); the emerging church tends to use a "synthetic" or "transcendent" model of contextual theology. The emerging church has charged many conservative evangelical churches with withdrawal from involvement in contextual mission and seeking the contextualization of the gospel.
Many emerging churches have put a strong emphasis on contextualization and, therefore, contextual theology. Contextual theology has been defined as "A way of doing theology in which one takes into account: the spirit and message of the gospel; the tradition of the Christian people; the culture in which one is theologising; and social change in that culture." Emerging churches, drawing on this synthetic (or transcendent) model of contextual theology, seek to have a high view towards the Bible, the Christian people, culture, humanity and justice. It is this "both ... and" approach that distinguishes contextual theology.
Emerging communities participate in social action, community involvement, global justice and sacrificial hospitality in an effort to know and share God's grace. At a conference entitled "The Emerging Church Forum" in 2006, John Franke said: "The Church of Jesus Christ is not the goal of the Gospel, just the instrument of the extension of God's mission", and: "The Church has been slow to recognize that missions a program the Church administers, it is the very core of the Church's reason for being." This focus on missional living and practicing radical hospitality has led many emerging churches to deepen what they are doing by developing a rhythm of life, and a vision of missional loving engagement with the world.
Communitarian or egalitarian ecclesiology
Proponents of the movement communicate and interact through fluid and open networks because the movement is decentralized with little institutional coordination. Because of the participation values named earlier, being community through participation affects the governance of most emerging churches. Participants avoid power relationships, attempting to gather in ways specific to their local context. In this way some in the movement share with the house church movements a willingness to challenge traditional church structures/organizations though they also respect the different expressions of traditional Christian denominations.
International research suggests that some emerging churches are utilizing a Trinitarian basis to being church through what Avery Dulles calls 'The Mystical Communion Model of Church'.
Not an institution but a sorority.
Church as interpersonal community.
Church as a sisterhood of individual congregations (unified bride of Christ), and as a fellowship of people in family with God and with one another (brothers and sisters) in Christ.
Connects strongly with the mystical 'body of Christ' as a communion of the spiritual life of faith, hope and charity.
Resonates with Aquinas' notion of the Church as the principle of unity that dwells in Christ and in us, binding us together and in him.
All the external means of grace, (sacraments, scripture, laws etc.) are secondary and subordinate; their role is simply to dispose people for an interior union with God effected by grace.
Dulles sees the strength in this approach being acceptable to both Protestant and Catholic:
Creative and rediscovered spirituality
This can involve everything from expressive, neocharismatic style of worship and the use of contemporary music and films to more ancient liturgical customs and eclectic expressions of spirituality, with the goal of making the church gathering reflect the local community's tastes.
Emerging church practitioners are happy to take elements of worship from a wide variety of historic traditions, including traditions of the Catholic, Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches, and Celtic Christianity. From these and other religious traditions emerging church groups take, adapt and blend various historic church practices including liturgy, prayer beads, icons, spiritual direction, the labyrinth, and . The emerging church is also sometimes called the "Ancient-Future" church.
One of the key social drives in Western post-industrialised countries, is the rise in new-"old" forms of mysticism. This rise in spirituality appears to be driven by the effects of consumerism, globalisation and advances in information technology. Therefore, the emerging church is operating in a new context of postmodern spirituality, as a new form of mysticism. This capitalizes on the social shift in starting assumptions from the situation that most are regarded as materialist/atheist (the modern position), to the fact that many people now believe in and are searching for something more spiritual (postmodern view). This has been characterised as a major shift from religion to spirituality.
In the new world of 'spiritual tourism', the Emerging Church Movement is seeking to missionally assist people to shift from being spiritual tourists to Christian pilgrims. Many are drawing on ancient Christian resources recontextualised into the contemporary such as contemplation and contemplative forms of prayer, symbolic multi-sensory worship, story telling and many others. This again has required a change in focus as the majority of unchurched and dechurched people are seeking 'something that works' rather than something that is 'true'.
Morality and justice
Drawing on a more 'missional morality' that again turns to the synoptic gospels of Christ, many emerging-church groups draw on an understanding of God seeking to restore all things back into restored relationship. This emphasises God's graceful love approach to discipleship, in following Christ who identified with the socially excluded and ill, in opposition to the Pharisees and Sadducees and their purity rules.
Under this movement, traditional Christians' emphasis on either individual salvation, end-times theology or the prosperity gospel have been challenged. Many people in the movement express concern for what they consider to be the practical manifestation of God's kingdom on earth, by which they mean social justice. This concern manifests itself in a variety of ways depending on the local community and in ways they believe transcend "modernist" labels of "conservative" and "liberal." This concern for justice is expressed in such things as feeding the poor, visiting the sick and prisoners, stopping contemporary slavery, critiquing systemic and coercive power structures with "postcolonial hermeneutics," and working for environmental causes.
See also
– theological term, the 'mission of God'
Models of Contextual Theology – About the book by Stephen B. Bevans
References
Sources
Link to 1974 edition:
Citations
External links
Postmodernity and the Emerging Church Movement: Reading Room: Extensive online resources on the Emerging Church Movement (Tyndale Seminary)
The Emerging Church, Part One 8 July 2005, PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Retrieved 29 July 2005.
The Emerging Church, Part Two 15 July 2005, PBS Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Retrieved 29 July 2005.
What is the Emerging Church? - 2006 guest lecture by Dr. Scot McKnight at Westminster Theological Seminary
Five Streams of the Emerging Church - Christianity Today article by Scot McKnight
The Emergent Mystique - Christianity Today feature by Andy Crouch
What Should We Think of the Emerging Church? Part One - Christian Post column by Albert Mohler
What Should We Think of the Emerging Church? Part Two - Christian Post column by Albert Mohler
An Interview with Tony Jones, National Coordinator of Emergent Village
Missional Christianity
Evangelicalism
Christian movements
Christian terminology
Postmodern religion | 0.765751 | 0.987323 | 0.756044 |
Peripeteia | Peripeteia (alternative Latin form: Peripetīa, ultimately from ) is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point. The term is primarily used with reference to works of literature; its anglicized form is peripety.
Aristotle's view
Aristotle, in his Poetics, defines peripeteia as "a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity." According to Aristotle, peripeteia, along with discovery, is the most effective when it comes to drama, particularly in a tragedy. He wrote that "The finest form of Discovery is one attended by Peripeteia, like that which goes with the Discovery in Oedipus...".
Aristotle says that peripeteia is the most powerful part of a plot in a tragedy along with discovery. A peripety is the change of the kind described from one state of things within the play to its opposite, and that too in the way we are saying, in the probable or necessary sequence of events. There is often no element like Peripeteia; it can bring forth or result in terror, mercy, or in comedies it can bring a smile or it can bring forth tears (Rizo).
This is the best way to spark and maintain attention throughout the various form and genres of drama "Tragedy imitates good actions and, thereby, measures and depicts the well-being of its protagonist. But in his formal definition, as well as throughout the Poetics, Aristotle emphasizes that" ... Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of events inspiring fear or pity" (1452a 1); in fact, at one point Aristotle isolates the imitation of "actions that excite pity and fear" as "the distinctive mark of tragic imitation" (1452b 30).
Pity and fear are effected through reversal and recognition; and these "most powerful elements of emotional interest in Tragedy-Peripeteia or Reversal of the Situation, and recognition scenes-are parts of the plot (1450a 32). has the shift of the tragic protagonist's fortune from good to bad, which is essential to the plot of a tragedy. It is often an ironic twist. Good uses of Peripeteia are those that especially are parts of a complex plot, so that they are defined by their changes of fortune being accompanied by reversal, recognition, or both" (Smithson).
Peripeteia includes changes of character, but also more external changes. A character who becomes rich and famous from poverty and obscurity has undergone peripeteia, even if his character remains the same.
When a character learns something he had been previously ignorant of, this is normally distinguished from peripeteia as anagnorisis or discovery, a distinction derived from Aristotle's work.
Aristotle considers anagnorisis, leading to peripeteia, the mark of a superior tragedy. Two such plays are Oedipus Rex, where the oracle's information that Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother brings about his mother's death and his own blindness and exile, and Iphigenia in Tauris, where Iphigenia realizes that the strangers she is to sacrifice are her brother and his friend, resulting in all three of them escaping Tauris. These plots he considered complex and superior to simple plots without anagnorisis or peripeteia, such as when Medea resolves to kill her children, knows they are her children, and does so. Aristotle identified Oedipus Rex as the principal work demonstrating peripety. (See Aristotle's Poetics.)
Examples
Oedipus Rex
In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, the peripeteia occurs towards the end of the play when the Messenger brings Oedipus news of his parentage. In the play, Oedipus is fated to murder his father and marry his mother. His parents, Laius and Jocasta, try to forestall the oracle by sending their son away to be killed, but he is actually raised by Polybus and his wife, Merope, the rulers of another kingdom. The irony of the Messenger’s information is that it was supposed to comfort Oedipus and assure him that he was the son of Polybus. Unfortunately for Oedipus, the Messenger says, "Polybus was nothing to you, [Oedipus] that’s why, not in blood" (Sophocles 1113).
The Messenger received Oedipus from one of Laius’ servants and then gave him to Polybus. The plot comes together when Oedipus realizes that he is the son and murderer of Laius as well as the son and husband of Jocasta. Martin M. Winkler says that here, peripeteia and anagnorisis occur at the same time "for the greatest possible impact" because Oedipus has been "struck a blow from above, as if by fate or the gods. He is changing from the mighty and somewhat arrogant king of Thebes to a figure of woe" (Winkler 57).
Conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus
The instantaneous conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus is a classic example of peripeteia, which Eusebius presented in his Life of Constantine as a pattern for the equally revelatory conversion of Constantine. Modern biographers of Constantine see his conversion less as a momentary phenomenon than as a step in a lifelong process.
The Three Apples
In "The Three Apples", a medieval Arabian Nights, after the murderer reveals himself near the middle of the story, he explains his reasons behind the murder in a flashback, which begins with him going on a journey to find three rare apples for his wife, but after returning finds out she cannot eat them due to her lingering illness. Later at work, he sees a slave passing by with one of those apples claiming that he received it from his girlfriend, a married woman with three such apples her husband gave her. He returns home and demands his wife to show him all three apples, but she only shows him two. This convinces him of her infidelity and he murders her as a result. After he disposes of her body, he returns home, where his son confesses that he had stolen one of the apples and that a slave, to whom he had told about his father's journey, had fled with it. The murderer thus realizes his guilt and regrets what he has just done.
The second use of peripety occurs near the end. After finding out about the culprit behind the murder, the protagonist Ja'far ibn Yahya is ordered by Harun al-Rashid to find the tricky slave within three days, or else he will have Ja'far executed instead. After the deadline has passed, Ja'far prepares to be executed for his failure and bids his family farewell. As he hugs his youngest daughter, he feels a round object in her pocket, which is revealed to be the same apple that the culprit was holding. In the story's twist ending, the daughter reveals that she obtained it from their slave, Rayhan. Ja'far thus realizes that his own slave was the culprit all along. He then finds Rayhan and solves the case, preventing his own execution. That was a plot twist.
See also
Deus ex machina
Notes
Further reading
Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Ingram Bywater; Modern Library College Editions, New York, 1984.
Finlayson, James G., "Conflict and Reconciliation in Hegel's Theory of the Tragic", Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999); pp. 493–520.
Lucas, F. L., "The Reverse of Aristotle" (an essay on peripeteia), Classical Review, Vol. XXXVII Nos 5,6; Aug.–Sept. 1923; pp. 98–104.
Rizo, Juan Pablo Mártir, Poetica de Aristoteles traducida de Latin; M. Newels Elias L. Rivers MLN, Vol. 82, No. 5, General Issue. (Dec., 1967), pp. 642–643
Silk, M. S., Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond; Oxford, 1998; pp. 377–380.
Smithson, Isaiah, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 44, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1983), pp. 3–17.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, in The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles; Comp. Bernard Knox; New York: Penguin, 1982.
Winkler, Martin M., Oedipus in the Cinema, Arethusa, 2008; pp. 67–94.
External links
Britannica Online Encyclopedia
F. L. Lucas, "The Reverse of Aristotle": a discussion of Peripeteia (Classical Review, August–September 1922)
Clifford Leech, Tragedy
Ancient Greek theatre
Narratology
Plot (narrative)
Poetics
Greek words and phrases
Concepts in ancient Greek aesthetics | 0.762626 | 0.991357 | 0.756035 |
Xenocentrism | Xenocentrism is the preference for the cultural practices of other cultures and societies, such as how they live and what they eat, rather than of one's own social way of life. One example is the romanticization of the noble savage in the 18th-century primitivism movement in European art, philosophy and ethnography. Xenocentrism can be a type of ethnocentrism. Because ethnocentrism is often negative and characterized by perceived superiority of one's own society to others, it often contrasts with xenocentrism.
Etymology
The term xenocentrism was coined by American sociologists Donald P. Kent and Robert G. Burnight in the 1952 paper "Group Centrism in Complex Societies" published in the American Journal of Sociology. Kent and Burnight state that feelings of xenocentrism are caused by three possible factors; individuals who have familial ties to a foreign country, specifically 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants, those who oppose the political choices of their native country. One example of this is the Communist Party USA. The party idealized the Soviet Union and its anti-capitalist government. As well as individuals who are exposed to other cultures and grow disenchanted with their society, and then rebel against it. This word remained obscure but considered useful and occasionally used by other sociologists. The University of Florida treats it as a key term of Sociology.
The term is opposed to ethnocentrism, as coined by 19th-century American sociologist William Graham Sumner, which describes the natural tendencies of an individual to place disproportionate worth upon the values and beliefs of one's own culture relative to others.
Examples
Consumer xenocentrism
Rene Dentiste Mueller and Amanda Broderick were the first to apply the consumer xenocentrism (CX) concept to describe the preference that some consumers have for foreign goods, even when domestic goods are qualitatively and/or functionally similar or better. Although the CX phenomenon is global, the researchers cite a significant number of studies that suggests there are proportionally more consumer xenocentrics in former colonies where the locals have been conditioned to perceive ‘foreign’ as better. A consequence of consumer xenocentrism is its negative effect on local industry and on the decline in living standards as poor consumers buy the (often) more expensive foreign products. Consumer xenocentrism, especially among the local elites, reduces confidence and pride in local manufacturing which can lead to the loss of local industries, a decline in purchase choices, especially among traditional products or even a dependency on foreign ones. Mueller, Wang, Liu and Cui, applied the concept to China and showed consumer xenocentrism is not a new phenomenon. The researchers were also able to show that when consumer xenocentrism grew too much, a ‘protection of the herd’ mentality caused the pendulum to swing back towards consumer ethnocentrism (nationalism).
In his doctoral dissertation, Steven James Lawrence suggests xenocentrism may be influential in making consumers buying decisions as they might have "favorable orientations to products from outside their membership group."
Puja Mondal cited some examples from India: "People in India often assume that British lifestyle (dress pattern, etc.), French fashion or Japanese electronic devices (TV, tape recorders, mobile set, washing machines, etc.) and Swiss watches are superior to their own."
Grace Susetyo suggests "the idea that foreign cultures and their elements are superior to the local" causes a crisis of cultural identity among Western-educated Indonesians and is a problem that needs to be eradicated.
George Balabanis and Adamantios Diamantopoulos further defined consumer xenocentrism to be a multi-dimensional construct by which to explain consumer affinities for foreign products. They define consumer xenocentrism to be rooted in two concepts, perceived inferiority of domestic goods and aggrandized perception of foreign products.
The Academy of International Business is studying "out of group favoritism and in-group derogation" as a consumer effect in the Chinese consumer market.
Measurement of consumer xenocentrism
Lawrence uses the definition of xenocentrism, conceived by Kent and Burnight, to propose a scale, CXENO, to predict how xenocentric views of non-domestic goods affects consumer behavior. The most recently proposed scale to quantity xenocentric consumer tendencies, XSCALE, includes both instances of social and consumer xenocentrism.
Economists have begun to include consumer xenocentrism, along with other consumer centrisms such as consumer ethnocentrism and consumer cosmopolitanism, in their analysis of consumer behavior. Most recent research has looked at how these three centrisms impact one another.
Further reading
See also
References
Bias
Prejudices
Multiculturalism
1950s neologisms
Anthropology
Affirmative action
Political terminology
Linguistic controversies | 0.765253 | 0.987899 | 0.755992 |
Capstone course | A capstone course, also known as a synthesis and capstone project, senior synthesis, among other terms, is a project that serves as the culminating and usually integrative praxis experience of an educational program mostly found in American-style pedagogy. Although somewhat different from an industry-oriented capstone project, case study, case method, or praxis commonly used in American-style higher education; in the Commonwealth of Nations, Bologna Process, and in other parts of the world influenced by their education systems, a senior thesis (thesis) usually takes its place as a culmination of an educational program but is much more theoretical and academia-oriented rather than the praxis and industry-oriented synthesis and capstone project.
It is a hands-on project, essay, research paper, or other document submitted in support of a candidature for a degree or professional qualification, written in a professional writing format, presenting from the perspective of a professional in the field as opposed to the perspective of an academic researcher or student who typically use an academic writing format.
Some universities and colleges award a Capstone Award or Capstone Prize based on merit in the capstone course.
The term derives from the final decorative coping or "cap-stone" used to complete a building or monument. In higher education, the term has been in common use in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, although there is evidence that it was in use as early as the late 1800s. It has gradually been gaining currency in other countries, particularly where attention has focused on student outcomes and employability in undergraduate studies. National grant projects in Australia and the U.K. have further raised the profile of the capstone experience.
See also
Major (academic)
Seminar
Thesis
References
Educational programs | 0.760652 | 0.993848 | 0.755973 |
Islamic neo-traditionalism | Islamic neo-traditionalism also known as Wasatism is a contemporary strand of Sunni Islam that emphasizes adherence to the four principal Sunni schools of law (Madhahib), belief in one of the Ash'ari, Maturidi and Athari creeds (Aqaid) and the practice of Sufism (Tasawwuf), which Islamic neo-traditionalists consider to be the Sunni tradition.
Beliefs
Islamic neo-traditionalists believe Islam fundamentally consists of three concepts: Fiqh, Aqidah and Tasawwuf. Fiqh is regarded as being delineated by the Shafiʽi, Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali schools of law and Aqidah by the Ash'ari, Maturidi, and Athari creeds. The neo-traditionalist understanding of the religion is therefore thought to lie with the scholars of these fields who possess an unbroken scholarly lineage or chain of transmission (Isnad) to their classical authorities, which ultimately end with Muhammad. A scholar's authoritativeness is based on whether or not he has been issued an Ijazah by his teachers, which lists their scholarly chain and grants him a license to teach on its authority.
Neo-traditionalists argue against the position that following a school of law (Taqlid) is unnecessary, claiming that it implies previous generations of Sunni Muslims were mistaken in their understanding of Islam, that it is impossible to derive correct rulings without relying on a school's legal principles, and that it will lead to laypeople making Ijtihad, thereby irreversibly disrupting Sunni legal unity and introducing new practices to the religion. Islamic neo-traditionalists are open to the changing of Fiqh and the transpiring of new Ijtihad to combat new challenges in the contemporary world Muslims now live in. Neo-traditionalism overlaps with modernism in its core emphasis and promotion of progressive view points, Fiqh al-Aqalliyat (minority jurisprudence), and, to a certain degree, non-denominationalism.
History
Western neo-traditionalism
Islamic neo-traditionalism emerged in the West during the 1990s following the return of several Muslim scholars who had studied at traditionalist centres of Islamic learning in the Arab world, including Hamza Yusuf, Abdal Hakim Murad and Umar Faruq Abdullah, who intended to disseminate the knowledge they had learned throughout their communities. Younger scholars who are linked to neo-traditionalism include Hasan Spiker and Yahya Rhodus. Critiques of progressivism are made by some members in the movement, which is held responsible for spiritual decay, the decline of Islamic metaphysics and the rise of liberal and progressive Islamic movements. Western neo-traditionalists have established their own religious educational institutes, including Zaytuna College, Cambridge Muslim College and the online Islamic seminary SeekersGuidance.
Arab Spring
Following the Arab Spring, some neo-traditionalist scholars adopted a counter-revolutionary politically quietist stance citing the prohibition of resistance against ruling authorities by a number of pre-modern Sunni jurists and concerns that political upheaval would empower Islamic fundamentalist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Their subsequent alliance with the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, and their silence towards or outright approval of their actions, attracted criticism, particularly the conduct of Ali Gomaa and Hamza Yusuf after the August 2013 Rabaa massacre.
However other neo-traditionalist scholars such as Muhammed al-Yaqoubi openly advocated for the removal of dictators such as Bashar al-Assad.
The need for Islamic Revival
Fauzi Abdul Hamid of the Middle East Institute wrote:
"Contrary in a way to the stereotypical picture of traditionalists, who cling to the ''closing of the gates of Ijtihad (opining)'', neo-traditionalists do not deny the need for and wisdom of dispensing with Taqlid (following a school of law) when conditions beckon and are ripe for it. Neo-traditionalists accept the shortcomings of traditionalism that have led to passivity and stagnation, and admit that latter-day Sufis suffer from a perception deficit among the larger Muslim populace as not being down-to-earth enough to problematise the inner malaise of the Ummah."
Contemporary neo-traditionalists
Abdal Hakim Murad
Hamza Yusuf
Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad
Muhammad Said Ramadan al-Bouti
Ali Gomaa
Umar bin Hafiz
Umar Faruq Abd-Allah
Abdallah bin Bayyah
Ali al-Jifri
Muhammad al-Yaqoubi
Nuh Ha Mim Keller
Yasir Qadhi
Faraz Rabbani
The Lebanese Sufi movement al-Ahbash has also been described as neo-traditionalist.
See also
Traditionalism (Islam in Indonesia)
Political quietism in Islam
American Islam (term)
References
Sunni Islamic branches | 0.762925 | 0.990886 | 0.755972 |
Workplace | A workplace is a location where someone works, for their employer or themselves, a place of employment. Such a place can range from a home office to a large office building or factory. For industrialized societies, the workplace is one of the most important social spaces other than the home, constituting "a central concept for several entities: the worker and [their] family, the employing organization, the customers of the organization, and the society as a whole". The development of new communication technologies has led to the development of the virtual workplace and remote work.
Workplace issues
Sexual harassment: Unwelcome sexual advances, conduct or remarks of a sexual nature which unreasonably interferes with the performance of a person's job or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.
Kiss up kick down
Toxic workplace
Workplace aggression: A specific type of aggression that occurs in the workplace.
Workplace bullying: The tendency of individuals or groups to use persistent aggressive or unreasonable behavior against a co-worker or subordinate.
Workplace conflict: A specific type of conflict that occurs in the workplace.
Workplace culture: The social behaviors and norms in the workplace.
Workplace counterproductive behaviour: Employee behavior that goes against the goals of an organization.
Workplace cyber-aggression: Workplace e-mail or text messages that threaten or frighten employees.
Workplace democracy: The application of democracy in all its forms to the workplace.
Workplace deviance: Deliberate or intentional desire to cause harm to an organization.
Workplace discrimination: Discrimination in hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, and compensation.
Workplace diversity: Theory that in a global marketplace, a company that employs a diverse workforce is better able to understand the demographics of the marketplace it serves.
Workplace emotions: Emotions in the workplace play a large role in how an entire organization communicates within itself and to the outside world.
Workplace employee factors leading to job promotion.
Laziness in the workplace which could lead to Industrial accidents or other things.
Workplace empowerment: Provides employees with opportunities to make their own decisions with regards to their tasks.
Workplace evaluation: A tool employers use to review the performance of an employee.
Feminisation of the workplace: Trend towards greater employment of women, and of men willing and able to operate with these more 'feminine' modes of interaction.
Workplace relationships: Directly related to several other area of study including cohesion, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intention to leave.
Workplace gender inequality: Relates to wage discrimination and career advancement.
Workplace gossip: Idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.
Workplace harassment: Offensive, belittling or threatening behavior directed at an individual worker or a group of workers.
Workplace health surveillance: The removal of the causative factors of disease.
Workplace hazard controls for COVID-19: Measures employed to control the spread of COVID-19
Workplace humor: Comedy that revolves around the inner workings of various jobs.
Workplace incivility: Low-intensity deviant workplace behavior such as rudeness, discourtesy and displaying a lack of regard for others.
Workplace intervention: Scheme to improve both organizational and individual health as well as help workers manage job stress.
Workplace jargon: Highly specialized terminology or needlessly complicated and obfuscated phrases sometimes used by managers or colleagues.
Workplace listening: a type of active listening that is generally employed in a professional environment.
Mobbing: similar concept to workplace bullying.
Workplace morale: Workplace events play a large part in changing employee morale, such as heavy layoffs, the cancellation of overtime, canceling benefits programs, and the lack of union representation.
Workplace menopause: The impact menopause symptoms can have on attendance and performance in the workplace.
Workplace narcissism
Workplace phobia: An actual or imagined confrontation with the workplace or certain stimuli at the workplace causes a prominent anxiety reaction in a person.
Workplace politics: The use of one's individual or assigned power within an employing organization for the purpose of obtaining advantages beyond one's legitimate authority.
Workplace privacy: Employees typically must relinquish some of their privacy while at the workplace, but how much can be a contentious issue.
Workplace probation: A status given to new employees of a company or business.
Workplace psychopathy: Psychopaths can do enormous damage when they are positioned in senior management roles
Workplace revenge: Refers to the general action of purposeful retaliation within the workplace in an attempt to seek justice.
Workplace sabotage: When disgruntled workers damage or destroy equipment or interfere with the smooth running of a workplace.
Workplace safety: Occupational safety and health is a category of management responsibility in places of employment.
Workplace spirituality: A grassroots movement with individuals seeking to live their faith and/or spiritual values in the workplace.
Workplace strategy: The dynamic alignment of an organization's work patterns with the work environment to enable peak performance and reduce costs.
Workplace stress: The harmful physical and emotional response that occurs when there is a poor match between job demands and the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker.
Workplace surveillance: Businesses use workplace surveillance as a way of monitoring the activities of their employees.
Workplace swearing: In the UK, swearing in the workplace can be an act of gross misconduct under certain circumstances.
Professional development: Skills and knowledge attained for both personal development and career advancement.
Workplace violence Violence that originates from employees or employers and threatens employers and/or other employees.
Workplace wellness: Program offered by some employers to support behavior conducive to the health of employees.
See also
Corporation
Employment
Factory
Office
Organization
Whistleblower
References
Further reading | 0.76448 | 0.98883 | 0.75594 |
Public art | Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically accessible to the public; it is installed in public space in both outdoor and indoor settings. Public art seeks to embody public or universal concepts rather than commercial, partisan, or personal concepts or interests. Notably, public art is also the direct or indirect product of a public process of creation, procurement, and/or maintenance.
Independent art created or staged in or near the public realm (for example, graffiti, street art) lacks official or tangible public sanction has not been recognized as part of the public art genre, however this attitude is changing due to the efforts of several street artists. Such unofficial artwork may exist on private or public property immediately adjacent to the public realm, or in natural settings but, however ubiquitous, it sometimes falls outside the definition of public art by its absence of public process or public sanction as "bona fide" public art.
Characteristics of public art
Common characteristics of public art are public accessibility, public realm placement, community involvement, public process (including public funding); these works can be permanent or temporary. According to the curator and art/architecture historian, Mary Jane Jacob, public art brings art closer to life.
Public accessibility: placement in public space/public realm
Public art is publicly accessible, both physically and/or visually. When public art is installed on privately owned property, general public access rights still exist.
Public art is characterized by site specificity, where the artwork is "created in response to the place and community in which it resides" and by the relationship between its content and the public. Cher Krause Knight states that "art's publicness rests in the quality and impact of its exchange with audiences ... at its most public, art extends opportunities for community engagement but cannot demand particular conclusion,” it introduces social ideas but leaves room for the public to come to their own conclusions.
Public process, public funding
Public art is often characterized by community involvement and collaboration. Public artists and organizations often work in conjunction with architects, fabricators/construction workers, community residents and leaders, designers, funding organizations, and others.
Public art is often created and provided within formal "art in public places" programs that can include community arts education and art performance. Such programs may be financed by government entities through Percent for Art initiatives.
Longevity
Some public art is planned and designed for stability and permanence. Its placement in, or exposure to, the physical public realm requires both safe and durable materials. Public artworks are designed to withstand the elements (sun, wind, water) as well as human activity. In the United States, unlike gallery, studio, or museum artworks, which can be transferred or sold, public art is legally protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) which requires an official deaccession process for sale or removal.
Forms of public art
The following forms of public art identify to what extent public art may be physically integrated with the immediate context or environment. These forms, which can overlap, employ different types of public art that suit a particular form of environment integration.
stand alone: for example, sculptures, statues, structures
integrated (into façades, pavements, or landscapes): for example, bas reliefs, Hill figure, Geoglyph, Petroglyph, mosaics, digital lighting
applied (to a surface): for example, murals, building-mounted sculptures
installation (where artwork and site are mutually embedded): for example, transit station art
ephemeral (or non-permanent): performances, temporary installations: for example, a precarious rock balance or an instance of colored smoke.
History of public art
United States, 20th century
In the 1930s, the production of national symbolism implied by 19th century monuments began being regulated by long-term national programs with propaganda goals (Federal Art Project, United States; Cultural Office, Soviet Union). Programs like President Roosevelt's New Deal facilitated the development of public art during the Great Depression but was wrought with propaganda goals. New Deal art programs were intended to develop national pride in American culture while avoiding addressing the faltering economy. Although problematic, New Deal art programs such as FAP altered the relationship between the artist and society by making art accessible to all people. The New Deal program Art-in-Architecture (A-i-A) developed percent for art programs, a structure for funding public art still utilized today. This program allotted one half of one percent of total construction costs of all government buildings to the purchase of contemporary American art for them. A-i-A helped solidify the policy that public art in the United States should be truly owned by the public. It also promoted site-specific public art.
The approach to public art radically changed during the 1970s, following the civil rights movement's claims on public space, the alliance between urban regeneration programs and artistic efforts at the end of the 1960s, and revised ideas of sculpture. Public art acquired a status beyond mere decoration and visualization of official national histories in public space. Public art became much more about the public. This perspective was reinforced in the 1970s by urban cultural policies, for example the New York-based Public Art Fund and urban or regional Percent for Art programs in the United States and Europe. Moreover, public art discourse shifted from a national to a local level, consistent with the site-specific trend and criticism of institutional exhibition spaces emerging in contemporary art practices.
Environmental public art
Between the 1970s and the 1980s, gentrification and ecological issues surfaced in public art practice both as a commission motive and as a critical focus by artists. The individual, Romantic retreat element implied in the conceptual structure of land art, and its will to reconnect the urban environment with nature, is turned into a political claim in projects such as Wheatfield – A Confrontation (1982) by American artist Agnes Denes, as well as in Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks (1982). Both projects focus on the increase of ecological awareness through a green urban design process, bringing Denes to plant a two-acre field of wheat in downtown Manhattan and Beuys to plant 7000 oaks coupled with basalt blocks in Kassel, Germany in a guerrilla or community garden fashion. In recent years, programs of green urban regeneration aiming at converting abandoned lots into green areas regularly include public art programs. This is the case for High Line Art, 2009, a commission program for the High Line, derived from the conversion of a portion of railroad in New York City; and of Gleisdreieck, 2012, an urban park derived from the partial conversion of a railway station in Berlin which hosts, since 2012, an open-air contemporary art exhibition.
The 1980s also witnessed the institutionalization of sculpture parks as curated programs. While the first public and private open-air sculpture exhibitions and collections dating back to the 1930s aimed at creating an appropriate setting for large-scale sculptural forms difficult to show in museum galleries, installations such as Noguchi's Garden in Queens, New York (1985) reflect the necessity of a permanent relationship between the artwork and its site.
This relationship also develops in Donald Judd’s project for the Chinati Foundation (1986) in Texas, which advocates for the permanent nature of large-scale installations whose fragility may be destroyed when re-locating the work.
Sustainability and public art
Public art faces a design challenge by its very nature: how best to activate the images in its surroundings. The concept of “sustainability” arises in response to the perceived environmental deficiencies of a city. Sustainable development, promoted by the United Nations since the 1980s, includes economical, social, and ecological aspects. A sustainable public art work would include plans for urban regeneration and disassembly. Sustainability has been widely adopted in many environmental planning and engineering projects. Sustainable art is a challenge to respond the needs of an opening space in public.
In another public artwork titled "Mission leopard" was commissioned in 2016 in Haryana, India, among the remote deciduous terrain of Tikli village a team coordinated by Artist Hunny Mor painted two leopards perched on branches on a water source tank 115 feet high. The campaign was aimed to spread awareness on co-habitation and environmental conservation. The art work can be seen from several miles across in all directions.
Ron Finley's work as the Gangsta Gardener (or Guerrilla Gardener) of South Central L.A. is an example of an artist whose works constitute temporary public art works in the form of public food gardens that addresses sustainability, food security and food justice.
Andrea Zittel has produced works, such as Indianapolis Island that reference sustainability and permaculture with which participants can actively engage.
Interactive public art
Some public art is designed to encourage direct hands-on interaction. Examples include public art that contain interactive musical, light, video, or water components. For example, the architectural centerpiece in front of the Ontario Science Centre is a fountain and musical instrument (hydraulophone) by Steve Mann where people can produce sounds by blocking water jets to force water through sound-producing mechanisms. An early and unusual interactive public artwork was Jim Pallas' 1980 Century of Light in Detroit, Michigan of a large outdoor mandala of lights that reacted in complex ways to sounds and movements detected by radar (mistakenly destroyed 25 years later). Another example is Rebecca Hackemann's two works The Public Utteraton Machines of 2015 and The Urban Field Glass Project / Visionary Sightseeing Binoculars 2008, 20013, 2021, 2022. The Public Utteraton Machines records people's opinions of other public art in New York, such as Jeff Koon's Split Rocker and displays responses online.
New genre public art
In the 1990s, some artists called for artistic social intervention in public space. These efforts employed the term "new genre public art" in addition to the terms "contextual art", "relational art", "participatory art", "dialog art", "community-based art", and "activist art". "New genre public art" is defined by Suzanne Lacy as "socially engaged, interactive art for diverse audiences with connections to identity politics and social activism". Mel Chin's Fundred Dollar Bill Project is an example of an interactive, social activist public art project. Rather than metaphorically reflecting social issues, new genre public art strove to explicitly empower marginalized groups while maintaining aesthetic appeal. An example was curator Mary Jane Jacob's 1993 public art show "Culture in Action" that investigated social systems though engagement with audiences that typically did not visit traditional art museums.
In the 21st Century public art has often been a significant component of public realm projects in UK cities and towns, often via engagement with local residents where artists will work with the community in developing an idea or sourcing content to be featured in the artwork. Examples would include Adrian Riley's 'Come Follow Me' in Minster in Lincolnshire where a 35m long text artwork in the public square outside the town's Minster includes local residents own stories alongside official civic history and the town's origin myth.
Curated public art
The term "curated public art" is used to define the way of producing public art that significantly takes into account the context, the process and the different actors involved. It defines itself slightly differently from top-down approaches of direct commissioning.
If it mainly designates the fact that a curator conducts and supervises the realization of a public art work for a third party, it can also mean that the art work is produced by a community or public who commissions a work in collaboration with a curator-mediator.
For the first, significant examples of these prospective manners of commissioning art projects have been established by the Public Art Fund launched by Doris C. Freedman in 1977, with a new approach in the way the percent for art was used, or the public art funds of Geneva with the Neon Parallax project involving a very large urban environnement in 2005.
For the second one can refer to Les Nouveaux Commanditaires launched by Fondation de France with François Hers in 1990 with the idea a project can respond to a community's wish. The New York High Line from 2009 is a good example although less art is involved. The doual'art project in Douala (Cameroon, 1991) is based on a commissioning system that brings together the community, the artist and the commissioning institution for the realization of the project.
Memorial public art
Memorials for individuals, groups of people or events are sometimes represented through public art. Examples are Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC, Tim Tate's AIDS Monument in New Orleans, and Kenzō Tange's Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan.
Controversies
Public art is sometimes controversial. The following public art controversies have been notable:
Detroit's Heidelberg Project was controversial for several decades since its inception in 1986 due to its garish appearance.
Richard Serra's minimalist piece Tilted Arc was removed from Foley Square in New York City in 1989 after office workers complained their work routine was disrupted by the piece. A public court hearing ruled against continued display of the work.
Victor Pasmore's Apollo Pavilion in the English New Town of Peterlee has been a focus for local politicians and other groups complaining about the governance of the town and allocation of resources. Artists and cultural leaders mounted a campaign to rehabilitate the reputation of the work with the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art commissioning artists Jane and Louise Wilson to make a video installation about the piece in 2003.
Sam Durant's Scaffold (2017), installed in the Walker Art Center's garden represented the gallows used in seven government hangings. Native American groups found the work offensive, as 38 Dakota people had been hung at Mankato, Minnesota. The artist agreed to dismantle and permit the tribal elders to burn and bury the piece.
Maurice Agis' Dreamspace V, a huge inflatable maze erected in Chester-le-Street, County Durham, killed two women and seriously injured a three-year-old girl in 2006 when a strong wind broke its moorings and carried it into the air, with thirty people trapped inside.
Ron Robertson-Swann's Vault, an abstract yellow polygonal structure erected in Melbourne City Square was considered so visually offensive that it was moved several times and referred by much of the public by the racist colour metaphor Yellow Peril.
There have been numerous controversies regarding monuments in the United States, many of which have to do with public monuments dedicated to soldiers and leaders of the Confederate States of America following the American Civil War.
Online documentation
Online databases of local and regional public art emerged in the 1990s and 2000s in tandem with the development of web-based data. Online public art databases can be general or selective (limited to sculptures or murals), and they can be governmental, quasi-governmental, or independent. Some online databases, such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Archives of American Art. It currently holds over six thousand works in its database.
There are dozens of non-government organizations and educational institutions that maintain online public art databases of public artworks covering numerous areas, including the National Endowment for the Arts, WESTAF, Public Art Fund, Creative Time, and others. Public Art Online, maintains a database of public art works, essays and case studies, with a focus on the UK. The Institute for Public Art, based in the UK, maintains information about public art on six continents.
The WikiProject Public art project began in 2009 and strove to document public art around the globe. While this project received initial attention from the academic community, it mainly relied on temporary student contributions. Its status is currently unknown.
See also
ART/MEDIA
Association for Public Art
Canary Wharf Art Trail, London
Environmental sculpture
List of sculptors
Lock On (street art)
Murals
Plop art
Sculpture trail
Site-specific art
Statue
Street installation
Trompe-l'œil
References
Bibliography
Cartiere, Cameron, and Martin Zebracki, eds. The Everyday Practice of Public Art: Art, Space, and Social Inclusion. Routledge, 2016.
Zebracki, Martin. Public Artopia: Art in Public Space in Question. Amsterdam University Press, 2012.
Chris van Uffelen: 500 x Art in Public: Masterpieces from the Ancient World to the Present. Braun Publishing, 1. Auflage, 2011, 309 S., in Engl. [Mit Bild, Kurzbiografie und kurzer Beschreibung werden 500 Künstler mit je einem Kunstwerk im öffentlichen Raum vorgestellt. Alle Kontinente (außer der Antarktis) und alle Kunststile sind vertreten.]
Savage, Kirk. Monument Wars: Washington, DC, the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape. University of California Press, 2009.
Powers, John. Temporary Art and Public Place: Comparing Berlin with Los Angeles. European University Studies, Peter Lang Publishers, 2009.
Durante, Dianne. Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide. New York University Press, 2007.
Ronald Kunze: Stadt, Umbau, Kunst: Sofas und Badewannen aus Beton in: STADTundRAUM, H., S. 62–65, 2/2006.
Goldstein, Barbara, ed. Public Art by the Book, 2005.
Federica Martini, Public Art in Mobile A2K Methodology guide, 2002.
(ed.): Public Art. Kunst im öffentlichen Raum, Ostfildern 2001
Finkelpearl, Tom, ed. Dialogues in Public Art. MIT Press, 2000.
Lacy, Susanne, ed. Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Bay Press, 1995.
Deutsche, Rosalyn. Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics. MIT Press, 1998.
Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. University of California Press, 1996.
Miles, Malcolm. Art, Space and the City: Public Art and Urban Futures, 1997.
Academy Group Ltd. Public Art, Art & Design. London, 1996
Doss, Erika Lee. Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities. Smithsonian Books, 1995.
Senie, Harriet, and Sally Webster, eds. Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy. HarperCollins, 1992.
Crimp, Douglas. On the Museum's Ruins. MIT Press, 1993.
Miles, Malcolm, et al. Art For Public Places: Critical Essays, 1989.
(ed.). Kunst im öffentlichen Raum. Anstöße der 80er Jahre, Köln, 1989
Love, Suzanne, and Kim Dammers. The Lansing Area Arts Attitude Survey. Michigan State University Center for Urban Affairs, Lansing, 1978
Herlyn, Sunke, Manske, Hans-Joachim, and Weisser, Michael (eds.). Kunst im Stadtbild - Von Kunst am Bau zu Kunst im öffentlichen Raum, (catalog for exhibition of the same name, at University of Bremen), Bremen, 1976
External links
Infecting the City Public Arts Festival
Public Art Archive™
CultureNOW's MuseumWithoutWalls Public Art Database
Public sculpture in Perth Australia
Public sculpture in Cape Town South Africa
Public art in Africa, web dossier compiled by the library of the African Studies Centre, July 2019
Types of art museums and galleries | 0.764544 | 0.988739 | 0.755934 |
Postmodernist film | Postmodernist film is a classification for works that articulate the themes and ideas of postmodernism through the medium of cinema. Some of the goals of postmodernist film are to subvert the mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterization, and to test the audience's suspension of disbelief. Typically, such films also break down the cultural divide between high and low art and often upend typical portrayals of gender, race, class, genre, and time with the goal of creating something that does not abide by traditional narrative expression.
Specific elements
Modernist film came to maturity in the era between WWI and WWII with characteristics such as montage and symbolic imagery, and often took the form of expressionist cinema and surrealist cinema (as seen in the works of Fritz Lang and Luis Buñuel) while postmodernist film – similar to postmodernism as a whole – is a reaction to the modernist works and to their tendencies (such as nostalgia and angst). Modernist cinema has been said to have "explored and exposed the formal concerns of the medium by placing them at the forefront of consciousness. Modernist cinema questions and made visible the meaning-production practices of film." The auteur theory and idea of an author creating a work from their singular vision was a cultural advancement that coincided with the further maturation of modernist cinema. It has been said that "To investigate the transparency of the image is modernist but to undermine its reference to reality is to engage with the aesthetics of postmodernism." The modernist film has more faith in the author, the individual, and the accessibility of reality itself than the postmodernist film, and is generally more sincere in tone.
Postmodernism is in many ways interested in the liminal space that would be typically ignored by more modernist or traditionally narrative offerings. Henri Bergson writes in his book Creative Evolution, "The obscurity is cleared up, the contradiction vanishes, as soon as we place ourselves along the transition, in order to distinguish states in it by making cross cuts therein in thoughts. The reason is that there is more in the transition than the series of states, that is to say, the possible cuts--more in the movement than the series of position, that is to say, the possible stops."
Postmodernist film is often separated from modernist cinema and traditional narrative film by three key characteristics. One of them is an extensive use of homage or pastiche. The second element is meta-reference or self-reflexivity, highlighting the construction and relation of the image to other images in media and not to any kind of external reality. A self-referential film calls the viewer's attention – either through characters' knowledge of their own fictional nature, or through visuals – that the film itself is only a film. This is sometimes achieved by emphasizing the unnatural look of an image which seems contrived. Another technique used to achieve meta-reference is the use of intertextuality, in which the film's characters reference or discuss other works of fiction. Additionally, many postmodern films tell stories that unfold out of chronological order, deconstructing or fragmenting time so as to highlight the fact that what is appearing on screen is constructed. A third common element is a bridging of the gap between highbrow and lowbrow activities and artistic styles, e.g. a parody of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling in which Adam is reaching for a McDonald's burger rather than the hand of God. The use of homage and pastiche can, in and of itself, result in a fusion of high and low art. Lastly, contradictions of all sorts – whether it be in visual technique, characters' morals, etc. – are crucial to postmodernism.
Specific postmodern examples
Once Upon a Time in the West
Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West has often been referred to by critics as an example of a postmodern Western. The 1968 spaghetti Western revolves around a beautiful widow, a mysterious gunslinger playing a harmonica, a ruthless villain, and a lovable but hard-nosed bandit who just escaped from jail. The story was developed by Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento by watching classic American Westerns, and the final product is a deliberate attempt to both pay homage to and subvert Western genre conventions and audience expectations. Among the most notable examples of intertextuality are the plot similarities to Johnny Guitar, the visual reference to High Noon of a clock stopped at high noon in the middle of a gunfight, and the casting of Henry Fonda as the story's sadistic antagonist which was a deliberate subversion of Fonda's image as a hero established in such films as My Darling Clementine and Fort Apache, both directed by John Ford.
Blade Runner
Ridley Scott's Blade Runner might be the best-known postmodernist film. Scott's 1982 film is about a future dystopia where "replicants" (human cyborgs) have been invented and are deemed dangerous enough to hunt down when they escape. There is tremendous effacement of boundaries between genres and cultures, and styles that are generally more separate, along with the fusion of disparate styles and times, a common trope in postmodernist cinema. The fusion of noir and science-fiction is another example of the film deconstructing cinema and genre. This embodies the postmodern tendency to destroy boundaries and genres into a self-reflexive product. The 2017 Academy Award-winning sequel Blade Runner 2049 also tackled postmodern anxieties.
Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is another example of a postmodernist film. The Palme d'Or-winning film tells the interweaving stories of gangsters, a boxer, and robbers. The 1994 film breaks down chronological time and demonstrates a particular fascination with intertextuality: bringing in texts from both traditionally "high" and "low" realms of art. This foregrounding of media places the self as "a loose, transitory combination of media consumption choices." Pulp Fiction fractures time (by the use of asynchronous time lines) and by using styles of prior decades and combining them together in the movie. By focusing on intertextuality and the subjectivity of time, Pulp Fiction demonstrates the postmodern obsession with signs and subjective perspective as the exclusive location of anything resembling meaning.
Other selected examples
Aside from the aforementioned Once Upon a Time in the West, the Blade Runner sequels and Pulp Fiction, postmodern cinema includes films such as:
20th Century
Hellzapoppin' (1941)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Duck Amuck (1953, also been called a modernist film)
All That Heaven Allows (1955; also been called a modernist film)
Written on the Wind (1956)
A Movie (1958)
Hiroshima mon amour (1959; also been called a modernist film)
L'Avventura (1960, also been called a modernist film)
Psycho (1960)
Blast of Silence (1961)
Last Year at Marienbad (1961, also been called a modernist film)
8½ (1963; also been called a modernist film)
Scorpio Rising (1964)
Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Pierrot Le Fou (1965, also been called a modernist film)
Alphaville (1965)
Persona (1966; also been called a modernist film)
Batman (1966)
Blowup (1966; also been called a modernist film)
Weekend (1967)
Branded to Kill (1967)
Casino Royale (1967)
Playtime (1967; also been called a modernist film)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968; also called a modernist film)
Teorema (1968)
Death by Hanging (1968)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968; also called a modernist film)
The Color of Pomegranates (1969; also been called a modernist film)
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969; also been called a modernist film)
The Honeymoon Killers (1970)
Performance (1970)
The Conformist (1970)
El Topo (1970)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Badlands (1973)
Day for Night (1973; also called a modernist film)
The Holy Mountain (1973; also been called a modernist film)
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974)
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
F for Fake (1975)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Star Wars (1977)
The American Friend (1977)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
House (1977)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
All That Jazz (1979)
Alien (1979)
Stalker (1979)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)
The Shining (1980)
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980)
Raging Bull (1980)
Diva (1981)
Escape from New York (1981)
The Evil Dead (1981)
The Howling (1981)
Ms. 45 (1981)
The Thing (1982)
The Atomic Cafe (1982)
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)
Liquid Sky (1982)
Sans Soleil (1983)
Videodrome (1983)
Zelig (1983)
Love Streams (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Repo Man (1984)
The Terminator (1984)
Brazil (1985)
Shoah (1985)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
After Hours (1985)
Terrorizers (1986)
Mauvais Sang (1986)
Blue Velvet (1986)
A Zed and Two Noughts (1986)
Walker (1987)
The Princess Bride (1987)
Innerspace (1987)
Wings of Desire (1987)
Om-Dar-B-Dar (1988)
Akira (1988)
Beetlejuice (1988)
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
They Live (1988)
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Jesus of Montreal (1989)
sex, lies and videotape (1989)
Roger & Me (1989)
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Close-Up (1990)
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Miller's Crossing (1990)
Barton Fink (1991)
JFK (1991)
The Double Life of Veronique (1991)
Until the End of the World (1991)
Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991)
Aladdin (1992)
Orlando (1992)
The Player (1992)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Falling Down (1993)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Last Action Hero (1993)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
The Piano (1993)
Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
True Romance (1993)
Through the Olive Trees (1994)
Sátántangó (1994)
Chungking Express (1994)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Natural Born Killers (1994)
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Serial Mom (1994)
Fallen Angels (1995)
Dead Man (1995)
Braveheart (1995)
Get Shorty (1995)
Underground (1995)
Showgirls (1995)
Fargo (1996)
From Dusk till Dawn (1996)
Schizopolis (1996)
Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996)
Scream (1996)
Irma Vep (1996)
End of Evangelion (1997)
Lost Highway (1997)
Gummo (1997)
Boogie Nights (1997)
Dark City (1997)
Starship Troopers (1997)
Titanic (1997)
Funny Games (1997)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
New Rose Hotel (1998)
Run Lola Run (1998)
The Hole (1998)
The Truman Show (1998)
Pleasantville (1998)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
You've Got Mail (1998)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Fight Club (1999)
The Straight Story (1999)
American Beauty (1999)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
The Matrix (1999)
Magnolia (1999)
21st Century
American Psycho (2000)
Memento (2000)
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Timecode (2000)
Rejected (2000)
The Majestic (2001)
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Shrek (2001)
Waking Life (2001)
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Donnie Darko (2001)
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)
The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
Pulse (2001)
Far From Heaven (2002)
The Hours (2002)
24 Hour Party People (2002)
Down with Love (2003)
Lost in Translation (2003)
The Fog of War (2003)
Zatōichi (2003)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Team America: World Police (2004)
Tropical Malady (2004)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
The Machinist (2004)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Brick (2005)
Grizzly Man (2005)
Still Life (2006)
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Enchanted (2007)
I'm Not There (2007)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
The Beaches of Agnès (2008)
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Hunger (2008)
Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Enter the Void (2009)
Shutter Island (2010)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
Inception (2010)
Drive (2011)
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Shame (2011)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
The Act of Killing (2012)
Tabu (2012)
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Holy Motors (2012)
ParaNorman (2012)
Post Tenebras Lux (2012)
Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Get a Horse! (2013)
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Her (2013)
Only God Forgives (2013)
Boyhood (2014)
Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
The Lego Movie (2014)
The Look of Silence (2014)
Cemetery of Splendour (2015)
World of Tomorrow (2015)
Deadpool (2016)
La La Land (2016)
Swiss Army Man (2016)
Get Out (2017)
I, Tonya (2017)
The Square (2017)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Wonderstruck (2017)
Spider-Verse (2018–2024)
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
The House That Jack Built (2018)
Long Day's Journey into Night (2018)
Knives Out (2019)
Pain & Glory (2019)
Last Night in Soho (2021)
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)
Belle (2021)
Bergman Island (2021)
Babylon (2022)
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Nope (2022)
Razzennest (2022)
White Noise (2022)
Barbie (2023)
Beau is Afraid (2023)
List of notable postmodernist filmmakers
Sofia Coppola
Sergio Leone
Steve McQueen
Wong Kar-Wai
Don Hertzfeldt
Christopher Nolan
Douglas Sirk (also been called a modernist filmmaker)
Quentin Tarantino
Joel and Ethan Coen
Oliver Stone
Robert Altman
Woody Allen
David Lynch
Tim Burton
Joe Dante
Errol Morris (also been called an anti-postmodernist filmmaker)
Brian De Palma
David Cronenberg
Peter Bogdanovich
Martin Scorsese
Ridley Scott
Wes Anderson
Michael Haneke
Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Verhoeven
Steven Soderbergh
Pedro Almodovar
John Waters
George A. Romero
Guy Maddin
Michel Gondry
Spike Jonze
Tex Avery (also been called a modernist filmmaker)
Abel Ferrara
Stanley Kubrick (also been called a modernist filmmaker)
Michael Moore
Jordan Peele
Peter Greenaway
Kevin Smith
Michael Mann
Postmodernist television
Postmodern television is a category or period of modern television related to the art and philosophy of postmodernism, often making use of postmodern principles such as satire, irony, and deconstruction.
List of postmodernist television shows
30 Rock
Arrested Development
The Bachelor
Bob's Burgers
Breaking Bad
The Bullwinkle Show
Catfish
The Colbert Report
Community
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Ed, Edd and Eddy
Fallout
Family Guy
Fleabag
Freakazoid!
Futurama
Hell on Wheels
Inventing Anna
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The Larry Sanders Show
Magpie Murders
Miami Vice
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The Office
The Prisoner
Real Housewives
The Rehearsal
The Ren & Stimpy Show
Rick and Morty
Riverdale
RuPaul's Drag Race
Scrubs
Seinfeld
The Simpsons
The Singing Detective
The Sopranos
South Park
Space Ghost: Coast to Coast
Spartacus
SpongeBob SquarePants
Stranger Things
True Detective
The Twilight Zone
Twin Peaks
Vanderpump Rules
WandaVision
The X-Files
See also
Remodernist film, one of the many critical stances against postmodernist cinema
Cinephilia
Art film
New Hollywood, similar in content
Social thriller
Vulgar auteurism
Auteur theory
Extreme cinema
Independent film
Hyperlink cinema
Slow cinema
Arthouse action film
Remix culture
American Eccentric Cinema
Maximalist and minimalist cinema
Cult film
Arthouse animation
Pop culture fiction
Postmodern horror
Arthouse musical
References
External links
Post-modernism and Authorship in David Lynch's Blue Velvet
For a comprehensible introduction
From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: the Local/Global Context
In Search of The Postmodern: Chapter 1
10 Lesser-Known Postmodern Films|Philosophy in Film
1940s in film
1950s in film
1960s in film
1970s in film
1980s in animation
1980s in film
1990s in animation
1990s in film
2000s in animation
2000s in film
2010s in animation
2010s in film
2020s in film
2020s in animation
Aesthetics
Concepts in aesthetics
Film genres
Postmodernism
Postmodern art
Theories of aesthetics
Visual arts | 0.761398 | 0.992748 | 0.755876 |
Cultural economics | Cultural economics is the branch of economics that studies the relation of culture to economic outcomes. Here, 'culture' is defined by shared beliefs and preferences of respective groups. Programmatic issues include whether and how much culture matters as to economic outcomes and what its relation is to institutions. As a growing field in behavioral economics, the role of culture in economic behavior is increasingly being demonstrated to cause significant differentials in decision-making and the management and valuation of assets.
Overview
Applications include the study of religion, social capital, social norms, social identity, fertility, beliefs in redistributive justice, ideology, hatred, terrorism, trust, family ties, long-term orientation, and the culture of economics. A general analytical theme is how ideas and behaviors are spread among individuals through the formation of social capital, social networks and processes such as social learning, as in the theory of social evolution and information cascades. Methods include case studies and theoretical and empirical modeling of cultural transmission within and across social groups. In 2013, Said E. Dawlabani added the value systems approach to the cultural emergence aspect of macroeconomics.
Development
Cultural economics develops from how wants and tastes are formed in society. This is partly due to nurture aspects, or what type of environment one is raised in, as it is the internalization of one's upbringing that shapes their future wants and tastes. Acquired tastes can be thought of as an example of this, as they demonstrate how preferences can be shaped socially.
A key thought area that separates the development of cultural economics from traditional economics is a difference in how individuals arrive at their decisions. While a traditional economist will view decision making as having both implicit and explicit consequences, a cultural economist would argue that an individual will not only arrive at their decision based on these implicit and explicit decisions but based on trajectories. These trajectories consist of regularities, which have been built up throughout the years and guide individuals in their decision-making process.
Combining value systems and systems thinking
Economists have also started to look at cultural economics with a systems thinking approach. In this approach, the economy and culture are each viewed as a single system where "interaction and feedback effects were acknowledged, and where in particular the dynamic were made explicit". In this sense, the interdependencies of culture and the economy can be combined and better understood by following this approach.
Said E. Dawlabani's book MEMEnomics: The Next-Generation Economic System combines the ideas of value systems (see value (ethics)) and systems thinking to provide one of the first frameworks that explores the effect of economic policies on culture. The book explores the intersections of multiple disciplines such as cultural development, organizational behavior, and memetics all in an attempt to explore the roots of cultural economics.
Growth
The advancing pace of new technology is transforming how the public consumes and shares culture. The cultural economic field has seen great growth with the advent of online social networking which has created productivity improvements in how culture is consumed. New technologies have also led to cultural convergence where all kinds of culture can be accessed on a single device. Throughout their upbringing, younger persons of the current generation are consuming culture faster than their parents ever did, and through new mediums. The smartphone is a blossoming example of this where books, music, talk, artwork and more can all be accessed on a single device in a matter of seconds. This medium and the culture surrounding it is beginning to have an effect on the economy, whether it be increasing communication while lowering costs, lowering the barriers of entry to the technology economy, or making use of excess capacity.
This field has also seen growth through the advent of new economic studies that have put on a cultural lens.
For example, Kafka and Kostis (2021) at a recent study published in the Journal of Comparative Economics, use an unbalanced panel dataset comprised from 34 OECD countries from 1981 to 2019, conclude that the cultural background during the overall period under consideration is characterized as post-materialistic and harms economic growth. Moreover, they highlight both theoretically and empirically the cultural backlash hypothesis since the cultural background of the countries under analysis presents a shift from traditional/materialistic (from 1981 up to 1998) to post-materialist values (from 1999 up to 2019). Doing so, they conclude on a positive effect of cultural background on economic growth when traditional / materialistic values prevail, and a negative effect when post-materialistic values prevail. These results highlight culture as a crucial factor for economic growth and indicate that economic policy makers should take it seriously into account before designing economic policy and in order to explain the effectiveness of economic policies implemented.
Another study on Europeans living with their families into adulthood was conducted by Paola Giuliano, a professor at UCLA. The study found that those of Southern European descent tend to live at home with their families longer than those of Northern European descent. Giuliano added cultural critique to her analysis of the research, revealing that it is Southern European culture to stay at home longer and then related this to how those who live at home longer have fewer children and start families later, thus contributing to Europe's falling birthrates. Giuliano's work is an example of how the growth of cultural economics is beginning to spread across the field.
Sustainable development
An area that cultural economics has a strong presence in is sustainable development. Sustainable development has been defined as "...development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs...". Culture plays an important role in this as it can determine how people view preparing for these future generations. Delayed gratification is a cultural economic issue that developed countries are currently dealing with. Economists argue that to ensure that the future is better than today, certain measures must be taken such as collecting taxes or "going green" to protect the environment. Policies such as these are hard for today's politicians to promote who want to win the vote of today's voters who are concerned with the present and not the future. People want to see the benefits now, not in the future.
Economist David Throsby has proposed the idea of culturally sustainable development which compasses both the cultural industries (such as the arts) and culture (in the societal sense). He has created a set of criteria in regards to for which policy prescriptions can be compared to in order to ensure growth for future generations. The criteria are as follows:
Advancement of material and non-material well-being: implies balance amongst economic, social, and cultural forces
Intergenerational equity and the maintenance of cultural capital: current generation must recognize their responsibility to future generations
Equity within the present generation: distribution of cultural resources must be fair
Recognition of interdependence: policy must understand the connections between economic, cultural and other variables within an overall system.
With these guidelines, Throsby hopes to spur the recognition between culture and economics, which is something he believes has been lacking from popular economic discussions.
Cultural finance
Cultural finance a growing field in behavioral economics that studies the impact of cultural differences on individual financial decisions and on financial markets. Probably the first paper in this area was "The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development" by Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales. The paper studied how well-known differences in social capital affected the use and availability of financial contracts across different parts of Italy. In areas of the country with high levels of social capital, households invest less in cash and more in stock, use more checks, have higher access to institutional credit, and make less use of informal credit. Few years later, the same authors published another paper "Trusting the Stock Market" where they show that a general lack of trust can limit stock market participation. Since trust has a strong cultural component, these two papers represent important contribution in cultural economics.
In 2007, Thorsten Hens and Mei Wang pointed out that indeed many areas of finance are influenced by cultural differences. The role of culture in financial behavior is also increasingly being demonstrated to have highly significant effects on the management and valuation of assets. Using the dimensions of culture identified by Shalom Schwartz, it has been proved that corporate dividend payments are determined largely by the dimensions of Mastery and Conservatism. Specifically, higher degrees of conservatism are associated with greater volumes and values of dividend payments, and higher degrees of mastery are associated with the total opposite. The effect of culture on dividend payouts has been further shown to be closely related to cultural differences in risk and time preferences.
A different study assessed the role of culture on earnings management using Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions and the index of earnings management developed by Christian Leutz; which includes the use of accrual alteration to reduce volatility in reported earnings, the use of accrual alteration to reduce volatility in reported operating cash flows, use of accounting discretion to mitigate the reporting of small losses, and the use of accounting discretion when reporting operating earnings. It was found that Hofstede's dimension of Individualism was negatively correlated with earnings management, and that uncertainty avoidance was positively correlated. Behavioral economist Michael Taillard demonstrated that investment behaviors are caused primarily by behavioral factors, largely attributed to the influence of culture on the psychological frame of the investors in different nations, rather than rational ones by comparing the cultural dimensions used both by Geert Hofstede and Robert House, identifying strong and specific influences in risk aversion behavior resulting from the overlapping cultural dimensions between them that remained constant over a 20-year period.
In regards to investing, it has been confirmed by multiple studies that greater differences between the cultures of various nations reduces the amount of investment between those countries. It was proven that both cultural differences between nations as well as the amount of unfamiliarity investors have with a culture not their own greatly reduces their willingness to invest in those nations, and that these factors have a negative impact with future returns, resulting in a cost premium on the degree of foreignness of an investment. Despite this, equity markets continue to integrate as indicated by equity price comovements, of which the two largest contributing factors are the ratio of trade between nations and the ratio of GDP resulting from foreign direct investment. Even these factors are the result of behavioral sources, however. The UN World Investment Report (2013) shows that regional integration is occurring at a more rapid rate than distant foreign relations, confirming an earlier study concluding that nations closer to each other tend to be more integrated. Since increased cultural distance reduces the amount of foreign direct investment, this results in an accelerating curvilinear correlation between financial behavior and cultural distance.
Culture also influences which factors are useful when predicting stock valuations. In Jordan, it was found that 84% of variability in stock returns were accounted for by using money supply, interest rate term structure, industry productivity growth, and risk premium; but were not influenced at all by inflation rates or dividend yield. In Nigeria, both real GDP and Consumer Price Index were both useful predictive factors, but foreign exchange rate was not. In Zimbabwe, only money supply and oil prices were found to be useful predictors of stock market valuations. India identified exchange rate, wholesale price index, gold prices, and market index as being useful factors. A comprehensive global study out of Romania attempted to identify if any factors of stock market valuation were culturally universal, identifying interest rates, inflation, and industrial production, but found that exchange rate, currency exchange volume, and trade were all unique to Romania.
Geographical origins of cultural traits
Geographical characteristics were linked recently to the emergence of cultural traits and differences in the intensity of these cultural traits across regions, countries and ethnic group. Geographical characteristics that were favorable for the usage of the plow in agriculture contributed to a gender gap in productivity, and to the emergence of gender roles in society. Agricultural characteristics that led to a higher return to agricultural investment generated a process of selection, adaptation, and learning, that increase the level of long-term orientation in society.
See also
Behavioral economics
Critique of economics
Economic theory of museums
History of schools of economic thought on arts and culture
Cultural anthropology
Cultural cognition
Cultural geography
Cultural policy
Economic anthropology
Economic imperialism (economics)
Economic sociology
Economics of the arts and literature
Evolutionary economics
Information economics
Memetics
Organizational behavior
Social economics
Sustainable development
Notes
Journals
Economic Development and Cultural Change
Journal of Cultural Economics. Description, scope and links to volume contents.
Interdisciplinary subfields of economics | 0.772125 | 0.978937 | 0.755861 |
Sex in advertising | Sex appeal in advertising is a common tactic employed to promote products and services. Research indicates that sexually appealing content, including imagery, is often used to shape or alter the consumer's perception of a brand, even if it is not directly related to the product or service being advertised. This approach, known as "sex sells," has become more prevalent among companies, leading to controversies surrounding the use of sexual campaigns in advertising.
Contemporary mainstream advertising, across various media platforms such as magazines, online, and television, frequently incorporates sexual elements to market a wide range of branded goods and services. Provocative images of attractively dressed men and women are commonly used to promote clothing, alcohol, beauty products, and fragrances. Renowned brands like Calvin Klein, Victoria's Secret, and Pepsi use such imagery to cultivate an alluring media presence.
In some cases, sexual content is overtly displayed, while in others, it is subtly integrated with imperceptible cues aimed at influencing the target audience. Furthermore, sexual content has been employed to promote mainstream products that were not traditionally associated with sex. For instance, the Dallas Opera's marketing of the more suggestive aspects of its performances is believed to have contributed to a boost in ticket sales.
The effectiveness of sex appeal in advertising varies depending on the cultural context and the gender of the recipient, though these aspects are subject to further research and discussion.
Concept
Gender Advertisements, a 1979 book by Canadian social anthropologist Erving Goffman, is a series of studies of visual communication and how gender representation in advertising communicates subtle, underlying messages about the sexual roles projected by masculine and feminine images in advertising. The book is a visual essay about sex roles in advertising and the symbolism implied in the depictions of men and women in advertising.
When couples are used in an advertisement, the sex roles played by each partner also sends out messages. The interaction of the couple may send out a message of relative dominance and power, and may stereotype the roles of one or both partners. Usually the message is very subtle, and sometimes advertisements attract interest by changing stereotypical roles. For example, companies including Spotify, Airbnb, Lynx and Amazon.com have used same-sex couples in adverts. These adverts appeal to same-sex couples; they also create the image that these companies are tolerant, allowing them to appeal to a wider consumer audience.
As many consumers and professionals are thinking people, sex may be used to grab a viewer's attention, but this is likely short-term success. Whether using sex in advertising is effective depends on the product. About three-quarters of advertisements using sex to sell the product are communicating a product-related benefit, such as the product making its users more sexually attractive.
Daily exposure on social media by adolescents to these types of influences can affect their development. Younger teenage girls are drawn to these ads in order to learn about romance and relationships.
Correlational studies have linked sociodemographic variables to adolescent viewing habits. This can include (but not limited to) sex, age, and even ethnicity. Adolescents who watch and listen to a lot of media are more likely than less regular audiences to consider stereotypes of sex roles on TV as realistic.
Types
Physical attractiveness
The use of physically attractive models in advertising is a form of sex in advertising. Physical attractiveness can be conveyed through facial beauty, physique, hair, skin complexion as well as by the model's inferred personality. This form of sex in advertising is effective as it draws attention and influences the overall feeling of the ad. Furthermore, such ads create an association between physical attractiveness and the product which sends a message to the consumer that buying and using the product will help them achieve that physique. The sexual arousal possibly elicited by physical attractiveness in adverts is thought to transfer onto the advertised product.
Sexual behavior
Marketers often use tactics such as sexual imagery in their advertisements to capture the consumer's attention for longer. Sex in advertising is also incorporated using hints of sexual behavior. The latter is communicated by the models using flirtatious body language, open posture and making eye contact with the viewer. Sexual behavior can also be displayed using several models interacting in a more or less sexual way. Sexual behavior in advertising is used to arouse sexual interest from the viewer. Research has shown that sexual arousal elicited by an advert subsequently affects the overall ad evaluation and the chances of future purchase.
For example, in a Guess clothing advert, while the models are physically attractive, it is their behavior such as position, posture and facial expressions that communicate sexual interest to the viewer. Women are often shown as being shorter, put in the background of images, shown in more 'feminine' poses than men, and generally present a higher degree of 'body display' than men in print advertisements.
Sexual embeds
Sexual embeds are a controversial form of sex in advertising. They are a powerful technique that advertising agencies do not want consumers to consciously notice. They are subliminal elements that are detected as sexual information solely at the subconscious level. Sexual embeds can take the form of objects or words that, at the subconscious level (or when occasionally consciously identified) explicitly depict sexual acts or genitalia. For example, a perfume bottle could mimic a phallic shape and its positioning could suggest sexual intercourse. Embeds are especially effective as they unconsciously trigger sexual arousal in the consumer which drives motivation and goal directed behavior such as purchase intention.
Gender roles
After women achieved the vote in the United States, Britain and Canada in the 1920s, advertising agencies exploited the new status of women. For example, they associated driving an automobile with masculinity, power, control, and dominance over a beautiful woman sitting alongside. More subtly, they published automobile ads in women's magazines, at a time when the vast majority of purchasers and drivers were in fact men. The new ads promoted themes of women's liberation while also delineating the limits of this freedom. Automobiles were more than practical devices, they were also highly visible symbols of affluence, mobility and modernity. The ads offered women a visual vocabulary to imagine their new social and political roles as citizens and to play an active role in shaping their identity as modern women.
History
The earliest known use of sex in advertising is by the Pearl Tobacco brand in 1871, which featured a naked maiden on the package cover. In 1885, W. Duke & Sons inserted trading cards into cigarette packs that featured sexually provocative starlets. Duke grew to become the leading American cigarette brand by 1890.
Other early forms of sex appeal in advertising include woodcuts and illustrations of attractive women (often unclothed from the waist up) adorning posters, signs, and ads for saloons, tonics, and tobacco. In several notable cases, sex in advertising has been claimed as the reason for increased consumer interest and sales.
Sex and soap
Woodbury's Facial Soap, a woman's beauty bar, was almost discontinued in 1911. The soap's sales decline was reversed, however, with ads containing images of romantic couples and promises of love and intimacy for those using the brand. Jōvan Musk Oil, introduced in 1971, was promoted with sexual entendre and descriptions of the fragrance's sexual attraction properties. As a result, Jōvan, Inc.'s revenue grew from $1.5 million in 1971 to $77 million by 1978.
Kamasutra condoms in India
In 1991, J.K. Chemicals Group asked the Bombay office of Lintas Bombay to develop a campaign for a new condom brand. The problem was that in the late 1940s, the Nehru government had launched a major population limitation program to reduce India's birthrate. The program was very heavy-handed, using coercion, and demanding that men use condoms. The product therefore signified an oppressive governmental intrusion. The agency head hit on the idea of a pleasurable condom, "So when the user hears the brand name, he says, "Wow. It's a turn on. Not a turn off." A brainstorming session hit on the name "Kamasutra", which refers to an ancient Sanskrit treatise on lovemaking and the sculptures at temples that illustrate the positions involved. The term was known to well-educated Indians, the intended audience. Correctly predicting the huge impact the campaign would have, the agency purchased all the advertising space in the popular glamour magazine Debonair and filled it with erotic images of Bollywood actors and actresses promoting Kamasutra condoms. A television commercial followed featuring a steamy shower scene. The television ad was censored but the print campaign proved highly successful.
Benetton
The Italian clothing company Benetton gained worldwide attention in the late 20th century for its saucy advertising, inspired by its art director Oliviero Toscani. He started with multicultural themes, tied together under the campaign "United Colors of Benetton" then became increasingly provocative with interracial groupings, and unusual sexual images, such as a nun kissing a priest.
Calvin Klein – sex and jeans
Calvin Klein of Calvin Klein Jeans has been at the forefront of this movement to use sex in advertising, having claimed, "Jeans are about sex. The abundance of bare flesh is the last gasp of advertisers trying to give redundant products a new identity." Calvin Klein's first controversial jeans advertisement showed a 15-year-old Brooke Shields, in Calvin Klein jeans, saying, "Do you want to know what gets between me and my Calvins? Nothing." Calvin Klein has also received media attention for its controversial advertisements in the mid-1990s. Several of Calvin Klein's advertisements featured images of teenage models, some "who were reportedly as young as 15" in overly sexual and provocative poses. Although Klein insisted that these advertisements were not pornographic, some considered the campaign as a form of "soft porn" or "kiddie porn" that was exploitative, shocking, and suggestive. In 1999, Calvin Klein was the subject of more controversy when it aired advertisements of young children who were only wearing the brand's underwear. This "kiddie underwear ad campaign" was pulled only one day after it aired as a result of public backlash. A spokesperson from Calvin Klein insisted that these ads were intended "to capture the same warmth and spontaneity that you find in a family snapshot."
The film industry
Film studios often make use of provocative movie posters in order to increase publicity and draw in larger audiences. One example is the iconic poster for Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction, in which Uma Thurman lies on her front, wearing a low-cut top and stilettos and smoking a cigarette despite the fact that, in the actual movie, she wears a button-down shirt that is far less revealing.
The idea that "sex sells" has also led to film studios going a step further - rather than dressing female stars in a certain way simply to promote the movie, they base their actual costume design around this concept. For example, in the 2004 film Catwoman, Halle Berry simply wore a black push-up bra with S&M inspired straps, heavily ripped leather trousers and heels with a cat mask and whip, which commentators said "oozed overt [...] sexuality". This costume was a move away from Catwoman's skin-tight black suit that she wears for the majority of her appearances within DC Comics and thus, despite being entirely more revealing, was actually not a popular decision among fans of the character.
Effectiveness
Effective use
Gallup & Robinson, an advertising and marketing research firm, has reported that in more than 50 years of testing advertising effectiveness, it has found the use of the erotic to be a significantly above-average technique in communicating with the marketplace, "...although one of the more dangerous for the advertiser. Weighted down with taboos and volatile attitudes, sex is a Code Red advertising technique ... handle with care ... seller beware; all of which makes it even more intriguing." This research has led to the popular idea that "sex sells".
Marketing strategies centered around sex have been successful. Abercrombie & Fitch used sex to market their brand in a variety of ways, including store greeters dressed only in underwear, models working in store and topless models on the bags. Employees were hired based on physical attractiveness. This strategy was aimed at teenagers and young adults, who are the most impressionable consumer group and have significant disposable income. During the late 1990s, the company produced a magazine/catalogue (magalog), featuring semi-nude or nude models. The magalog was a success, with A&F issuing over 1.5 million copies. The use of sexual branding raised their revenue from $85 million in 1993 to $1.35 billion in 2002. A&F have expressed that they will move away from sexual marketing, and focus on showcasing product and trends.
Sexuality in advertising is extremely effective at attracting the consumer's attention and once it has their attention, to remember the message. This solves the greatest problem in advertising of getting the potential buyer to look at and remember the advertisement. However, the introduction of attraction and especially sexuality into an ad often distracts from the original message and can cause an adverse effect of the consumer wanting to take action.
Ineffective use
There are some studies that contradict the theory that sex is an effective tool for improving finances and gathering attention. A study from 2009 found that there was a negative correlation between nudity and sexuality in movies, and box office performance and critical acclaim. A 2005 research by MediaAnalyzer has found that less than 10% of men recalled the brand of sexual ads, compared to more than 19% of non sexual ads; a similar result was found in women (10.8% vs. 22.3%). It is hypothesized by that survey, that this is a result of a general numbing caused by overuse of sexual stimuli in advertising.
In another experimental study conducted on 324 undergraduate college students, Brad Bushman, professor and Chair of Mass Communication at Ohio State University, examined brand recall for neutral, sexual or violent commercials embedded in neutral, sexual or violent TV programs. He found that brand recall was higher for participants who saw neutral TV programs and neutral commercials versus those who saw sexual or violent commercials embedded in sexual or violent TV programs. Other studies have found that sex in television is extremely overrated and does not sell products in ads. Unless sex is related to the product (such as beauty, health or hygiene products), there is no clear effect.
Using sex may attract one market demographic while repelling another at the same time. The overt use of sexuality to promote breast cancer awareness, through fundraising campaigns like "I Love Boobies" and "Save the Ta-tas", is effective at reaching younger women, who are at low risk of developing breast cancer, but angers and offends some breast cancer survivors and older women, who are at higher risk of developing breast cancer.
In addition, sexually objectified content fails to achieve its goal of brand recall, a 2020 study by Vargas & Mensa shows. Despite the use of sex in marketing to influence men, the 2020 Vargas & Mensa study highlights that young women are more influenced; thus, the approach can be ineffective when directed towards male products.
Gender differences
Recent research indicates that the use of sexual images of females in ads negatively affects women's interest. Research shows that females were more likely than males to be portrayed as nude, wearing sexual clothing or only a partial amount of clothing. A study from the University of Minnesota in 2013 of how printed ads with sexual content affects women clearly showed that women are not attracted to them except in the case of products being luxurious and expensive. Besides alienating women, there is a serious risk that the audience in general will reduce support for organisations that uses the sexual images of women without a legitimate reason.
Further research found that men have a positive attitude to sexual adverts, whereas women have a negative response to them; this study used an advert with both a male and female. This was thought to be because women had lower average sex drives than men. Another theory for this difference is that evolution has led men to seek casual sex, contrary to women who value commitment and intimacy in the context of a sexual relationship. In adverts sex tends to be represented in its own right and not as part of a relationship leading to the difference in responses. This theory is supported by research which found that women respond less negatively to sexual adverts when it is in the context of gift giving from a man to a woman, i.e. when the sexuality of the advert is the context of commitment. Men respond more negatively to the sexual advert when it involves gift giving as it emphasizes them having to spend money in a relationship. This is in line with evolutionary theory that women value men for their resources and men value women for sex and fertility. Further research found that even in men, recall of the advert is worsened by sexual content, as they focus on breasts and legs but not on the product.
Cultural differences
In order to be consistent, brands use standardized campaigns across various countries. Cultural differences have been found in response to sexual adverts. A 2016 study by the Korea Internet Advertising Foundation (KIAF) noted that 94.5% of South Korean high-schoolers were familiar with sex-driven ads, 83.4% of adults thought such ads have negative influence on society, and 91.2% said there are too many of such ads. A KIAF official noted that government legislation aimed to reduce such ads is not effective due to its ambiguity. Research has found that sex is used in adverts more in France than in the United States because they are more sexually liberated and so receptive to its use in advertising.
Prevalence
In the 21st century, the use of increasingly explicit sexual imagery in consumer-oriented print ads have become almost commonplace. Ads for jeans, perfumes and many other products have featured provocative images that were designed to elicit sexual responses from as large a cross section of the population as possible, to shock by their ambivalence, or to appeal to repressed sexual desires, which are thought to carry a stronger emotional load. Increased tolerance, more tempered censorship, emancipatory developments and increasing buying power of previously neglected appreciative target groups in rich markets (mainly in the West) have led to a marked increase in the share of attractive flesh 'on display'.
A 2008 cross-national study examined nudity in television advertising in Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, South Korea, Thailand, and the United States. It showed that female but not male levels of nudity differed substantially across countries, and that U.S. and Chinese commercials showed the lowest level of nudity, whereas German and Thai ads showed the highest level.
Historically, sex in advertising has focused on heterosexual gender roles, but there are increasing examples of sex being used to advertise to the LGBT community. The New Zealand Aids Foundation's Love Your Condom (LYC) campaign used provocative images of males alongside captions such as "Riding hard?", "Bear hunting?" and "Going deep?", followed by the hashtag #loveyourcondom. It was hoped by using images explicitly directed towards homosexual men, their use of condoms would increase, which would help decrease rates of HIV transmission amongst gay and bisexual men. The campaign has been successful, with a 12% reduction in new HIV infections among MSM in New Zealand.
In a 2003 study conducted at the University of Georgia’s Department of Advertising and Public Relations Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, researchers looked at sexual advertisements in magazines over the span of the last 30 years. The rate at which sex in advertising is being used increased from 15% to 27% in the advertisements that the researchers looked at. Their reasoning behind the increase is because they believe sex still sells, specifically with “low-risk products impulse purchases.” The study also mentions “alcohol, entertainment and beauty are the main product categories that use sex in advertising.
Ad Age, a magazine delivering news, analysis, and data on marketing and media, published a list of Top 100 most effective advertising of the century, out of the 100, only eight involved use of sex. Unruly Media's viral video tracker lists the Top-20 most viewed car commercial viral videos; only one uses sex, while the No.1 spot was held by VW's "The Force" ad. The overall top-spot (across all product segments), was held by VW's "Fun Theory" campaign, the most viewed viral video as of October 2011.
Criticism
Stereotypes
The use of sex in advertising has been criticized for its tendency to reinforce sexist stereotypes. Since the late 1970s, many researchers have determined that advertisements depict women as having less social power than men, but the ways in which women are displayed as less powerful than men have evolved over time. In modern times, advertisements have displayed women's expanding roles in the professional realm and importance in business backgrounds. However, as this change occurred there has been a substantial increase in the number of images that showcase women as less sexually powerful than men and as objects of men's desire. The 2011 documentary film Miss Representation by Jennifer Siebel Newsom explores how the depiction of women in mainstream media contributes to the under-representation of women in leadership roles and other positions of influence.
Objectification
Furthermore, sex in advertising has been criticized for its emphasis on the importance of physical attractiveness and role as a mate. This emphasis has led men and women to value intelligence and general skills less. The rise in awareness of sexism portrayed in these types of adverts has led to stricter advertising policies. One group that enforces these rules is the Advertising Women of New York association. Adverts using highly sexual images containing nudity and unrealistic physiques can lead to self-objectification. In turn, this can lead to shame, disgust, appearance anxiety, eating disorders and depression. The increase in self-objectification caused by the use of sex in advertising has been found in women and men. The latter is not surprising with the increased sexual portrayal of men in advertising.
Social norms
Sex in advertising is an accepted marketing technique, however it is not unusual for it to cause backlash when it breaks social norms. In 1995, the Calvin Klein advertising campaign (see section on Calvin Klein, above) that showed teenage models in provocative poses wearing Calvin Klein underwear and jeans was deemed inappropriate and shocking. The ads were withdrawn when parents and child welfare groups threatened to protest and Hudson stores did not want their stores associated with the ads. It was reported that the U.S. Justice Department was investigating the ad campaign for possible violations of federal child pornography and exploitation laws. The Justice Department subsequently decided not to prosecute Calvin Klein for these alleged violations as the DOJ “independently verified that minors were not used as models in the particular photographs that raised questions,” according to Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Kevin V. Di Gregory.
See also
Body image
Exploitation of women in mass media
Family in advertising
Feminism
Gender advertisement
Media and gender
Promotional model
Sexual objectification
Shock advertising
Killing Us Softly
Miss Representation
References
Further reading
Garcia, Eli, and Kenneth CC Yang. "Consumer responses to sexual appeals in cross-cultural advertisements." Journal of International Consumer Marketing 19#2 (2006): 29–52.
Reichert, Tom, and Jacqueline Lambiase, eds. Sex in advertising: Perspectives on the erotic appeal (Routledge, 2014)
Sherman, Claire, and Pascale Quester. "The influence of product/nudity congruence on advertising effectiveness." Journal of Promotion Management 11#2-3 (2006): 61–89.
Streitmatter, Roger. Sex sells!: The media's journey from repression to obsession (Basic Books, 2004)
External links
Advertising
Sexuality and society
Sexualization
LGBTQ and society | 0.760909 | 0.993331 | 0.755835 |
Imagination age | The Imagination Age is a theorized period following the Information Age where creativity and imagination become the primary creators of economic value (in contrast, the main activities of the Information Age were analysis and rational thought). It has been proposed that new technologies like virtual reality and user created content will change the way humans interact with each other and create economic and social structures.
The AI boom of the 2020s only increased the ubiquity of information. The relevant neologism is the Fourth Industrial Revolution, popularized in 2016 based on transformative developments shifting the nature of industrial capitalism.
One conception is that the rise of an immersive virtual reality (the metaverse or the cyberspace) will raise the value of "imagination work" done by designers, artists, et cetera over rational thinking as a foundation of culture and economics.
Origins of the term
The terms Imagination Age as well as Age of Imagination were first introduced in an essay by designer and writer Charlie Magee in 1993. His essay, "The Age of Imagination: Coming Soon to a Civilization Near You" proposes the idea that the best way to assess the evolution of human civilization is through the lens of communication.
The most successful groups throughout human history have had one thing in common: when compared to their competition they had the best system of communication. The fittest communicators—whether tribe, citystate, kingdom, corporation, or nation—had (1) a larger percentage of people with (2) access to (3) higher quality information, (4) a greater ability to transform that information into knowledge and action, (5) and more freedom to communicate that new knowledge to the other members of their group.
Imagination Age, as a philosophical tenet heralding a new wave of cultural and economic innovation, appears to have been first introduced by artist, writer and cultural critic Rita J. King in November 2007 essay for the British Council entitled, "The Emergence of a New Global Culture in the Imagination Age", where she began using the phrase, "Toward a New Global Culture and Economy in the Imagination Age":Rather than exist as an unwitting victim of circumstance, all too often unaware of the impact of having been born in a certain place at a certain time, to parents firmly nestled within particular values and socioeconomic brackets, millions of people are creating new virtual identities and meaningful relationships with others who would have remained strangers, each isolated within their respective realities.
King further refined the development of her thinking in a 2008 Paris essay entitled, "Our Vision for Sustainable Culture in the Imagination Age" in which she states,
Active participants in the Imagination Age are becoming cultural ambassadors by introducing virtual strangers to unfamiliar customs, costumes, traditions, rituals and beliefs, which humanizes foreign cultures, contributes to a sense of belonging to one's own culture and fosters an interdependent perspective on sharing the riches of all systems. Cultural transformation is a constant process, and the challenges of modernization can threaten identity, which leads to unrest and eventually, if left unchecked, to violent conflict. Under such conditions it is tempting to impose homogeneity, which undermines the highly specific systems that encompass the myriad luminosity of the human experience.
King has expanded her interpretation of the Imagination Age concept through speeches at the O'Reilly Media, TED, Cusp, and Business Innovation Factory conferences.
The term Imagination Age was subsequently popularized in techno-cultural discourse by other writers, futurists and technologists, who attributed the term to King, including Jason Silva.
Earlier, one-time, references to the Imagination Age can be found attributed to Carl W. Olson in his 2001 book "The Boss is Dead...: Leadership Breakthroughs for the Imagination Age, and virtual worlds developer Howard Stearns in 2005.
Previous ages
The ideas of the Imagination Age depend in large part upon an idea of progress through history because of technology, notably outlined by Karl Marx.
That cultural progress has been categorized into a number of major stages of development. According to this idea civilization has progressed through the following ages, or epochs:
Agricultural Age – economy dominated by physical work with wooden tools and animals in order to produce food
Industrial Age – economy dominated by factories to produce commodities
Information Age – economy dominated by knowledge workers using computers and other electronic devices for the purposes of research, finance, consulting, information technology, and other services
Following this is a new paradigm created by virtual technology, high speed internet, massive data storage, and other technologies. This new paradigm, the argument goes, will create a new kind of global culture and economy called the Imagination Age. The next and current age might have started recently:
The term Fourth Industrial Revolution came into popular discourse in 2016
Economic rise of imagination
The Imagination Age includes a society and culture dominated by the imagination economy. The idea relies on a key Marxist concept that culture is a superstructure fully conditioned by the economic substructure. According to Marxist thinking certain kinds of culture and art were made possible by the adoption of farming technology. Then with the rise of industry new forms of political organization (democracy, militarism, fascism, communism) were made possible along with new forms of culture (mass media, news papers, films). These resulted in people changing. In the case of industrialization people were trained to become more literate, to follow time routines, to live in urban communities.
The concept of the Imagination Age extends this to a new order emerging presently.
An imagination economy is defined by some thinkers as an economy where intuitive and creative thinking create economic value, after logical and rational thinking has been outsourced to other economies.
Michael Cox Chief Economist at Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas argues that economic trends show a shift away from information sector employment and job growth towards creative jobs. Jobs in publishing, he has pointed out are declining while jobs for designers, architects, actors & directors, software engineers and photographers are all growing. This shift in job creation is a sign of the beginning of the Imagination Age. The 21st century has seen a growth in games and interactive media jobs.
Cox argues that the skills can be viewed as a "hierarchy of human talents", with raw physical effort as the lowest form of value creation, above this skilled labor and information entry to creative reasoning and emotional intelligence. Each layer provides more value creation than the skills below it, and the outcome of globalization and automation is that labor is made available for higher level skills that create more value. Presently these skills tend to be around imagination, social and emotional intelligence.
Technology
Key to the idea that imagination is becoming the key commodity of our time is a confidence that virtual reality technology like Oculus Rift and HoloLens will emerge to take much of the place of the current text-and-graphic dominated internet. This will provide a 3D internet where imagination and creativity (over information and search) will be key to creating user experience and value.
The concept is not limited to just virtual reality. Charlie Magee states that the technology that will develop during the Imagination Age would include:
The best bet is on a hybrid breakthrough created by the meshing of nanotechnology, computer science (including artificial intelligence), biotechnology (including biochemistry, biopsychology, etc.), and virtual reality.
In The Singularity is Near, Raymond Kurzweil states that future combination of AI, nano-technology, and biotechnology will create a world where anything that can be imagined will be possible, raising the importance of imagination as the key mode of human thinking.
Global implications
Rita J. King has been the single major advocate of the Imagination Age concept and its implications on cultural relations, identity and the transformation of the global economy and culture. King has expounded on the concept through speeches at the O'Reilly Media and TED conferences and has argued that virtual world technology and changes in people's ability to imagine other lives could promote world understanding and reduce cultural conflict. Some public policy experts have argued the emergence of the Imagination Age out of the Information Age will have a major impact on overall public policy. All are concepts discussed in The Purpose Economy by Aaron Hurst, and in the creation of The Purpose Revolution discussed in the Golden Age Companion Textbook.
See also
Attention economy
Cognitive-cultural economy
Cognitive Surplus, 2010 book
Content creator
Golden Age
Information society
Indigo Era
Netocracy, concept whereby power revolves around the ability to form and use networks and technological tools
Post-scarcity economy
Post-work society
Post-truth
References
20th century
21st century
Historical eras
Information Age
Contemporary history
Science fiction themes
Virtual reality
Virtual economy
Imagination
1993 neologisms | 0.769562 | 0.982143 | 0.75582 |
Primitive (phylogenetics) | In phylogenetics, a primitive (or ancestral) character, trait, or feature of a lineage or taxon is one that is inherited from the common ancestor of a clade (or clade group) and has undergone little change since. Conversely, a trait that appears within the clade group (that is, is present in any subgroup within the clade but not all) is called advanced or derived. A clade is a group of organisms that consists of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants.
A primitive trait is the original condition of that trait in the common ancestor; advanced indicates a notable change from the original condition. These terms in biology contain no judgement about the sophistication, superiority, value or adaptiveness of the named trait. "Primitive" in biology means only that the character appeared first in the common ancestor of a clade group and has been passed on largely intact to more recent members of the clade. "Advanced" means the character has evolved within a later subgroup of the clade.
Phylogenetics is utilized to determine evolutionary relationships and relatedness, to ultimately depict accurate evolutionary lineages. Evolutionary relatedness between living species can be connected by descent from common ancestry. These evolutionary lineages can thereby be portrayed through a phylogenetic tree, or cladogram, where varying relatedness amongst species is evidently depicted. Through this tree, organisms can be categorized by divergence from the common ancestor, and primitive characters, to clades of organisms with shared derived character states. Furthermore, cladograms allow researchers to view the changes and evolutionary alterations occurring in a species over time as they move from primitive characters to varying derived character states.
Cladograms are important for scientists as they allow them to classify and hypothesize the origin and future of organisms. Cladograms allow scientists to propose their evolutionary scenarios about the lineage from a primitive trait to a derived one. By understanding how the trait came to be, scientists can hypothesize the environment that specific organism was in and how that affected the evolutionary adaptations of the trait that came to be.
Other, more technical, terms for these two conditions—for example, "plesiomorphic" and "synapomorphic"—are frequently encountered; see the table below.
Usage
At least three other sets of terms are synonymous with the terms "primitive" and "advanced". The technical terms are considered preferable because they are less likely to convey the sense that the trait mentioned is inferior, simpler, or less adaptive (e.g., as in non-vascular ("lower") and vascular ("higher") plants). The terms "plesiomorphy" and "apomorphy" are typically used in the technical literature: for example, when a plesiomorphic trait is shared by more than one member of a clade, the trait is called a symplesiomorphy, that is, a shared primitive trait; a shared derived trait is a synapomorphy.
The amount of variation of characters can assist in depicting greater relatedness amongst species, and conversely show the lack of relatedness between species. Analysis of character variation also aids in distinguishing primitive characters from derived characters. The term derived and primitive, or ancestral, is used in reference to characters and character state. In doing so, a derived character is depicted as a character procured through evolution from the previous ancestral state, and persisting due to fixation of derived alleles. Whereas, a primitive character is one that is originally present in the ancestral population. Primitive characters are avoided as they depict the ancestral character state. Conversely, derived characters depict the alteration of characters from the ancestral state because selection favored organisms with that derived trait.
Primitiveness of characters is determined by context
"Primitive" and "advanced" are relative terms. When a trait is called primitive, the determination is based on the perspective from which the trait is viewed. Any trait can be both primitive (ancestral) and advanced (derived) depending on the context.
Examples
In the clade of vertebrates, legs are an advanced trait since it is a feature that appears in the clade. However, in the clade of tetrapods, legs are primitive since they were inherited from a common ancestor.
The terms "primitive" and "advanced", etc., are not properly used in referring to a species or an organism as any species or organism is a mosaic of primitive and derived traits. Using "primitive" and "advanced" may lead to "ladder thinking" (compare the Latin term scala naturae 'ladder of nature'), which is the thought that all species are evolving because they are striving toward supremacy. When this form of thinking is used, humans are typically considered perfect and all other organisms are of less quality than them. This can cause the misconception of one species being an ancestor to another species, when in fact both species are extant. Homo sapiens, for example have large brains (a derived trait) and five fingers (a primitive trait) in their lineage. Species are constantly evolving, so a frog is not biologically more primitive than a human as each has been evolving continuously since each lineage split from their common ancestor.
References
Evolutionary biology | 0.77052 | 0.980906 | 0.755808 |
Typology (theology) | Typology in Christian theology and biblical exegesis is a doctrine or theory concerning the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament. Events, persons or statements in the Old Testament are seen as types prefiguring or superseded by antitypes, events or aspects of Christ or his revelation described in the New Testament. For example, Jonah may be seen as the type of Christ in that he emerged from the fish's belly and thus appeared to rise from death.
In the fullest version of the theory of typology, the whole purpose of the Old Testament is viewed as merely the provision of types for Christ, the antitype or fulfillment. The theory began in the Early Church, was at its most influential in the High Middle Ages and continued to be popular, especially in Calvinism, after the Protestant Reformation, but in subsequent periods, it has been given less emphasis. In 19th-century German Protestantism, typological interpretation was distinguished from rectilinear interpretation of prophecy. The former was associated with Hegelian theologians and the latter with Kantian analyticity. Several groups favoring typology today include the Christian Brethren beginning in the 19th century (for which typology was much favoured and the subject of numerous books) and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.
Notably, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, typology is still a common and frequent exegetical tool, mainly because of the church's great emphasis on continuity in doctrinal presentation through all historical periods. Typology was frequently used in early Christian art, where type and antitype would be depicted in contrasting positions.
The usage of the terminology has expanded into the secular sphere; for example, "Geoffrey de Montbray (d.1093), Bishop of Coutances, a right-hand man of William the Conqueror, was a type of the great feudal prelate, warrior and administrator".
Etymology
The term is derived from the Greek noun , 'a blow, hitting, stamp', and thus the figure or impression made on a coin by such action; that is, an image, figure, or statue of a man; also an original pattern, model, or mould. To this is prefixed the Greek preposition , meaning 'opposite, corresponding'.
Origin of the theory
Christian typology begins in the New Testament itself. For example, Paul in Romans 5:14 calls Adam "a type [] of the one who was to come" — i.e., a type of Christ. He contrasts Adam and Christ both in Romans 5 and in 1 Corinthians 15. The author of the First Epistle of Peter uses the term to refer to baptism. There are also typological concepts in pre-Pauline strata of the New Testament.
The early Christians, in considering the Old Testament, needed to decide what its role and purpose was for them, given that Christian revelation and the New Covenant might be considered to have superseded it, and many specific Old Testament rules and requirements were no longer being followed from books such as Leviticus dealing with Expounding of the Law. One purpose of the Old Testament for Christians was to demonstrate that the Ministry of Jesus and Christ's first coming had been prophesied and foreseen, and the Gospels indeed contain many Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Christ and quotations from the Old Testament which explicitly and implicitly link Jesus to Old Testament prophecies. Typology greatly extended the number of these links by adding others based on the similarity of Old Testament actions or situations to an aspect of Christ.
Typology is also a theory of history, seeing the whole story of the Jewish and Christian peoples as shaped by God, with events within the story acting as symbols for later events. In this role, God is often compared to a writer, using actual events instead of fiction to shape his narrative. The most famous form of this is the three-fold Hegelian dialectic pattern, although it is also used in other applications besides history.
Development of typology
The system of Medieval allegory began in the Early Church as a method for synthesizing the seeming discontinuities between the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament. The Church studied both testaments and saw each as equally inspired by God, yet the Old Testament contained discontinuities for Christians such as the Jewish kosher laws and the requirement for male circumcision. This therefore encouraged seeing at least parts of the Old Testament not as a literal account but as an allegory or foreshadowing of the events of the New Testament, and in particular examining how the events of the Old Testament related to the events of Christ's life. Most theorists believed in the literal truth of the Old Testament accounts, but regarded the events described as shaped by God to provide types foreshadowing Christ. Others regarded some parts of the Bible as essentially allegorical; however, the typological relationships remained the same whichever view was taken. Paul the Apostle states the doctrine in Colossians 2:16–17: "Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." The idea also finds expression in the Letter to the Hebrews.
The development of this systematic view of the Hebrew Bible was influenced by the thought of the Hellenistic Jewish world centered in Alexandria, where Jewish philosopher Philo (c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD) and others viewed Scripture in philosophical terms (contemporary Greek literary theory highlighted foreshadowing as a literary device) as essentially an allegory, using Hellenistic Platonic concepts. Origen (184/185253/254) Christianised the system, and figures including Hilary of Poitiers (c. 300c. 368) and Ambrose (c. 340397) spread it. Saint Augustine (345–430) recalled often hearing Ambrose say that "the letter kills but the spirit gives life", and Augustine in turn became a hugely influential proponent of the system, though also insisting on the literal historical truth of the Bible. Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) and Rabanus Maurus (c. 780–856) became influential as summarizers and compilers of works setting out standardized interpretations of correspondences and their meanings.
Jewish typological thought continued to develop in Rabbinic literature, including the Kabbalah, with concepts such as the Pardes, the four approaches to a biblical text.
Typology frequently emerged in art; many typological pairings appear in sculpture on cathedrals and churches and in other media. Popular illustrated works expounding typological couplings were among the commonest books of the late Middle Ages, as illuminated manuscripts, blockbooks, and incunabula (early printed books). The Speculum Humanae Salvationis and the Biblia pauperum became the two most successful compilations.
Example of Jonah
The story of Jonah and the fish in the Old Testament offers an example of typology. In the Old Testament Book of Jonah, Jonah told his shipmates to throw him overboard, explaining that God's wrath would pass if Jonah were sacrificed, and that the sea would become calm. Jonah then spent three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish before it spat him up onto dry land.
Typological interpretation of this story holds that it prefigures Christ's burial and resurrection. The stomach of the fish represented Christ's tomb; as Jonah exited from the fish after three days and three nights, so did Christ rise from His tomb on the third day. In the New Testament, Jesus invokes Jonah in the manner of a type: "As the crowds increased, Jesus said, 'This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.'" (see also , ). In , Jonah called the belly of the fish "She'ol", the land of the dead (translated as "the grave" in the NIV Bible).
Thus, when one finds an allusion to Jonah in Medieval art or in Medieval literature, it usually represents an allegory for the burial and resurrection of Christ. Other common typological allegories entail the four major Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel prefiguring the four Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or the twelve tribes of Israel foreshadowing the twelve apostles. Commentators could find countless numbers of analogies between stories of the Old Testament and the New; modern typologists prefer to limit themselves to considering typological relationships that they find sanctioned in the New Testament itself, as in the example of Jonah above.
Other Old Testament examples
Offering of Isaac
Genesis Chapter 22 brings us the story of the preempted offering of Isaac. God asks Abraham to offer his son Isaac to Him, cited as foreshadowing the crucifixion of Jesus. Isaac asks his father, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering”, and Abraham prophesies, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And indeed, a ram caught by its horns awaits them, which is also seen as a type for Christ, the lamb that God provides for sacrifice, crowned by thorns.
Joseph
Genesis Chapters 37–50 have the story of Joseph in Egypt, and Joseph is commonly cited as a Christ type. Joseph is a very special son to his father. From his father's perspective, Joseph dies and then comes back to life as the ruler of Egypt. Joseph's brothers deceive their father by dipping his coat in the blood of a sacrificed goat (Genesis 37:31). Later, Joseph's father finds that Joseph is alive and is the ruler of Egypt who saves the world from a great famine. Other parallels between Joseph and Jesus include:
both are rejected by their own people
both became servants
both are betrayed for silver
both are falsely accused and face false witnesses
both attain stations at the "right hand" of the respective thrones (Joseph at Pharaoh's throne and Christ at the throne of God)
Joseph was 30 years old when he stood before Pharaoh, and Jesus was about the same age, according to the Bible, when he began his ministry
Money and goods were not able to save the people in time of famine, they had to sell themselves, the same notions are discussed throughout the New Testament.
both provided for the salvation of gentiles, (Joseph provided a physical salvation in preparing for the famine, while Christ provided the deeper spiritual salvation)
Joseph married an Egyptian wife, bringing her into the Abrahamic lineage; Christ's relationship with the church is also described in marriage terms in the New Testament
A direct parallel with Joseph ruling over all of Egypt, and that only Pharaoh would be greater in the throne (Genesis 41:40) is repeated in 1 Corinthians 15:27 with regards to Jesus
Both suffered greatly, and through patience and humbleness were exalted greatly by God, who gave in abundance all things over time.
Moses
Moses, like Joseph and Jonah, undergoes a symbolic death and resurrection. Moses is placed in a basket and floated down the Nile river, and then is drawn out of the Nile to be adopted as a prince (floating the body down the Nile river was also part of an Egyptian funerary ritual for royalty).
While in the wilderness, Moses put a brazen serpent on a pole which would heal anyone bitten by a snake, provided that the person looked at it (Numbers 21:8). Jesus proclaimed that the serpent was a type of Himself: "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up" (John 3:14).
In the battle with the Amalekites at Rephidim, Exodus 17:11 states that "as long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning." Commentators interpret Moses' raised hands as a type of Jesus' raised hands upon the Cross for, when Jesus' hands were raised as He died, a figurative battle was waged with sin, the result being victory – that "all will be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22).
Inanimate types
Other types were found in aspects of the Old Testament less tied to specific events. The Jewish holidays also have typological fulfillment in the life of Christ. The Last Supper was a Passover meal. Furthermore, many people see the Spring Feasts as types of what Christ accomplished in his first advent and the Fall Feasts as types of what Christ will accomplish in his second advent.
The Jewish Tabernacle is commonly seen as a series of complex types of Jesus Christ. For example, Jesus describes himself as "the door" and the only "way" to God, represented in the single, wide gate to the tabernacle court; the various layers of coverings over the tabernacle represent Christ's godliness (in the intricately woven inner covering) and his humanity (in the dull colouring of the outside covering). The Showbread prepared in the Temple of Jerusalem is also seen as a type for Christ.
Post-biblical usage
As Erich Auerbach points out in his essay "Figura", typological (figural) interpretation co-existed alongside allegorical and symbolic-mythical forms of interpretation. But it was typology that was most influential as Christianity spread in late Mediterranean cultures, as well as in the North and Western European cultures. Auerbach notes that it was the predominant method of understanding the Hebrew scriptures until after the Reformation—that is, that the Hebrew texts were not understood as Jewish history and law but were instead interpreted "as or phenomenal prophecy, as a prefiguration of Christ". Typological interpretation was a key element of Medieval realism, but remained important in Europe "up to the eighteenth century".
Further, typology was extended beyond interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures and applied to post-biblical events, seeing them as "not the ultimate fulfillment, but [...] a promise of the end of time and the true kingdom of God." Thus, the Puritans interpreted their own history typologically:
In this way, the Puritans applied typology both to themselves as a group and to the progress of the individual souls:
Typology also became important as a literary device, in which both historical and literary characters become prefigurations of later historical or literary characters.
Intrinsic vs. extrinsic typology
Exegetical professor (1842–1913) separated biblical typology into two categories. He distinguished extrinsic or external typology as separate from the meaning of the text and its original meaning – rather, it is applied to the topic by the reader. Stöckhardt saw intrinsic or internal typology as embedded within the meaning of the text itself. Although he rejected the possibility of intrinsic typology because it would violate the doctrine of the clarity of scripture, most typologists either do not make this distinction or do not reject typology internal to the text. Stöckhardt's position against intrinsic typology is related to the position that all Messianic prophecies are rectilinear as opposed to typological.
Typology and narrative criticism
Typology is also used by narrative critics to describe the type of time in which an event or happening takes place. Mark Allan Powell separates chronological time from typological time. Whereas chronological time refers to the time of action, typological time refers to the “kind of time” of an action. Typological settings may be symbolic.
See also
Anagoge
Foreshadowing
Correspondence (theology) – typology of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Peter Leithart – typologist
Parallelomania, concerning the overuse of typology
Supersessionism
Tropological reading
References
Further reading
Fairbairn, Patrick. The Typology of Scripture. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1847.
Northrop Frye (1982). The Great Code: The Bible and Literature.
Goppelt, Leonhardt. Typos: The Typology Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982.
Martens, Peter. "Revisiting the Allegory/Typology Distinction: The Case of Origen." Journal of Early Christian Studies 16 (2008): 283–317.
External links
Berkeley, Set of woodcut typological illustrations to the Speculum Humanae Salvationis
Online book Patrick Fairbairn The Typology of Scripture, 1859
Catholic Encyclopedia: Types in Scripture
Jewish Encyclopedia: ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION
Puritan typology, Donna M. Campbell, Washington State University
Nicholas Lunn, "Allusions to the Joseph Narrative in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts" (2012)
Biblical exegesis
Christian theology of the Bible
Christian iconography
Christian terminology | 0.762068 | 0.991775 | 0.7558 |
Neijuan | ( IPA: ) is an English loanword of the Chinese word for involution. is made of two characters which mean "inside" and "rolling". has disseminated to nearly all walks of life in mainland China in the recent few years, due to the uneven distribution of social, economic, and educational resources and ongoing economic malaise, especially in terms of higher education bodies and labour markets. reflects a life of being overworked, stressed, anxious and feeling trapped, a lifestyle where many face the negative effects of living a very competitive life for nothing.
Origin and conceptualization
Involution was developed as a sociological concept by American anthropologist Alexander Goldenweiser in his 1937 book Anthropology: An Introduction To Primitive Culture. In this work, Goldenweiser identifies involution as a cultural process. That when a society reaches its final form it cannot evolve nor stabilise itself. Instead, it can only complicate its internal elements. Goldenweiser uses Maori decorative art as an example. The development of art was done within the framework of already existing patterns. The final pieces were elaborate and complicated in appearance but fundamentally the same as already existing patterns.
This term was later utilised by fellow American anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who popularised the term in his 1963 book Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia. In this work, Geertz analysed the rice farming process following Dutch colonial rule. Geertz found that despite the complexity of the process, coupled with the increasing amount of labour being assigned to it, productivity remained stagnant. All these greater efforts to increase productivity yielded little results. All this did was complicate the already existing processes and systems. For Geertz this was involution.
Geertz's concept was introduced into Chinese rural studies by the Indian sinologist Prasenjit Duara and the Chinese historian Philip Huang (黄宗智 Huang Zongzhi), arousing some controversy in Chinese academic circles. Huang explained involution using the economic concept of diminishing returns in his book The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (, published in 2000), which has deviated from Geertz's original explanation.
Since 2020, the word "involution" (nèijuǎn) has become an internet slang word in mainland China and could, by extension, refer to a toxic culture in which people are expected to keep ahead of others. It could also have other negative connotations including cut throat competition, race to the bottom, etc., depending on its context. Xiang Biao, an anthropologist, describes the internet slang word "involution" as "a dead loop in which people constantly force themselves" and "a race that participants are not allowed to fail or exit". Some other people described it as a process in which people "gain a slight advantage by exploiting themselves and competing excessively within a group". Influenced by its popularity, the number of academic papers containing the keyword "involution" increased, but the meaning has further deviated from the original sociological sense, leading to some criticisms that the word has been abused.
Dissemination in China
In contemporary China, the concept of has spread in modern societies through media outlets like newspapers and social media platforms like Weibo. On Weibo, the number of page views of various topics related to has exceeded 1 billion, and in an election in 2020, was one of China's "top 10 buzzwords" of the year. has become so popular because it has a strong influence on the ways of living for youth and contemporary middle-class parents. The spread of the word can be tracked in the timeline below.
Tsinghua's Involuted King
In September 2020, a picture of a university student from one of the elite universities, Tsinghua went viral on social media platforms with more than 1 billion views. The picture of the boy working on his laptop while still riding his bike resonated with most millennials or generation Z which includes people born after the 1990s.
This incident sparked others to post more pictures of other hard-working students who became the involuted kings. The likes and reposting of similar pictures made to be among China's top 10 buzzwords of the year.
in the IT industry
In 2021, the concept of university translated into China's hypercompetitive tech industry, which is the preferred destination for most graduates. With an increasing number of graduates with relevant educational qualifications, the job market is becoming very competitive. This leaves many to work in areas they are overqualified for like becoming takeaway drivers. In association with these views, these pictures were popularised.
996 working culture
Many graduated students get involved in a 996 working culture, like takeaway services, after they leave the universities. Some of the picture shows takeaway drivers are trying their best to deliver the food on behalf of Meituan (美团), a high-tech delivery-service corporation, with a high level of competitive business culture. Many workers, including the takeaway drivers, are just like robots. They are working extremely hard, but with no real purpose.
Culture areas associated with
Education
Parents' views on education involution
As a result of , most Chinese middle-class parents no longer see education as a conveyance of upwards social mobility. Parents feel the need to overcompensate just to ensure their children won't fall back on the social ladder in the coming years. These intensified efforts are through active involvement and financial spending. Parental involvement is manifested in the following ways. First, parents prefer to familiarise themselves with the content of what is being taught at school, this is to ensure they can teach their children when needed. It has become a common occurrence for parents to buy 3 books in subjects like maths, one book for the student, one for the parents and one to be left at work. Second, compared to their western counterparts, the struggle of choosing the best educational institutions starts as early as daycare and not pre-university. Parents are anxious because of the increasing competition, correspondingly they start getting fully involved in their children's education from a very young age. As a consequence of , nurturing competent applicants for elite universities parents must oblige to an established order of doing things, there is no escape. Time has become a significant factor because actions must be taken at the right time otherwise it will be too late.
Third, parents now find themselves in positions where they must push their children very hard, and children have little to no say. Pressuring their children is a characteristic that model middle-class parents share. This behaviour has popularised words like '' ('chicken child'), 'tiger mom', and 'chicken blood', referring to the ambitious parenting of contemporary Chinese parents. A tiger mom is a controlling mother who does not allow their children any freedom. Examples of tiger mom behaviour include making primary school children study subjects like chemistry and physics through after-school tutoring even though the syllabus introduces these subjects in the third year of junior secondary school. One parent explained 'it is not enough to compete just in terms of studies,' having some sort of talent is now seen as a significant entry requirement to elite universities. As a result, playing the piano and swimming are not valuable talents as they once were, as shown in the valuable skill chains below.Moreover, contemporary middle-class Chinese parents are overcompensating for the cost spent on their children's education. In recent years there has been a trend for parents to relocate to Haidian, a district in Beijing. Haidian is the most famous home for self-sacrificing and education-focused parents, this is because of the strong public institutions found in the area. Schools in Haidian teach programming from a very young age; by the time children are in high school, they are already at an advanced level in programming languages like C++ and Python. It is the desire of most parents to move to cities with quality public schools like the city of Haidian, regardless of the cost. Therefore, to ensure their children attend esteemed schools, parents pay high real estate prices because of the overpriced markets.
University students' views on education involution
In university, learning takes a more independent approach, where students become responsible for themselves and are in control of what and when they learn. Though university is thought of as a time to make new friends, explore new interests and even understand oneself better, the reality is different in China. As stated by Li Meng, dean of Yuanpei College, 'GPA is at the centre, regardless of their educational levels students pay attention to their GPA'. The notion that GPA at the centre is a result of , there is no escape because 'no matter what path you take in the future, GPA is the basic insurance'. As a result, there is an increasing number of incidents where students are taking studying to disturbing extremes. One such example is Tsinghua's involuted king. Behind the above notion is the function of higher-level institutions as agents for elite talent selection therefore, with the depreciating academic qualifications most students feel the need to perform beyond average. The rising generation of 'involuted' young students gets involved in an endless cycle of competition and self-flagellation until all knowledge is becoming meaningless.
Work-life balance
In China, the work-life of younger social elites is very different from their predecessors. Young people are trapped in hyper-competitive and unhealthy work environments as 'the new industry standards'. To ensure they stay relevant at work, employees are trapped in the 996 work culture. 996 is the new industry requirement for good-paying industries like finance and tech where employees work from 9 am to 9 pm for 6 days a week. Under 996 employees work more than 60 hours a week, a number that is 1.5 times more than the legalized 44 hours a week as stated in article 36 of the labour law. Moreover, though the labour law requirement asks for workers to be paid 2.275 times their base salary if they work under the 996 schedule, there are reports that workers are rarely compensated. In efforts to highlight their frustration a number of programmers have created websites like 996icu and posted a blacklist of companies that encourage these exploitative work cultures. Some of the most famous companies include , , JD.com, Alibaba and TikTok's parent company ByteDance. However, these efforts are in vain since has made entry into these jobs very difficult therefore there is no turning back 'their greatest fear is perhaps losing what they already have,' there is no escaping. Finally, many workers, including the takeaway drivers, are just like robots. They are working extremely hard, but with no real purpose.
Responses
Generation gap
The previous generation came of age during the opening up of China's economy, who experienced large social mobility and the creation of markets in many sectors. Xiang Biao pointed out that people from the previous generation had a more secure childhood and upward mobility. Now that the markets in many sectors are largely saturated in these sectors and social mobility has stagnated, Gen Z does not enjoy the same kind of abundance of opportunity
Anticapitalistic sentiment
The overworking culture that constituted much of the has engendered an anti-capitalistic sentiment from the overworked population. The former chief editor of Harper's Bazaar China, Su Mang, called 'the gap between desire and indolence'. Su has been lambasted as a 'typical capitalist' and forced to apologise. Jack Ma called 996 a 'fortune earned through hard work', and was labelled a 'bloodsucking capitalist'.
(Lying flat)
, a term that means 'lying flat' giving up on the grind, has also gained a lot of traction. has been interpreted as a kind of resistance to , as an exit from competition by renouncing pointless effort. spawned under the stress from overworking and promised a form of resistance to the cycle of exploitation.
Government encouragement of
The government's position on this is largely positive and encouraging, as it is perceived workers working hard would drive up the economy.
Resistance to such as has garnered concerns from the official state media, and some media went as far as to openly condemn the act of . Xu Fang from University of California, Berkeley proposes that this is a part of the 'stability maintenance' effort from the ruling party; the government would rather people vent their emotions through ranting online rather than a social movement.
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
Benny. (2022, June 13). 上海封城引爆 "润学"讨论，内卷、躺平后中国年轻人开始"润"了？.[After the lockdown of Shanghai, China's young people began to "embellish" the discussion?]. BBC News Chinese. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-61760256
Feng, E., & Cao A. (2022, June 3). Hard work is a point of pride in China. but a culture of slacking off is now in Vogue. NPR. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/06/03/1102405433/work-culture-sang-work-ethic-chinese-culture
Jha, M. (2023, August). ‘Involution’ or Alienation?: Visiting the Issue through Jia Zhangke’s ‘Hometown Trilogy’. China Report. Retrieved September 16, 2024, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00094455231187053
Peizemaduxinli. (2019, May 2). 专制型父母教育出来的孩子，失掉的不是自我，而是整个人生. [Authoritarian parents education out of the children, lose not self, but the whole life.]. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.sohu.com/a/311434883_120020281
Yan M. (2021, November 2). The new popular parenting term in China is 'jiwa' - or 'Chicken blood' parenting. Insider. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.insider.com/jiwa-parenting-why-is-it-so-popular-in-china-2021-10
Yang D. (2021, June 4). Faster, higher, stronger: China's kids pushed to Breaking Point. ThinkChina. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.thinkchina.sg/faster-higher-stronger-chinas-kids-pushed-breaking-point
Yu X. (2020, September 22). 余秀兰：父母社会背景、教育价值观及其教育期望 研究. 搜狐. [Yu Xiulan: A Study on Parents' Social Background, Educational Values and Educational Expectations. Sohu.]. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.sohu.com/a/419942282_387114
Chinese Internet slang
Employment in China
Work–life balance
Social issues in China | 0.766393 | 0.986166 | 0.755791 |
Alternative tourism | Alternative tourism combines tourist products or individual tourist services, different from mass tourism by means of supply, organization and the human resources involved. Other examples of different terms include "intelligent" or "motivated tourism." In addition, "anti-tourism" or "participative tourism" are some others. That was just to name few of them. Natural, social, and community value in which allow both host and guest to enjoy positive, worthwhile and shared experience.
Forms
The term "alternative tourism" tries to include the concepts of active tourism as well as explorer and encounter travel even with the concept of committed tourism. The following lists try to enumerate some of the styles of alternative tourism. Sources that state a number of different styles are and
Active tourism
hiking
trekking
biking
adventure tourism
snowshoeing
ski mountaineering
rafting
diving
caving
climbing
horseback riding
Explore and encounter travel
historical places
archeological sites
foreign communities
foreign cultures
rural tourism
ecotourism
cultural and historical heritage
wine
traditional cuisine
ethnography
traditional music
handicrafts
Committed tourism
voluntary service overseas
aid and assistance
archeological digs
international work camps
justice
solidarity tourism
religion
Terminology critiques
Since the term alternative is ambiguous, there are numerous critical remarks stating that the concept is only " (...) a fashionable idea among those who are dissatisfied with the nature of mass tourism (...)". The critics state, that alternative tourism lacks a clear definition of what is the tourism style alternative to. The origins of the term can be found in two alternating concepts:
Rejection of modern mass consumerism
Concern about the social impact in third-world countries
Others express their critical opinions regarding the term as fetish-adjective, miracle-word, mythical-term.
See also
Alternative Tourism Group (in Palestine)
References
External links
Bulgarian Association for Alternative Tourism
Green Olive Tours - Travel Agency for Alternative Tourism in Palestine/Israel
Arttours - Artists exploring alternative tourism in Stuttgart
Types of tourism | 0.782793 | 0.965485 | 0.755775 |
Quadruple and quintuple innovation helix framework | The quadruple and quintuple innovation helix framework describes university-industry-government-public-environment interactions within a knowledge economy. In innovation helix framework theory, first developed by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff and used in innovation economics and theories of knowledge, such as the knowledge society and the knowledge economy, each sector is represented by a circle (helix), with overlapping showing interactions. The quadruple and quintuple innovation helix framework was co-developed by Elias G. Carayannis and David F.J. Campbell, with the quadruple helix being described in 2009 and the quintuple helix in 2010. Various authors were exploring the concept of a quadruple helix extension to the triple helix model of innovation around the same time. The Carayannis and Campbell quadruple helix model incorporates the public via the concept of a 'media-based democracy', which emphasizes that when the political system (government) is developing innovation policy to develop the economy, it must adequately communicate its innovation policy with the public and civil society via the media to obtain public support for new strategies or policies. In the case of industry involved in R&D, the framework emphasizes that companies' public relations strategies have to negotiate ‘reality construction’ by the media. The quadruple and quintuple helix framework can be described in terms of the models of knowledge that it extends and by five subsystems (helices) that it incorporates; in a quintuple helix-driven model, knowledge and know-how are created and transformed, and circulate as inputs and outputs in a way that affects the natural environment. Socio-ecological interactions via the quadruple and quintuple helices can be utilized to define opportunities for the knowledge society and knowledge economy, such as innovation to address sustainable development, including climate change.
Conceptual interrelationship of models of knowledge
The framework involves the extension of previous models of knowledge, specifically mode 1, mode 2, the triple helix, and mode 3, by adding the public and the environment:
Mode 1. Mode 1 was theorized by Michael Gibbons and is an elderly linear model of fundamental university research where success is defined as "a quality or excellence that is approved by hierarchically established peers” and does not necessarily contribute to industry or the knowledge economy.
Mode 2. Mode 2 was also theorized by Michael Gibbons and is context-driven, problem-focused and interdisciplinary research characterized by the following five principles: (1) knowledge produced in the context of application; (2) transdisciplinarity; (3) heterogeneity and organizational diversity; (4) social accountability and reflexivity; (5) and quality control.
The Triple Helix model of innovation. The triple helix was first suggested by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff in 1995 and emphasizes trilateral networks and hybrid organizations of university-industry-government relations to provide the infrastructure necessary for innovation and economic development; it provides a structural explanation for the historical evolution of mode 2 in relation to mode 1.
Mode 3. Mode 3 was developed by Elias G. Carayannis and David F.J. Campbell in 2006. Mode 3 emphasizes the coexistence and co-development of diverse knowledge and innovation modes, together with mutual cross-learning between knowledge modes and interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge.
Quadruple helix. The quadruple helix adds as fourth helix the public, specifically defined as the culture- and media-based public and civil society. This fourth helix includes, for example, sociological concepts like art, the creative industries, culture, lifestyles, media, and values.
Quintuple helix. The quintuple helix adds as fifth helix the natural environment, more specifically socio-ecological interactions, meaning it can be applied in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary way to sustainable development.
The five helices
The main constituent element of the helical system is knowledge, which, through a circulation between societal subsystems, changes to innovation and know-how in a society (knowledge society) and for the economy (knowledge economy). The quintuple helix visualizes the collective interaction and exchange of this knowledge in a state by means of five subsystems (helices): (1) education system, (2) economic system, (3) natural environment, (4) media-based and culture-based public (also ‘civil society’), (5) and the political system. Each of the five helices has an asset at its disposal, with a societal and scientific relevance, i.e., human capital, economic capital, natural capital, social capital and capital of information capital, and political capital and legal capital, respectively.
Quadruple and quintuple helix and policy making
The quadruple helix has been applied to European Union-sponsored projects and policies, including the EU-MACS (EUropean MArket for Climate Services) project, a follow-up project of the European Research and Innovation Roadmap for Climate Services, and the European Commission's Open Innovation 2.0 (OI2) policy for a digital single market that supports open innovation.
Quadruple and quintuple helix in academic research
The quadruple helix has implications for smart co-evolution of regional innovation and institutional arrangements, i.e., regional innovation systems. The quintuple helix has been applied to the quality of democracy, including in innovation systems; international cooperation; forest-based bioeconomies; the Russian Arctic zone energy shelf; regional ecosystems; smart specialization and living labs; climate change, and sustainable development, as well as to innovation diplomacy, a quintuple-helix based extension of science diplomacy.
Criticism of the concept
How to define the new sectors of the public and the environment with regard to the standard triple helix model of innovation has been debated, and some researchers see them as additional sectors while others see them as different types of overarching sectors which contain the previous sectors.
See also
Innovation economics
Innovation system
Knowledge economy
Knowledge production modes
Knowledge society
Triple helix model of innovation
References
Innovation economics | 0.768025 | 0.984044 | 0.755771 |
Medievalism | Medievalism is a system of belief and practice inspired by the Middle Ages of Europe, or by devotion to elements of that period, which have been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture. Since the 17th century, a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model or inspiration for creative activity, including Romanticism, the Gothic revival, the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts movements, and neo-medievalism (a term often used interchangeably with medievalism).
Historians have attempted to conceptualize the history of non-European countries in terms of medievalisms, but the approach has been controversial among scholars of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Renaissance to Enlightenment
In the 1330s, Petrarch expressed the view that European culture had stagnated and drifted into what he called the "Dark Ages", since the fall of Rome in the fifth century, owing to among other things, the loss of many classical Latin texts and to the corruption of the language in contemporary discourse. Scholars of the Renaissance believed that they lived in a new age that broke free of the decline described by Petrarch. Historians Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo developed a three tier outline of history composed of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The Latin term media tempestas (middle time) first appears in 1469. The term medium aevum (Middle Ages) is first recorded in 1604. "Medieval" first appears in the nineteenth century and is an Anglicised form of medium aevum.
During the Reformations of the 16th and 17th centuries, Protestants generally followed the critical views expressed by Renaissance Humanists, but for additional reasons. They saw classical antiquity as a golden time, not only because of Latin literature, but because it was the early beginnings of Christianity. The intervening 1000 year Middle Age was a time of darkness, not only because of lack of secular Latin literature, but because of corruption within the Church such as Popes who ruled as kings, pagan superstitions with saints' relics, celibate priesthood, and institutionalized moral hypocrisy. Most Protestant historians did not date the beginnings of the modern era from the Renaissance, but later, from the beginnings of the Reformation.
In the Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Middle Ages was seen as an "Age of Faith" when religion reigned, and thus as a period contrary to reason and contrary to the spirit of the Enlightenment. For them the Middle Ages was barbaric and priest-ridden. They referred to "these dark times", "the centuries of ignorance", and "the uncouth centuries". The Protestant critique of the Medieval Church was taken into Enlightenment thinking by works including Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–89). Voltaire was particularly energetic in attacking the religiously dominated Middle Ages as a period of social stagnation and decline, condemning Feudalism, Scholasticism, The Crusades, The Inquisition and the Catholic Church in general.
Gothic revival
The Gothic Revival was an architectural movement which began in the 1740s in England. Its popularity grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, when increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval forms in contrast to the classical styles prevalent at the time. In England, the epicentre of this revival, it was intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with a re-awakening of "High Church" or Anglo-Catholic self-belief (and by the Catholic convert Augustus Welby Pugin) concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism. He went on to produce important Gothic buildings such as Cathedrals at Birmingham and Southwark and the British Houses of Parliament in the 1840s. Large numbers of existing English churches had features such as crosses, screens and stained glass (removed at the Reformation), restored or added, and most new Anglican and Catholic churches were built in the Gothic style. Viollet-le-Duc was a leading figure in the movement in France, restoring the entire walled city of Carcassonne as well as Notre-Dame and Sainte Chapelle in Paris. In America Ralph Adams Cram was a leading force in American Gothic, with his most ambitious project the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York (one of the largest cathedrals in the world), as well as Collegiate Gothic buildings at Princeton Graduate College. On a wider level the wooden Carpenter Gothic churches and houses were built in large numbers across North America in this period.
In English literature, the architectural Gothic Revival and classical Romanticism gave rise to the Gothic novel, often dealing with dark themes in human nature against medieval backdrops and with elements of the supernatural. Beginning with The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, it also included Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and John Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which helped found the modern horror genre. This helped create the dark romanticism or American Gothic of authors like Edgar Allan Poe in works including "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) and Nathanial Hawthorne in "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836) and "The Birth-Mark" (1843). This in turn influenced American novelists like Herman Melville in works such as Moby-Dick (1851). Early Victorian Gothic novels included Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847). The genre was revived and modernised toward the end of the century with works like Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).
Anglo-Saxonism
Main article: Anglo-Saxonism in the 19th century
The development of philology through the 17th-19th centuries as a subject of study in north west Europe and England saw increased interest in tracing the so-called 'roots' of languages and cultures including English, German, Icelandic and Dutch. Antiquaries of the time believed that languages and cultures were intertwined, and Old English texts, especially Beowulf, were claimed by antiquarians from each linguistic-cultural group as 'their' oldest poem.
In England, Rebecca Brackmann argues that an increased interest in Old English and imagined Anglo-Saxon culture was a result of, and in turn fuelled, political upheaval in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Great Seal of the United States
In the United States, Anglo-Saxon mythologies persisted, with Thomas Jefferson proposing that Hengist and Horsa were shown on the Great Seal of the United States.
Romanticism
Romanticism was a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the eighteenth century in Western Europe, and gained strength during and after the Industrial and French Revolutions. It was partly a revolt against the political norms of the Age of Enlightenment which rationalised nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature. Romanticism has been seen as "the revival of the life and thought of the Middle Ages", reaching beyond rational and Classicist models to elevate medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval, in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl and industrialism, embracing the exotic, unfamiliar and distant.
The name "Romanticism" itself was derived from the medieval genre chivalric romance. This movement contributed to the strong influence of such romances, disproportionate to their actual showing among medieval literature, on the image of Middle Ages, such that a knight, a distressed damsel, and a dragon is used to conjure up the time pictorially. The Romantic interest in the medieval can particularly be seen in the illustrations of English poet William Blake and the Ossian cycle published by Scottish poet James Macpherson in 1762, which inspired both Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1773), and the young Walter Scott. The latter's Waverley Novels, including Ivanhoe (1819) and Quentin Durward (1823) helped popularise, and shape views of, the medieval era. The same impulse manifested itself in the translation of medieval national epics into modern vernacular languages, including Nibelungenlied (1782) in Germany, The Lay of the Cid (1799) in Spain, Beowulf (1833) in England, The Song of Roland (1837) in France, which were widely read and highly influential on subsequent literary and artistic work.
The Nazarenes
The name Nazarene was adopted by a group of early nineteenth-century German Romantic painters who reacted against Neoclassicism and hoped to return to art which embodied spiritual values. They sought inspiration in artists of the Late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, rejecting what they saw as the superficial virtuosity of later art. The name Nazarene came from a term of derision used against them for their affectation of a biblical manner of clothing and hair style. The movement was originally formed in 1809 by six students at the Vienna Academy and called the Brotherhood of St. Luke or Lukasbund, after the patron saint of medieval artists. In 1810 four of them, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Franz Pforr, Ludwig Vogel and Johann Konrad Hottinger moved to Rome, where they occupied the abandoned monastery of San Isidoro and were joined by Philipp Veit, Peter von Cornelius, Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and a loose grouping of other German artists. They met up with Austrian romantic landscape artist Joseph Anton Koch (1768–1839) who became an unofficial tutor to the group and in 1827 they were joined by Joseph von Führich (1800–76). In Rome the group lived a semi-monastic existence, as a way of re-creating the nature of the medieval artist's workshop. Religious subjects dominated their output and two major commissions for the Casa Bartholdy (1816–17) (later moved to the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin) and the Casino Massimo (1817–29), allowed them to attempt a revival of the medieval art of fresco painting and gained then international attention. However, by 1830 all except Overbeck had returned to Germany and the group had disbanded. Many Nazareners became influential teachers in German art academies and were a major influence on the later English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Social commentary
Eventually, medievalism moved from the confines of fiction into the immediate realm of social commentary as a means of critiquing life in the Industrial Era. An early work of this kind is William Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation (1824–6), which was influenced by his reading of John Lingard's History of England (1819–30), among other sources. Cobbett attacked the Reformation as having divided a once-unified and wealthy England into "masters and slaves, a very few enjoying the extreme of luxury, and millions doomed to the extreme of misery", while decrying how "this land of meat and beef was changed, all of a sudden into a land of dry bread and oatmeal porridge". In the Victorian era, the principal representatives of this school were Thomas Carlyle and his disciple John Ruskin.
In Carlyle's Past and Present (1843), which Oliver Elton called the "most remarkable fruit in English literature of the medieval revival", the modern workhouse is contrasted with the medieval monastery. He draws on Jocelyn de Brakelond's twelfth-century account of Samson of Tottington's abbotcy of Bury St Edmunds Abbey to answer the "Condition-of-England Question", calling for a "Chivalry of Labour" based on cooperation and fraternity rather than competition and "Cash-payment for the sole nexus", and for the leadership of paternalistic "Captains of Industry".
Along with medievalist writers Walter Scott, Robert Southey, and Kenelm Henry Digby, Carlyle was among the "important literary influences" on Young England, a "parliamentary experiment in romanticism which created considerable stir during the eighteen-forties," led by Lord John Manners and Benjamin Disraeli. Young England developed contemporaneously with the Oxford Movement, which has been defined as "medievalism in religion."
Ruskin connected the quality of a nation's architecture with its spiritual health, comparing the originality and freedom of medieval art with the mechanistic sterility of modernism in such works as Modern Painters, Volume II (1846), The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–3). At the urging of Carlyle, Ruskin, who identified as both a "violent Tory of the old school" and a "Communist of the old school", adapted this thesis to his theory of political economy in Unto This Last (1860), and to his "Ideal Commonwealth" in Time and Tide (1867), the characteristics of which were derived from the Middle Ages: the guild system, the feudal system, chivalry, and the church.
The Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The three founders were soon joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner to form a seven-member "brotherhood". The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. They believed that the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art. Hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". In particular, they objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts, believing that his broad technique was a sloppy and formulaic form of academic Mannerism. In contrast, they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.
The Arts and Crafts movement
The Arts and Crafts movement was an aesthetic movement, directly influenced by the Gothic Revival and the Pre-Raphaelites, but moving away from aristocratic, nationalist and high Gothic influences to an emphasis on the idealised peasantry and medieval community, particularly of the fourteenth century, often with socialist political tendencies and reaching its height between about 1880 and 1910. The movement was inspired by the writings of Carlyle and Ruskin and was spearheaded by the work of William Morris, a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites and a former apprentice to Gothic-revival architect G. E. Street. He focused on the fine arts of textiles, wood and metal work and interior design. Morris also produced medieval and ancient themed poetry, beside socialist tracts and the medieval Utopia News From Nowhere (1890). Morris formed Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1861, which produced and sold furnishings and furniture, often with medieval themes, to the emerging middle classes. The first Arts and Crafts exhibition in the United States was held in Boston in 1897 and local societies spread across the country, dedicated to preserving and perfecting disappearing craft and beautifying house interiors. Whereas the Gothic revival had tended to emulate ecclesiastical and military architecture, the arts and crafts movement looked to rustic and vernacular medieval housing. The creation of aesthetically pleasing and affordable furnishings proved highly influential on subsequent artistic and architectural developments.
Romantic nationalism
By the nineteenth century real and pseudo-medieval symbols were a currency of European monarchical state propaganda. German emperors dressed up in and proudly displayed medieval costumes in public, and they rebuilt the great medieval castle and spiritual home of the Teutonic Order at Marienburg. Ludwig II of Bavaria built a fairy-tale castle at Neuschwanstein and decorated it with scenes from Wagner's operas, another major Romantic image maker of the Middle Ages. The same imagery would be used in Nazi Germany in the mid-twentieth century to promote German national identity with plans for extensive building in the medieval style and attempts to revive the virtues of the Teutonic knights, Charlemagne and the Round Table.
In England, the Middle Ages were trumpeted as the birthplace of democracy because of the Magna Carta of 1215. In the reign of Queen Victoria there was considerable interest in things medieval, particularly among the ruling classes. The notorious Eglinton Tournament of 1839 attempted to revive the medieval grandeur of the monarchy and aristocracy. Medieval fancy dress became common in this period at royal and aristocratic masquerades and balls and individuals and families were painted in medieval costume. These trends inspired a nineteenth-century genre of medieval poetry that included Idylls of the King (1842) by Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson and "The Sword of Kingship" (1866) by Thomas Westwood, which recast specifically modern themes in the medieval settings of Arthurian romance.
Twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Popular culture
Depictions of the Middle Ages can be found in different cultural media, including advertising.
Film
Film has been one of the most significant creators of images of the Middle Ages since the early twentieth century. The first medieval film was also one of the earliest films ever made, about Jeanne d'Arc in 1899, while the first to deal with Robin Hood dates to as early as 1908. Influential European films, often with a nationalist agenda, included the German Nibelungenlied (1924), Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), while in France there were many Joan of Arc sequels. Hollywood adopted the medieval as a major genre, issuing periodic remakes of the King Arthur, William Wallace and Robin Hood stories, adapting to the screen such historical romantic novels as Ivanhoe (1952—by MGM), and producing epics in the vein of El Cid (1961). More recent revivals of these genres include Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (1991), The 13th Warrior (1999) and The Kingdom of Heaven (2005).
Fantasy
While the folklore that fantasy drew on for its magic and monsters was not exclusively medieval, elves, dragons, and unicorns, among many other creatures, were drawn from medieval folklore and romance. Earlier writers in the genre, such as George MacDonald in The Princess and the Goblin (1872), William Morris in The Well at the World's End (1896) and Lord Dunsany in The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924), set their tales in fantasy worlds clearly derived from medieval sources, though often filtered through later views. In the first half of the twentieth century pulp fiction writers like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith helped popularise the sword and sorcery branch of fantasy, which often utilised prehistoric and non-European settings beside elements of the medieval.<ref>J. A. Tucker, A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity and Difference (Wesleyan University Press, 2004), p. 91.</ref> In contrast, authors such as E. R. Eddison and particularly J.R.R. Tolkien, set the type for high fantasy, normally based in a pseudo-medieval setting, mixed with elements of medieval folklore. Other fantasy writers have emulated such elements, and films, role-playing and computer games also took up this tradition. Modern fantasy writers have taken elements of the medieval from these works to produce some of the most commercially successful works of fiction of recent years, sometimes pointing to the absurdities of the genre, as in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, or mixing it with the modern world as in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books.
Living history
In the second half of the twentieth century interest in the medieval was increasingly expressed through form of re-enactment, including combat reenactment, re-creating historical conflict, armour, arms and skill, as well as living history which re-creates the social and cultural life of the past, in areas such as clothing, food and crafts. The movement has led to the creation of medieval markets and Renaissance fairs, from the late 1980s, particularly in Germany and the United States of America.
Neo-medievalism
Neo-medievalism (or neomedievalism) is a neologism that was first popularized by the Italian medievalist Umberto Eco in his 1973 essay "Dreaming of the Middle Ages". The term has no clear definition but has since been used to describe the intersection between popular fantasy and medieval history as can be seen in computer games such as MMORPGs, films and television, neo-medieval music, and popular literature. It is in this area—the study of the intersection between contemporary representation and past inspiration(s)—that medievalism and neomedievalism tend to be used interchangeably. Neomedievalism has also been used as a term describing the post-modern study of medieval history and as a term for a trend in modern international relations, first discussed in 1977 by Hedley Bull, who argued that society was moving towards a form of "neomedievalism" in which individual notions of rights and a growing sense of a "world common good" were undermining national sovereignty.
The study of medievalism
Leslie J. Workman, Kathleen Verduin and David Metzger noted in their introduction to Studies in Medievalism IX "Medievalism and the Academy, Vol I" (1997) their sense that medievalism had been perceived by some medievalists as a "poor and somewhat whimsical relation of (presumably more serious) medieval studies". In The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (2016), editor Louise D'Arcens noted that some of the earliest medievalism scholarship (that is, study of the phenomenon of medievalism) was by Victorian specialists including Alice Chandler (with her monograph A Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth Century England (London: Taylor and Francis, 1971), and Florence Boos, with her edited volume History and Community: Essays in Victorian Medievalism (London: Garland Publishing, 1992)). D'Arcens proposed that the 1970s saw the discipline of medievalism become an academic area of research in its own right, with the International Society for the Study of Medievalism formalised in 1979 with the publication of its Studies In Medievalism journal, organised by Leslie J. Workman. D'Arcens notes that by 2016 medievalism was taught as a subject on "hundreds" of university courses around the world, and there were "at least two" scholarly journals dedicated to medievalism studies: Studies in Medievalism and postmedieval.
Clare Monagle has argued that political medievalism has caused medieval scholars to repeatedly reconsider whether medievalism is a part of the study of the Middle Ages as a historical period. Monagle explains how in 1977 the International Relations scholar Hedley Bull coined the term "New Medievalism" to describe the world as a result of the rising powers of non-state actors in society (such as terrorist groups, corporations, or supra-state organisations such as the European Economic Community) which, due to new technologies, boundaries of jurisdiction that cross national borders, and shifts in private wealth challenged the exclusive authority of the state. Monagle explained that in 2007 medieval scholar Bruce Holsinger published Neomedievalism, Conservativism and the War on Terror, which identified how George W. Bush's administration relied on medievalising rhetoric to identify al-Qaeda as "dangerously fluid, elusive, and stateless". Monagle documents how Gabrielle Spiegel, then president of the American Historical Society "expressed concern at the idea that scholars of the historical medieval period might consider themselves licensed to in some way to intervene in contemporary medievalism", as to do so "conflates two very different historical periods". Eileen Joy (co-founder and co-editor of the postmedieval journal), responded to Spiegel that "the idea of a medieval past itself, as something that can be demarcated and cordoned off from other historical time periods, was and is of itself [...] a form of medievalism. Therefore, practising medievalists should absolutely pay heed to the use and abuse of the Middle Ages in contemporary discourse".
Medievalism topics are now annual features at the major medieval conferences the International Medieval Congress hosted at the University of Leeds, UK, and the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Exhibitions about medievalism
30 January - 22 May 2013. New Medievalist visions, King's College London, Maughan Library.
October 16, 2018 - March 3, 2019. Juggling the Middle Ages, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC. Juggling the Middle Ages "explores the influence of the medieval world by focusing on this single story with a long-lasting impact", Le Jongleur de Notre Dame or Our Lady’s Tumbler.''
Further reading
Bibliography
Notes
Themes of the Romantic Movement
Historiography of the Middle Ages
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Collective | A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an economic benefit or saving, though they can be.
The term "collective" is sometimes used to describe a species as a whole—for example, the human collective.
For political purposes, a collective is defined by decentralized, or "majority-rules" decision-making styles.
Types of groups
Collectives are sometimes characterised by attempts to share and exercise political and social power and to make decisions on a consensus-driven and egalitarian basis.
A commune or intentional community, which may also be known as a "collective household", is a group of people who live together in some kind of dwelling or residence, or in some other arrangement (e.g., sharing land). Collective households may be organized for a specific purpose (e.g., relating to business, parenting, or some other shared interest).
Artist collectives, including musical collectives, are typically a collection of individuals with similar interests in producing and documenting art as a group. These groups can range in size from a few people to thousands of members. The style of art produced can have vast differences. Motivations can be for a common cause or individually motivated purposes. Some collectives are simply people who enjoy painting with someone else and have no other goals or motivations for forming their collective.
A worker cooperative is a type of horizontal collective wherein a business functions as a partnership of individual professionals, recognizing them as equals and rewarding them for their expertise. The working collective aims to reduce costs to clients while maintaining healthy rewards for participating partners. This is accomplished by eliminating the operating costs that are needed to support levels of management.
See also
Colectivo (Venezuela)
Collective agreement
Collective bargaining
Collective farming
Collective guilt
Collective intentionality
Collective ownership
Collective punishment
Collective security
Community
Corporatism
Discursive dilemma
Green Mountain Anarchist Collective
Kibbutz
Kolkhoz
Law collective
Mutual aid
Further reading
List, Christian & Philip Pettit. (2011) Group Agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Curl, John. (2009) For All The People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America. PM Press.
David Van Deusen, 2015, ''The Rise and Fall of The Green Mountain Anarchist Collective' .
Community | 0.764994 | 0.987891 | 0.75573 |
Individualistic culture | Individualistic cultures are characterized by individualism, which is the prioritization or emphasis of the individual over the entire group. In individualistic cultures, people are motivated by their own preference and viewpoints. Individualistic cultures focus on abstract thinking, privacy, self-dependence, uniqueness, and personal goals. The term individualistic culture was first used in the 1980s by Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede to describe countries and cultures that are not collectivist; Hofstede created the term individualistic culture when he created a measurement for the five dimensions of cultural values.
People in individualistic cultures see each other as loosely connected and have a diverse population of different races, ethnicities, languages, and cultures. Individuals gain the most happiness from three key factors: personal satisfaction, internal happiness, and family satisfaction. People living in individualistic cultures use direct communication, low-power distance communication, self-expression of emotions, and a variety of conflict resolution strategies.
There has been a global increase in individualism in the recent years and individualistic culture is on the rise in many countries around the world due to wealth and urbanization. Highly individualistic countries are often Western countries, like Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States.
The rise of individualistic culture
The rise of Individualistic culture is a result of the integration of diverse cultures. The migration and meeting of cultures on a global level flourish in countries with political ideologies that allow freedom of self expression. A fertile atmosphere of freedom encourages the individual in self pursuit of personal growth. Individualistic culture has its focus on the individual mentality in society as opposed to the societal structure of the collective mentality. There has been much discussion about individualistic culture as opposed to a collectivism culture. One, the individualistic culture, promotes individualism or independent pursuits not associated with a group, while, in contrast, collectivism discourages the independence of the individual to develop a oneness of the masses with shared goals and ideology as in a group. Many thoughts and observations on individualism have been shared by noted intellectuals in philosophy, psychology and economics. In each of these schools of thought are Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Mises, and Geert Hofstede. Among the 3 of these scholars Geert Hofstede is most notable. It was Hofstede's study of culture and society in various countries which resulted in the term "Individualistic Culture", as a concept of social psychology solely attributed to him.
Low-power distance
Low-power distance includes power distance which is the degree to which unequal distribution of power is accepted and present in a culture. Individualistic cultures are referred to as low-power distance cultures that contains a hierarchy system, that strives for equality, and rejects inequality. Low-power distance countries are Austria, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and South Africa. Low-power distance countries challenge authority, encourage a reduction of power differences between management and employees, promote the distribution and use of power fairly, and focus on the unique skill of a person. People in low-power distance cultures challenge social norms, are creative, and outspoken. Though low-power distance cultures challenge authority, their appreciation of diversity allows people to perform better in group work than collectivist cultures. People from low-power distance cultures appreciate abstract thinking and combine their different opinions and ideas to work together and develop solutions to problems in group work.
Low-Power Distance behavior, as a characteristic, is more evident and commonly associated with diverse cultural backgrounds. The rights of the individual take precedence over the collective, and instead, minimizes the juxtaposition of the power distance relationship in individualistic culture resulting in the Low-Power distance dimension as set forth by Geert Hofstede’s observations on cultural dimensions'''.
Emotion display and display rules
Individualistic cultures tend to prioritize the individual person over the group, and this can be seen in how the display rules vary from a collectivist culture compared to an individualistic culture. Display rules are the rules that exist in different cultures that determine how emotion should be displayed publicly.
In an individualistic culture, self-expression is highly valued, making the display rules less strict and allowing people to display intense emotion such as: happiness, anger, love, etc. While in a collectivist culture, moderation and self-control is highly valued for the well-being of the group, and collectivist cultures therefore tend to restrain from showing emotion in public.
Marriage and family dynamics
In 1994 Ruth K. Chao, argued that "parenting styles developed on North American samples cannot be simply translated to other cultures, but instead must reflect their sociocultural contexts". Many cultures have different styles of parenting and the dynamics those families are also different.
People from individualistic cultures usually look out for themselves and their immediate family only. While people from collectivistic cultures look out for their community or group, as well as their family. Harald Wallbott and Klaus Scherer suggest that in cultures that are collectivist and high in power parents use real shame in their parenting styles. Whereas in individualistic cultures that are low in power, and are uncertainty-avoidance, shame more closely resembles guilt in their parent style. For example, in Asian collectivistic cultures shame is a highly valued emotional response. So much so, that in Japan, which is considered to be a collectivistic culture, many people commit suicide after dishonoring or bringing shame to their family or community.
Work-family balance
One's cultural style can also interfere with work-family relationship dynamics between different cultures. In Shan Xu research he found that employees from more individualistic cultures are more sensitive to how their work interferes with their family life. These employees are more concerned about their own individual family dynamics and structure. While people from more collectivistic cultures are more concerned about how their work provides material, social, and cognitive resources such as intelligence and experience which will help their families. These employees are more focused on the overall and harmony of all those little factors and how they affect their families.
Conflict strategies
Conflict strategies are methods used to resolve different problems. There are different approaches to resolving a conflict and depending on the culture a person is brought up in, the more likely it is for them to use a certain approach. Since individualistic culture sets greater value to personal achievement, contrary to collectivist cultures who value harmony, it is more likely for a person from an individualistic culture to use competition as their method of resolving conflict.
When using competition as an approach to resolving conflict, a person is more confrontational and seeks to achieve his or her own goals with no regard of the goals of others. Using this approach, a person seeks domination, which means to get others to do what the person wants instead of what they initially wanted. On the contrary, a collectivist culture would more likely use a less confrontational approach such as accommodation to end the conflict with compromise so that each party is benefited.
See also
Cross-cultural communication
Self-enhancement
References
Sociological terminology
Individualism
Social psychology | 0.766402 | 0.986 | 0.755672 |
Australian Aboriginal culture | Australian Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime and other mythology. Reverence and respect for the land and oral traditions are emphasised. The words "law" and "lore", the latter relating to the customs and stories passed down through the generations, are commonly used interchangeably. Learned from childhood, lore dictates the rules on how to interact with the land, kinship and community.
Over 300 languages and other groupings have developed a wide range of individual cultures. Aboriginal art has existed for thousands of years and ranges from ancient rock art to modern watercolour landscapes. Traditional Aboriginal music developed a number of unique instruments, and contemporary Aboriginal music spans many genres. Aboriginal peoples did not develop a system of writing before colonisation, but there was a huge variety of languages, including sign languages.
Oral tradition
Cultural traditions and beliefs as well as historical tellings of actual events are passed down in Aboriginal oral tradition, also known loosely as oral history (although the latter has a more specific definition). Some of the stories are many thousands of years old.
In a study published in February 2020, new evidence produced using radiometric dating showed that both Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted at least 34,000 years ago. Significantly, this is a "minimum age constraint for human presence in Victoria", and also could be interpreted as evidence for the Gunditjmara oral histories which tell of volcanic eruptions being some of the oldest oral traditions in existence. An axe found underneath volcanic ash in 1947 was also proof that humans inhabited the region before the eruption of Tower Hill.
Art and crafts
Australian Aboriginal art has a history spanning thousands of years. Aboriginal artists continue these traditions using both modern and traditional materials in their artworks. Aboriginal art is the most internationally recognizable form of Australian art. Several styles of Aboriginal art have developed in modern times including the watercolour paintings of Albert Namatjira, the Hermannsburg School, and the acrylic Papunya Tula "dot art" movement. Painting is a large source of income for some Central Australian communities such as at Yuendumu.
Basket weaving has been traditionally practised by the women of many Aboriginal peoples across the continent for centuries.
Astronomy
For many Aboriginal cultures, the night sky is a repository of stories and law. Songlines can be traced through the sky and the land. Stories and songs associated with the sky under many cultural tents.
Beliefs
Aboriginal Australians' oral tradition and spiritual values build on reverence for the land and on a belief in the Dreamtime, or Dreaming. The Dreaming is considered to be both the ancient time of creation and the present-day reality of Dreaming. It describes the Aboriginal cosmology, and includes the ancestral stories about the supernatural creator-beings and how they created places. Each story can be called a "Dreaming", with the whole continent criss-crossed by Dreamings or ancestral tracks, also represented by songlines.
There are many different groups, each with their own individual culture, belief structure and language.
The Rainbow Serpent is a major ancestral being for many Aboriginal people across Australia.
Baiame or Bunjil are regarded as the primary creator-spirits in South-East Australia.
Dingo Dreaming is a significant ancestor in the interior regions of Bandiyan, as Dingo formed the songlines that cross the continent from north to south and east to west.
The Yowie and Bunyip have their roots in Aboriginal mythology.
Sacred sites
To Aboriginal people, some places are sacred, owing to their central place in the mythology of the local people.
Customary law
The words "law" and "lore" are commonly used interchangeably: "law" was introduced by the British, whereas "lore" relates to the customs and stories from the Dreamtime, which has been passed on through countless generations through songlines, stories and dance. Learned from childhood, lore dictates the rules on how to interact with the land, kinship and community.
Kurdaitcha
Kurdaitcha (or kurdaitcha man, and also spelled kurdaitcha, gadaidja, cadiche, kadaitcha, or karadji) is a type of shaman amongst the Arrernte people, an Aboriginal group in Central Australia. The kurdaitcha may be brought in to punish a guilty party by death. The word may also relate to the ritual in which the death is willed by the kurdaitcha man, known also as bone-pointing.
The expectation that death would result from having a bone pointed at a victim is not without foundation. Other similar rituals that cause death have been recorded around the world. Victims become listless and apathetic, usually refusing food or water with death often occurring within days of being "cursed". When victims survive, it is assumed that the ritual was faulty in its execution. The phenomenon is recognized as psychosomatic in that death is caused by an emotional response—often fear—to some suggested outside force and is known as "voodoo death". As this term refers to a specific religion, the medical establishment has suggested that "self-willed death", or "bone-pointing syndrome" is more appropriate. In Australia, the practice is still common enough that hospitals and nursing staff are trained to manage illness caused by "bad spirits" and bone pointing.
Arnhem Land
The complete system of Yolngu customary law is the "Madayin", which embodies the rights and responsibilities of the owners of the law, or citizens (rom watangu walal, or simply rom). Madayin includes the rom, as well as the objects that symbolise the law, oral rules, names and song cycles, and the sacred places that are used to maintain, develop and provide education in the law. Rom can be roughly translated as "law" or "culture", but it embodies more than either of these words. Galarrwuy Yunupingu has described Rom watangu as the overarching law of the land, which is "lasting and alive... my backbone".
It covers ownership of land and waters and the resources within this region; it controls production trade; and includes social, religious and ethical laws. These include laws for conservation and farming of flora and fauna. Observance of Madayin creates a state of balance, peace and true justice, known as Magaya.
Rom includes bush crafts such as basket-weaving and mat-making, and stories which teach history, hunting, spear-making, gathering food, building shelters and rafts, various rituals, and taking care of others.
"Rom" is a word and concept shared by at least one of the nearby peoples, the Anbarra, who also perform a Rom ceremony.
Ceremonies and sacred objects
Aboriginal ceremonies have been a part of Aboriginal culture since the beginning, and still play a vital part in society. They are held often, for many different reasons, all of which are based on the spiritual beliefs and cultural practices of the community. They include Dreaming stories, secret events at sacred sites, homecomings, births and deaths. They still play a very important part in the lives and culture of Aboriginal people. They are performed in Arnhem Land and Central Australia with the aim of ensuring a plentiful supply of foods; in many regions they play an important part in educating children, passing on the lore of their people, spiritual beliefs and survival skills; some ceremonies are a rite of passage for adolescents; other ceremonies are around marriage, death or burial. Most include dance, song, rituals and elaborate body decoration and/or costume. Ancient Aboriginal rock art shows ceremonies and traditions that are still continued today.
Ceremonies provide a time and place for everyone in the group and community to work together to ensure the ongoing survival of spiritual and cultural beliefs. Certain stories are individually "owned" by a group, and in some cases dances, body decoration and symbols in a ceremony pass on these stories only within the group, so it is vital that these ceremonies are remembered and performed correctly. Men and women have different roles, and are sometimes appointed as guardians of a sacred site, whose role it is to care for the site and the spiritual beings who live there, achieved partly by performing ceremonies. The terms “men’s business” and “women’s business” are sometimes used; neither have greater spiritual needs or responsibilities than the other, but jointly ensure that sacred practices are passed on. Men often conduct ceremonies, but women are also guardians of special knowledge, hold great spiritual power within a group, and conduct ceremonies. Participation in ceremonies can also be restricted by age, family group, language group, but are sometimes open to all, depending on the purpose of the ceremony.
Right of access to songs and dances pertaining to a specific ceremony belong to a certain defined group (known as manikay by the Yolngu peoples of north-east Arnhem Land, or clan songs); some may be shared with people outside the community, but some are never shared. There is a wide range of songs, dances, music, body ornamentation, costume, and symbolism, designed to connect the body with the spiritual world of the ancestors. Ceremonies help to sustain Aboriginal identity as well as the group's connection to country and family.
Examples of ceremonies
A bora is an initiation ceremony in which young boys (Kippas) become men.
Bunggul is a traditional ceremonial dance of the Yolngu people of East Arnhem Land.
The bunya feast held in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast of Queensland is well-known. Representatives from many different groups from across southern Queensland and northern New South Wales would meet to discuss important issues relating to the environment, social relationships, politics and Dreaming lore, feasting and sharing dance ceremonies. Many conflicts would be settled at this event, and consequences for breaches of laws were discussed.
Burial practices differ from group to group. In parts of Northern Australia, there are two stages of burial. After the body has been on an elevated platform, covered with leaves and branches, long enough for the flesh to rot away from the bones, the bones are collected, painted with ochre, and dispersed in various ways.
A corroboree is a ceremonial meeting for Australian Aboriginal people, interacting with the Dreaming and accompanied by song and dance. They differ from group to group, and may be sacred and private.
An ilma is both a public ceremony or performance of the Bardi people, and the hand-held objects used in these ceremonies.
The inma is a cultural ceremony of Aṉangu women of Central Australia, involving song and dance and embodying the stories and designs of the tjukurrpa (Ancestral Law, or Dreamtime). The ceremony carries camaraderie, joy, playfulness and seriousness, and may last for hours. There are many different inma, all profoundly significant to the culture.
The Mamurrng is a ceremony of West Arnhem Land in which two different language communities come together for trade and diplomacy.
The Morning Star Ceremony is a mortuary ceremony of the Dhuwa moiety.
The ngarra is one of the major regional rituals performed in north-east Arnhem Land, begun by the Rirratjingu clan of the Yolŋu people of East Arnhem. The first ngarra was performed by creation ancestors called Djang'kawu at the sacred site of Balma, in Yalangbara, after giving birth to the first of the Rirratjingu clan.
A Pukamani, or Pukumani, is a burial ceremony of the Tiwi Islands, which lasts for several days around the grave of the deceased about six months after their death. Elaborate funerary posts known as tutini are erected around the grave before the ceremony, and dancers dance and sing around the posts.
The ROM (or Rom - see previous section) ceremony, involving songs, dances, and artefacts, which involve presenting other neighbouring communities with decorated totem poles, with the intent of establishing or re-establishing friendly terms with them; a form of diplomacy. The process of making and decorating the poles can extend over weeks, and involves successive sessions of song and dance, culminating in the ceremony where gifts are exchanged. In April 2017, a four-day festival to mark the Rom ceremony was attended by about 500 people at Gapuwiyak School, in north-eastern Arnhem Land. It was planned to hold the event each term. Historian and writer Billy Griffiths wrote in his award-winning book Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia (2018), of the Rom ceremony as an "extension of friendship" and "ritual of diplomacy", of which the "full significance ... has yet to be appreciated by the Australian public. At the heart of this symbolic act is a gift – of song and dance and cultural knowledge, but it comes with obligations. The acceptance of such a gift enmeshes the recipients into a continual process of reciprocity".
A smoking ceremony is a cleansing ritual performed on special occasions.
Tjurunga (or churinga) are objects of religious significance by Central Australian Arrernte groups.
Walkabout is a rite of passage journey during adolescence, often mis-applied.
A welcome to country is a ritual now performed at many events held in Australia, intended to highlight the cultural significance of the surrounding area to a particular Aboriginal group. The welcome must be performed by a recognised elder of the group. The welcome ceremony is sometimes accompanied by a smoking ceremony, music or dance.
Musical instruments and other objects
The didgeridoo originated in northern Australia, but is now used throughout the continent. Clapsticks, seed rattles and objects such as rocks or pieces of wood are used; in a few areas, women play a drum made from goanna, snake, kangaroo or emu skin.
Cuisine
Animal native foods include kangaroo, emu, witchetty grubs and crocodile, and plant foods include fruits such as quandong, kutjera, spices such as lemon myrtle and vegetables such as warrigal greens,bananas and various native yams. Since the 1970s, there has been recognition of the nutritional and gourmet value of native foods by non-Indigenous Australians, and the bushfood industry has grown enormously.
Medicine
Pituri is a mixture of leaves and wood ash traditionally chewed as a stimulant (or, after extended use, a depressant) by Aboriginal Australians widely across the continent. Leaves are gathered from any of several species of native tobacco (Nicotiana) or from at least one distinct population of the species Duboisia hopwoodii. Various species of Acacia, Grevillea and Eucalyptus are burned to produce the ash. Traditional healers (known as Ngangkari in the Western jester areas of Central Australia) are highly respected men and women who not only acted as healers or doctors, but also generally served as custodians of important Dreaming stories.
Fire practices
Cultural burning, identified by Australian archaeologist Rhys Jones in 1969, is the practice of regularly and systematically burning patches of vegetation used in Central to Northern Australia to facilitate hunting, to reduce the frequency of major bush-fires, and to change the composition of plant and animal species in an area. This "fire-stick farming", or "burning off", reduces the fuel-load for a potential major bush fire, while fertilising the ground and increasing the number of young plants, providing additional food for kangaroos and other fauna hunted for meat. It is regarded as good husbandry and "looking after the land" by Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory.
Language
The Australian Aboriginal languages consist of around 290–363 languages belonging to an estimated 28 language families and isolates, spoken by Aboriginal Australians of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands. The relationships between these languages are not clear at present. Many Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a manually coded language, a signed counterpart of their oral language. This appears to be connected with various speech taboos between certain kin or at particular times, such as during a mourning period for women or during initiation ceremonies for men.
Avoidance speech in Australian Aboriginal languages is closely tied to elaborate tribal kinship systems in which certain relatives are considered taboo. Avoidance relations differ from tribe to tribe in terms of strictness and to whom they apply. Typically, there is an avoidance relationship between a man and his mother-in-law, usually between a woman and her father-in-law, and sometimes between any person and their same-sex parent-in-law. For some tribes, avoidance relationships are extended to other family members, such as the mother-in-law's brother in Warlpiri or cross-cousins in Dyirbal. All relations are classificatory – more people may fall into the "mother-in-law" category than just a man's wife's mother.
Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) is a dialect of Australian English used by a large section of the Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander) population. Australian Kriol is an English-based creole language that developed from a pidgin used in the early days of European colonisation. The pidgin died out in most parts of the country, except in the Northern Territory, which has maintained a vibrant use of the language, spoken by about 30,000 people. It is distinct from Torres Strait Creole.
Literature
At the point of the first colonisation, Indigenous Australians had not developed a system of writing, so the first literary accounts of Aboriginal people come from the journals of early European explorers, which contain descriptions of first contact.
A letter to Governor Arthur Phillip written by Bennelong in 1796 is the first known work written in English by an Aboriginal person.
While his father, James Unaipon, contributed to accounts of Ngarrindjeri mythology written by the missionary George Taplin in South Australia, David Unaipon (1872–1967) provided the first accounts of Aboriginal mythology written by an Aboriginal person, Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines (1924–25), and was the first Aboriginal author to be published.
The Yirrkala bark petitions of 1963 are the first traditional Aboriginal document recognised by the Australian Parliament.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993) was a famous Aboriginal poet, writer and rights activist credited with publishing the first Aboriginal book of verse: We Are Going (1964).
Sally Morgan's 1987 memoir My Place brought Indigenous stories to wider notice.
Leading Aboriginal activists Marcia Langton (First Australians documentary TV series, 2008) and Noel Pearson (Up from the Mission, 2009) are contemporary contributors to Australian non-fiction. Other voices of Indigenous Australians include the playwright Jack Davis and Kevin Gilbert.
Writers coming to prominence in the 21st century include Kim Scott, Alexis Wright, Kate Howarth, Tara June Winch, Yvette Holt and Anita Heiss. Indigenous authors who have won Australia's Miles Franklin Award include Kim Scott, who was joint winner (with Thea Astley) in 2000 for Benang and again in 2011 for That Deadman Dance. Alexis Wright won the award in 2007 for her novel Carpentaria. Melissa Lucashenko won the Miles Franklin Award in 2019 for her novel Too Much Lip.
Music
Aboriginal people have developed unique musical instruments and folk styles. The didgeridoo is often considered the national instrument of Aboriginal Australians; however, it was traditionally played by peoples of Northern Australia, and only by the men. It has possibly been used by the people of the Kakadu region for 1500 years.
Clapping sticks are probably the more ubiquitous musical instrument, especially because they help maintain rhythm. More recently, Aboriginal musicians have branched into rock and roll, hip hop and reggae. Bands such as No Fixed Address and Yothu Yindi were two of the earliest Aboriginal bands to gain a popular following among Australians of all cultures.
In 1997 the State and Federal Governments set up the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts (ACPA) to preserve and nurture Aboriginal music and talent across all styles and genres from traditional to contemporary.
Sport and games
Woggabaliri is a traditional Indigenous Australian "co-operative kicking volley game". The Indigenous in areas of and near New South Wales played a ball game called Woggabaliri. The ball was usually made of possum fur, and was played in a group of four to six players in circle. It was a co-operative kicking game to see for how long the ball can be kept in the air before it touches the ground.
The Djab Wurrung and Jardwadjali people of western Victoria once participated in the traditional game of Marn Grook, a type of football played with possum hide. The game is believed by some commentators, including Martin Flanagan, Jim Poulter and Col Hutchinson, to have inspired Tom Wills, inventor of the code of Australian rules football.
Similarity between Marn Grook and Australian football include jumping to catch the ball or high "marking", which results in a free kick. Use of the word "mark" in the game may be influenced by the Marn Grook word mumarki, meaning "catch". However, this is likely a false etymology; the term "mark" is traditionally used in Rugby and other games that predate AFL to describe a free kick resulting from a catch, in reference to the player making a mark on the ground from which to take a free kick, rather than continuing to play on.
There are many Indigenous AFL players at professional level, with approximately one in ten players being of Indigenous origin . The contribution of the Aboriginal people to the game is recognized by the annual AFL "Dreamtime at the 'G" match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground between Essendon and Richmond football clubs (the colors of the two clubs combine to form the colours of the Aboriginal flag).
Testifying to this abundance of Indigenous talent, the Aboriginal All-Stars, an AFL-level all-Aboriginal football side competes against any one of the Australian Football League's current football teams in pre-season tests. The Clontarf Foundation and football academy is just one organisation aimed at further developing aboriginal football talent. The Tiwi Bombers began playing in the Northern Territory Football League and became the first all-Aboriginal side to compete in a major Australian competition.
Coreeda is a style of folk wrestling practiced in Australia and is based on Aboriginal combat sports that existed in the pre-colonial period before the 19th century. Combining the movements of the traditional kangaroo dance as a warm up ritual, with a style of wrestling that utilizes a yellow 4.5 meter diameter circle that has black and red borders (similar to the Aboriginal flag), Coreeda is often compared to sports as diverse as capoeira and sumo.
A popular children's game in some parts of Australia is weet weet, or throwing the play stick. The winner throws the weet weet furthest or the most accurately.
See also
Australian Aboriginal artefacts
Black Theatre (Sydney)
Contemporary Indigenous Australian art
Country (Indigenous Australians)
Garma Festival of Traditional Cultures
Indigenous Australian art
Indigenous Australian literature
Indigenous Australian traditional custodianship
Jindyworobak Movement, a white Australian literary movement inspired by Aboriginal culture
Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages, a digital archive of literature in endangered languages of the Northern Territory
Lizard Island#Mangrove Beach, a 2024 pottery finding
Stone tool#Aboriginal Australian use
Yaama Ngunna Baaka, 2019 festival consisting of a series of corroborees
References
Bibliography
Further reading
ENGAGING - A Guide to Interacting Respectfully and Reciprocally with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, and their Arts Practices and Intellectual Property (Australian Government: Indigenous Culture Support) | 0.761012 | 0.992975 | 0.755666 |
Postpositivism | Postpositivism or postempiricism is a metatheoretical stance that critiques and amends positivism and has impacted theories and practices across philosophy, social sciences, and various models of scientific inquiry. While positivists emphasize independence between the researcher and the researched person (or object), postpositivists argue that theories, hypotheses, background knowledge and values of the researcher can influence what is observed. Postpositivists pursue objectivity by recognizing the possible effects of biases. While positivists emphasize quantitative methods, postpositivists consider both quantitative and qualitative methods to be valid approaches.
Philosophy
Epistemology
Postpositivists believe that human knowledge is based not on a priori assessments from an objective individual, but rather upon human conjectures. As human knowledge is thus unavoidably conjectural, the assertion of these conjectures are warranted, or more specifically, justified by a set of warrants, which can be modified or withdrawn in the light of further investigation. However, postpositivism is not a form of relativism, and generally retains the idea of objective truth.
Ontology
Postpositivists believe that a reality exists, but, unlike positivists, they believe reality can be known only imperfectly. Postpositivists also draw from social constructionism in forming their understanding and definition of reality.
Axiology
While positivists believe that research is or can be value-free or value-neutral, postpositivists take the position that bias is undesired but inevitable, and therefore the investigator must work to detect and try to correct it. Postpositivists work to understand how their axiology (i.e. values and beliefs) may have influenced their research, including through their choice of measures, populations, questions, and definitions, as well as through their interpretation and analysis of their work.
History
Historians identify two types of positivism: classical positivism, an empirical tradition first described by Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte in the first half of the 19th century, and logical positivism, which is most strongly associated with the Vienna Circle, which met near Vienna, Austria, in the 1920s and 1930s. Postpositivism is the name D.C. Phillips gave to a group of critiques and amendments which apply to both forms of positivism.
One of the first thinkers to criticize logical positivism was Karl Popper. He advanced falsification in lieu of the logical positivist idea of verificationism. Falsificationism argues that it is impossible to verify that beliefs about universals or unobservables are true, though it is possible to reject false beliefs if they are phrased in a way amenable to falsification.
In 1965, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn had a debate as Thomas Kuhn's theory did not incorporate this idea of falsification. It has influenced contemporary research methodologies.
Thomas Kuhn is credited with having popularized and at least in part originated the post-empiricist philosophy of science. Kuhn's idea of paradigm shifts offers a broader critique of logical positivism, arguing that it is not simply individual theories but whole worldviews that must occasionally shift in response to evidence.
Postpositivism is not a rejection of the scientific method, but rather a reformation of positivism to meet these critiques. It reintroduces the basic assumptions of positivism: the possibility and desirability of objective truth, and the use of experimental methodology. The work of philosophers Nancy Cartwright and Ian Hacking are representative of these ideas. Postpositivism of this type is described in social science guides to research methods.
Structure of a postpositivist theory
Robert Dubin describes the basic components of a postpositivist theory as being composed of basic "units" or ideas and topics of interest, "laws of interactions" among the units, and a description of the "boundaries" for the theory. A postpositivist theory also includes "empirical indicators" to connect the theory to observable phenomena, and hypotheses that are testable using the scientific method.
According to Thomas Kuhn, a postpositivist theory can be assessed on the basis of whether it is "accurate", "consistent", "has broad scope", "parsimonious", and "fruitful".
Main publications
Karl Popper (1934) Logik der Forschung, rewritten in English as The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)
Thomas Kuhn (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Karl Popper (1963) Conjectures and Refutations
Ian Hacking (1983) Representing and Intervening
Andrew Pickering (1984) Constructing Quarks
Peter Galison (1987) How Experiments End
Nancy Cartwright (1989) Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement
See also
Antipositivism
Philosophy of science
Scientism
Sociology of scientific knowledge
Notes
References
Alexander, J.C. (1995), Fin De Siecle Social Theory: Relativism, Reductionism and The Problem of Reason, London; Verso.
Phillips, D.C. & Nicholas C. Burbules (2000): Postpositivism and Educational Research. Lanham & Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Zammito, John H. (2004): A Nice Derangement of Epistemes. Post-positivism in the study of Science from Quine to Latour. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
Popper, K. (1963), Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London; Routledge.
Moore, R. (2009), Towards the Sociology of Truth, London; Continuum.
External links
Positivism and Post-positivism
Positivism
Metatheory of science
Epistemological theories | 0.762581 | 0.990931 | 0.755665 |
Neoism | Neoism is a parodistic -ism. It refers both to a specific subcultural network of artistic performance and media experimentalists, and, more generally, to a practical underground philosophy. It operates with collectively shared pseudonyms and identities, pranks, paradoxes, plagiarism and fakes, and has created multiple contradicting definitions of itself in order to defy categorization and historization.
Background
Definitions of Neoism were always disputed. The
main source of this is the undefinable concept of Neoism which created
vastly different, tactically distorted accounts of Neoism and its
history. Undisputed, however, are the origin of the movement in the late 1970s Canada. It was initiated by Hungarian-born Canadian performance and media-artist Istvan Kantor (aka Monty Cantsin) in 1979, in Montreal. At around the same time the open-pop-star identity of Monty Cantsin was spread through the Mail Artist David Zack
(born New Orleans, June 12, 1938, died presumably in Texas ca. 1995) with the collaboration of artists Maris Kudzins and performance artist Istvan Kantor.
Schisms followed in the mid-1980s. Questions and concerns arose about whether the "open pop star" Monty Cantsin moniker was being overly associated with certain individuals. Later, writer Stewart Home sought to separate himself from the rest of the Neoist network, manifesting itself in Home's books on Neoism as opposed to the various Neoist resources in the Internet. In non-Neoist terms, Neoism could be called an international subculture which in the beginning put itself into simultaneous continuity and discontinuity with, among others, experimental arts (such as Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Concept Art), punk, industrial music and electropop, political and religious free-spirit movements, science fiction literature, 'pataphysics and speculative science. Neoism also gathered players with backgrounds in graffiti and street performance, language writing (later known as language poetry), experimental film and video, Mail Art, the early Church of the Subgenius and gay and lesbian culture. Neoism then gradually transformed from an active subculture into a self-written urban legend. As a side effect, many other subcultures, artistic and political groups since the late 1980s have—often vaguely—referred to or even opposed Neoism and thereby perpetuated its myth.
Since the gradual disappearance of Neoism in the 1990s, brief offshoots have appeared including The Seven By Nine Squares, Stewart Home's frequent use of Karen Eliot (as well as Sandy Larson, Luther Blissett (nom de plume) and others) to replace Monty Cantsin as the embodiment of the open pop star concept. "This project... confuses the restrictions that both define and delimit individual identity.... Changing details, such as biographical particulars... are usually considered indispensable in securing the signature of an individual."
History
Neoism, as a name for a different context, was coined in 1914 by the American satirist Franklin P. Adams as a parody of modern arts. Sydney J. Bounds used the word as the name of a planet in his 1977 science fiction story No Way Back. In 1980 Monty spent two weeks at mail artist Ginny Lloyd's San Francisco Storefront., a one year living art project holding art events and installations in a storefront window. He lived in the space, compiled writings and launched his Blood Campaign.
Neoism quickly spread to other places in America, Europe and Australia and involved up to two dozens of Neoists. Until the late 1980s and before the mass availability of the Internet, the mail art network continued to be used as the main communication and propaganda channel for Neoism.
Neoists refer to their strategies as "the great confusion" and "radical play". They were acted out in semi-private Apartment Festivals which took place in North America, Europe and Australia between 1980 and 1998 and in publications which sought to embody confusion and radical play rather than just describing it. Consequently, both Neoist festivals and Neoist writing experimented with radical undermining of identity, bodies, media, and notions of ownership and truth. Unlike typical postmodern currents, the experiment was practical and therefore existential. Monty Cantsin, for example, was not simply a collective pseudonym or mythical person, but an identity lived by Neoists in their everyday life.
For these purposes, Neoists employed performance, video, small press publications (such as Smile, the international magazine of multiple origins) and computer viruses, but also food (Chapati), flaming steam irons and metal coat hangers (used as telepathic antennas). Borrowing from Thomas Pynchon, Neoism could be more suitably called an "anarchist miracle" of an international network of highly eccentric persons collaborating, often with extremist intensity, under the one shared identity of Monty Cantsin and Neoism.
In 2004 Neoism was cited by Javier Ruis in response to the National Assembly Against Racism's condemnation of anarchists disrupting the Third European Social Forum session on anti- m and anti-racism in London (PGA Considered As Neoist Invisible Theatre).
In the early 1980s, the Neoist Reinhard U. Sevol founded Anti-Neoism, which other Neoists adopted by declaring
Neoism a pure fiction created by Anti-Neoists. The Dutch Neoist Arthur Berkoff operated as a one-person-movement
"Neoism/Anti-Neoism/Pregroperativism". Similarly, Blaster Al Ackerman declared himself a "Salmineoist" after Sicilian-American actor Sal Mineo, and John Berndt was credited by Ackerman as having given Neoism the name "Spanish Art," circa 1983. In 1989, following the post-Neoist "Festival of Plagiarism" in Glasgow, Scotland, artist Mark Bloch left mail art and after publishing "The Last Word" remained defiantly silent on Neoism for almost two decades. In 1994, Stewart Home founded the Neoist Alliance as an occult order with himself as the magus. At the same time, Italian activists of the Luther Blissett project operated under the name "Alleanza Neoista".
In 1997, the critic Oliver Marchart organized a "Neoist World Congress" in Vienna which did not involve any Neoists. In 2004 Istvan Kantor received the Governor General's Award, and an international "Neoist Department Festival" took place in Berlin.
Influences on other artists and subcultures
With their design prank CONSUMER'S REST Lounge Chair, the "one-man artist group" established a sub- as well as counter-culturally motivated connection between neoistically determined aspects of cultural consumption criticism and design consumption critical aspects of at the 9th Neoist Festival in Ponte Nossa in 1985 and at the Festival of Plagiarism in Braunschweig's University of Art in 1988. They also engaged in media consumption-critical public relations work in neoist collaborations and conspirations, especially with Neoism's foremost therrorist tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (cit.: "Neoism is a prefix and a suffix with no substance in between") on the aspect of Interpassivity, a neoist term coined by Stiletto. Since 1988 they had been consulted by on a regular, from 1994 on predominatly interpassive basis as antineoist nutritionists. In 1995 Stiletto Studio,s presented LESS function IS MORE fun as a post-neoist special waste sale of design-defuncts in the Spätverkauf project store by Laura Kikauka at the Volksbühne Berlin.
Other artists who explicitly if vaguely credit Neoism are The KLF, Luther Blissett, Alexander Brener/Barbara Schurz, Lee Wells and Luke Haines (of The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder). The contemporary Dutch Artist Thomas Raat created a series of artworks based on Neoist manifestos and photographic documents.
Quotes
"Neoism is a prefix and a suffix with no substance in between" - tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
"Neoism is a movement to create the illusion that there's a movement called Neoism." "Come, join us. We want war with you." - John Berndt
"If Neoism didn't exist, we would have to NOT create it" - Artemus Barnoz
"It is not a matter of describing Neoism but of abolishing" - Luther Blissett
"Neoism doesn't exist except in the reactions it creates" - Roberto Bui/ Wu Ming Yi
"Time is not money and we have plenty of it" - Kiki Bonbon
"Plagiarism is Necessary. Progress Implies It. NO MORE MASTERPIECES!" - Karen Eliot
"Neoisms not just for Xmas, it's for life!" - Stewart Home
"We are the Neoists, do NOT listen to us" - Monty Cantsin
"Neoism is conspiracy errorism" – Stiletto Studio,s
Selected books
A Neoist Research Project (2010), ed. N.O. Cantsin, London: OpenMute, , 246 pages; the first comprehensive anthology and source book of Neoist writing and images, documenting Neoist interventions, Apartment Festivals, definitions and pamphlets of Neoism and affiliated currents, language and identity experiments and Neoist concepts and memes.
Touchon, Cecil (2008). New and Improved Neoist Manifesto—a Trans-Lingual Edition. The Neoist Society in association with Ontological Museum Publications. . Features Touchon's trans-lingual Neoist Manifesto with commentaries by Monte Cantsin and Karen Eliot.
Oliver Marchart: Neoismus /Neoism, Edition Selene, Klagenfurt – Wien 1997, ISBN 3-85266-038-6
See also
Artivism
Church of the SubGenius
Situationist International
References
Neoism
Political art
Social theories
Humour
Practical jokes | 0.778894 | 0.970164 | 0.755655 |
Ephemerality | Ephemerality (from the Greek word , meaning 'lasting only one day') is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Academically, the term ephemeral constitutionally describes a diverse assortment of things and experiences, from digital media to types of streams. "There is no single definition of ephemerality". With respect to unique performances, for example, it has been noted that "[e]phemerality is a quality caused by the ebb and flow of the crowd's concentration on the performance and a reflection of the nostalgic character of specific performances". Because different people may value the passage of time differently, ephemerality may be a relative, perceptual concept: "In brief, what is short-lived may not be the object itself, but the attention we afford it".
Ephemerality and nature
Geographical features
An ephemeral stream is that which only exists following precipitation. They are not the same as intermittent or seasonal waterbodies, which exist for longer periods, but not all year round. Ephemeral streams can be difficult to "conceptually defin[e]"; those that are discontinuous, due to altering between aggradation or degradation, have the appearance of continual change. Furthermore, the characteristics of terrain and rainfall are profound in affecting ephemeral streams. Ephemeral waterbodies experience formative change upon the end of a hydroperiod. "Due to lack of continuous hydrology data, the designation of sites as ephemeral or intermittent is necessarily tenuous". Ephemeral streams feature a low degree of hydrological connectivity.
Small wetlands are often ephemeral and ephemeral ecosystems are often aquatic; ephemeral wetlands, streams and ponds are a varied and global occurrence. In northeastern United States, ephemeral freshwater systems are abundant and are "critical to the maintenance of forest biodiversity". Hydroperiod, predation, competition and food availability are among the "highly heterogeneous" elements of these features. In tropical biomes, amphibians often reside in ephemeral habitats during dry seasons; opportunistic species utilise similar and ephemeral habitats for food, sleep or mating. Environments akin to ephemeral ponds can be very significant sites of reproduction for amphibians; many other organism make use of ephemeral ponds, pools and streams to breed. Those which do utilise these sites are significantly constrained by time thus they mature, reproduce or disperse before evaporation. Ephemeral pools lasting only days or weeks are exclusively used for breeding by Fletcher's frog regardless of the precarious survival of offspring. Fletcher's frogs use these sites to exploit them, by-passing predation and competition. Tadpoles, however, are hindered by ephemeral streams, as can surrounding systems. Limited and unpredictable food availability means ephemeral waterbodies may be rife with cannibalism. Specific adaptions to ephemeral pools are abundant. Human alterations to the habitats of ephemeral nectar that flying foxes consume has led to urban migration. Climate change significantly affects ephemeral freshwater systems and changes in climates may be precisely identified by the ecosystems of ephemeral pools.
Ephemeral habitat patches have repeatedly been assessed as detrimental to metapopulation persistence, although metapopulations are not always negatively affected by ephemeral landscapes. These patches occur as a result of the habitat's turnover. Ephemeral streams have, relative to their perennial counterparts, lower species richness; the streams are "potentially demanding" for inhabitants, although some species do reside.
Ephemeral rivers sometimes form waterholes in geological depressions or areas scoured by erosion, and are common in arid regions of Australia.
The ephemerality of a river network is a particularly significant element in the hydrological transmission of waterborne diseases, via a direct and indirect presence in the transmission cycle – the nature of the disease and area covered are important factors as well. Diseases like malaria, dengue fever, chikungunya, zika and schistosomiasis are found in ephemeral waterbodies due to their vectors relation and/or reliance.
Examples of ephemeral streams are the Luni river in Rajasthan, India, Ugab River in Southern Africa, and a number of small ephemeral watercourses that drain Talak in northern Niger. Other notable ephemeral rivers include the Todd River and Sandover River in Central Australia as well as the Son River, Batha River, and the Trabancos River.
Any endorheic basin, or closed basin, that contains a playa (dry lake) at its drainage lowpoint can become an ephemeral lake. Examples include Lake Carnegie in Western Australia, Lake Cowal in New South Wales, Mystic Lake and Rogers Lake in California, and Sevier Lake in Utah. Even the driest and lowest place in North America, Death Valley (more specifically Badwater Basin), became flooded with a short-lived ephemeral lake in the spring of 2005. Costelloe et al. (2009) describes salt lakes found in the arid zone of Australia as profoundly ephemeral.
There are also ephemeral islands such as Banua Wuhu and Home Reef. These islands appear when volcanic activity increases their height above sea level, but disappear over several years due to wave erosion. Bassas da India, on the other hand, is a near-sea level island that appears only at low tide. On account of changing demarcation, shores exist as ephemeral.
Only a small amount of southern Costa Rica's secondary forests reach maturity, indicating that they may be "generally ephemeral". Deciduous forests, via the seasonal change of leaves, are subject to natural ephemeral changes. Ephemeral pools located in forests are commonly known as "vernal pools", often lasting in a seasonal manner. Landscapes feature ephemeral changes of both natural and man-made origin. Furrows, haystacks and sheaves are ephemeral aspects of a landscape.
Biological processes
Plants whose life cycle is significantly less than the time of a growing season are deemed ephemeral. Winter annuals, Epilobium and Senecio vulgaris are examples of ephemeral plants. The conditions for ephemeral plants are markedly present in deserts.
Animals can be ephemeral, with brine shrimp and the mayfly being examples. The placenta is considered an ephemeral organ present during gestation and pregnancy.
Ephemerality is a component of olfaction, breathing, speech and memory, aligned with permanency in the latter. With regards to witnessing an artwork in a museum, limited research indicates that the ephemerality of solely gazing at the artwork results in greater remembrance compared to the resulting memory from taking a photograph. Psychologists have studied why ephemerality may improve memory retention; social psychologist Karl E. Scheibe, conversely, suggested that ephemeral images are only memorable if repeated. The ephemerality of memory leads objects to assume the function of begeting remembrance on account of their greater stability.
Ephemerality and society
Ephemeral objects
Objects which are ephemeral, per one perspective, are those whose compositional material experience chemical or physical changes and are thus permanently altered; this process occurs in a matter of decades. Furthermore, ephemerality can be perceived as defiance of value or durability; common uses of the term indicate a "complicated relationship between temporality and value". Ephemerality is a matter of varying scale and can affect the entire spectrum of literature, from a "finely bound" Bible to a "hastily printed" handbill: "Paper is the medium of permanence and ephemerality at once". Due to them often outlasting their expressed purpose, these objects can be perceived as temporal and ontological oddities; ephemerality has been described as constitutionally liminal. Ephemerality has been seen as indicative of epochs like the Printing Revolution, a greater expansion thereof, the Baroque era, the Victorian era, the Georgian era, modernity, or the "emergent post-print age". The likes of food, clothes, novels, zines, illnesses, breath, regimes, persons, glass, ash and ephemera have been said to illustrate and/or be affected by ephemerality. The new media of the 20th century conditioned perceptions of ephemerality in the 21st century—the advent of the telegraph, camera, and film projector instilled an understanding of ephemeral media. Scholars such as Charles Baudelaire, Georg Simmel, and Walter Benjamin saw the distinctly and intentionally ephemeral practice of fashion as emblematic of modernity. Scholars have described ephemerality as affixed to the present, a present that is ephemeral insofar as it is contingent.
Baudelaire, who considered aesthetics to be centered around an interplay of the perennial and the ephemeral, defined the artistic component of modernity by its ephemeral quality. Sarah Kofman posited that art is utilised to abate the "intolerable nature of all ephemeral things". Ephemerality has been relevant to a considerable amount of art; various artists have drawn upon the matter to explore time, memory, politics, emotions, spirituality and death. The Dada, Fluxus, Surreal, and Futurist movements all incorporated ephemerality as have Kuba, Mono-ha, and ukiyo-e. Perceptions of ephemerality vary between cultures, from melancholy and mitigation to embrace. Performance art has frequently been described as ephemeral in nature; with regards to historical performances, the traces: playbills, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and material artifacts are themselves ephemeral.
Literature is ephemeral, including definitions and "all printed texts". Ephemeral was first used colloquially in reference to printed matters. By 1750, an "expansion of all kinds of ephemeral print" had occurred. Hazlitt contended that such ephemerality was the result of widespread aestheticism, thus the creations were subject to being abruptly disregarded due to the cascading "gaze of fashion". Wallace Stevens adjusted his poetic standards due to a "perception of ephemerality" that living in New York City instigated. Art Spiegelman asserted that the format of comics, even during degradation, defies ephemerality, although they have been deemed as such. Women's writing, the likes of diaries and political pamphlets, have amassed a status as long being ephemeral, acknowledged by some affected in the then-present. The ubiquity of digital media has spurred the opinion that print material is comparatively less ephemeral. Elisa New and Anna Akhmatova varyingly opined that poetry is a means of repealing mortal ephemerality, with Akhamatova invoking the aphorism ("skillfulness takes time and life is short").
Ephemeral objects chiefly disappear; when preserved it is often knowingly, having been "rescued from ephemerality", though this practice is still fraught with uncertainty and an object's ephemerality may only be suspended, thus still capable of being transitory. The legacy of ephemerality often manifests as "traces, glimmers, residues, and specks of things". Literature may contest, document or approximate ephemerality although the immateral nature means that there can only be an approximation: "In other words, there must always be an ephemeral beyond the ephemeral". Film has been used to document and combat ephemeral aspects of human development. Digital media's encompassing archival process means that information of varying importance can either be affixed or ephemeral, the former seen as the more generally common outcome. Digital personas, on account of precariousness and whim, can be entirely ephemeral, without any record. Grey literature has prove particularly vulnerable to the internet's ephemerality.
Ephemeral acquired its common meaning of short-living in the mid-19th century and has connotations of passing time, fragility, change, disappearance, transformation, and the "philosophically ultimate vision of our own existence". Sarah Kofman questioned if "the beauty that conceals the evanescent nature of all things were itself ephemeral". Rather than melancholic, Sigmund Freud and Walter Pater viewed ephemerality as valuable; awareness and acceptance were to Freud commendable.
Ephemerality as a human condition
Multiple scholars have viewed ephemerality as intrinsic to the human condition, a phenomenon of physicality. A significant amount of living is ephemeral, considered by some as a component of everyday life: "we might best understand the ephemeral as a routine and constant force... that establishes the presence of the everyday". Ephemeral aspects are evident in communication, of both digitial and physical origin. In the digital realm, online interactions straddle permanency and ephemerality, new posts proliferate such that participants adopt a social norm that "the discourse will pass and be forgotten as the past". Ephemerality is a technologically and socially reliant concept – relative and historically changing. The rudimentary technology of early radio led to the media broadcast being ephemeral and for a substantial amount of time spoken communication was ephemeral. Written communication, historically and presently, has been influenced by ephemerality. The emergence of new digital media and technology develops what we deem ephemeral, to the point that ephemerality is perhaps an "outdated concept".
Within the context of modern media dissemination, YouTube videos, viral emails and photos have been identified as ephemeral; as have means of advertising, both physical and digital and the internet collectively. Ephemeral media has been described as that which is brief in duration and/or circulation, adjacent to "the primary texts of contemporary entertainment culture". YouTube has "become a hugely successful aggregator of ephemeral media". In 2009, Ian Christie considered that a substantial amount of modern media, aligned with "rapid proliferati[on]", "may prove much more ephemeral than the flip-book".
Wang Tao, Stevens and Rubem Fonseca evoked ephemerality via female characters; Virginia Woolf used the rainbow as a symbol whereas grass occupies a similar role in the Bible; F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Keats elicited melancholic ephemerality in showcases of consumption. Historically, the ephemerality of dreams was utilised in ample East Asian literature as a metaphor for immaterial reality whereas Baroque writings depicted the matter as analogous to life. Scholar of comparative literature Stuart Lasine noted that writers have frequently invoked ephemerality as a negative aspect of the human condition. Ephemerality was profound to Dōgen and was intertwined with sorrow and regret; he used "the imagery of ephemerality" in a waka concerning death.
Ephemerality has received increased attention from modern academics, in fields such as: literary studies, art history, book history, digital media studies, performance studies – "and the 'archival turn' in the humanities as a whole". The ephemerality of dance has engendered concern since at least the sixteenth century. Curators of modern and contemporary art have increasingly expressed a similar interest; curator of said genres Jan Schall described them as varyingly ephemeral. Ephemerality present in digital literature and poetry has seen critical analysis. Russell questioned if scholarly conceptions of "the everyday" was deeply intertwined with ephemerality, despite attention to a relation being thus far faint. Social historians and historians of sound have contended their subject's ephemerality by utilising more material forms; creative soundwork has long been subordinate to these forms on account of its ephemerality. The ephemerality of the internet and features that engender ephemerality, such as link rot, has elicited concern in regards to scholarly practice.
Ephemerality has been studied in the context of dancing. Witnessing a dance that will be rendered ephemeral is resultingly commodified and of greater desire to prospecting audiences; the same is true of fairs. Muñoz posited that the physical proximation of dance, which coupled with the "shared rhythm", results in a unified yet ephemeral status of those engaged. La Sylphide sees ephemerality as a notable theme. Professor of Dance Mark Franko contended that the artform is approaching a state of being "post-ephemeral" while Diane Taylor viewed the lasting impact a performance may have as negating notions of ephemerality. The documentation of other ephemeral events: protests, installations, exhibitions, are often meager – public events, of varying size, naturally generate ephemeral material.
"[Ephemerality] and disposability" have been perceived as components "of an American ethos"; alternative history novels such as The Man in the High Castle and The Plot Against America depict Americana and the nation itself as ephemeral. Ephemerality has been central to Buddhism; Yogācāra teaches a version of ontology that centers around universal ephemerality. Ephemerality has been identified as relevant to queer cultures; José Esteban Muñoz argued that queerness and ephemerality are intertwined, as the former has been expressed in methods which are prone to fade upon the "touch of those who would erase queer possibility". Freud considered culture as the prevailing element exempt from ephemerality. Scheibe saw the likes of live theater, travel abroad, stand-up comedy, and political pundits as engendering greater ephemerality by reducing attention spans and sense of personal history.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' perception of ephemerality "represents a thoroughly modern experience". Ephemerality was furthermore prominent in the late 20th century, on account of multiple social features; Reiko Tomii described ephemerality as a "defining issue of the 1960s". In the 21st century, ephemerality "continues to signify concerns about the overflow of information, its evanescence, and questions of what or should be preserved". David Harvey defined postmodernism as "a total acceptance of ephemerality".
Architecture of an ephemeral nature appears as increasingly commonplace, on account of global and capricious hyper-mobility and mass displacement. Marc Augé observed ephemerality as key to the likes of airports, malls, supermarkets, office blocks, and hotels thus rendering them, per his definition, "non-places". Architecture scholar Anastasia Karandinou argued that the practice's modern relation to ephemerality correlated with digital media's evolution, which she says has enabled new conceptions of space and everyday thinking. Of an indefinite and contentious nature, the definition of a region is ephemeral.
See also
Ephemeroptera
Vanitas
On Transience
Liminal space
References
Further reading
Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Esthetique De L'ephemere, Galilee,
Concepts in aesthetics
Metaphysical properties | 0.760878 | 0.993096 | 0.755625 |
Plurisexuality | Plurisexuality or multisexuality is a term used to describe individuals who are attracted to multiple genders. This includes certain sexual identities such as pansexuality, bisexuality, omnisexuality, and polysexuality, falling under the umbrella of non-monosexuality, which encompasses all sexualities that are not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. It's also referred to as multiple-gender attraction (MGA). Plurisexual individuals may experience sexual attraction to people of different genders, which can include but is not limited to men, women, non-binary, genderqueer, and other gender identities. Plurisexuality can be fluid and may vary from person to person. Abrosexual, for example, can be used to describe when one's experience changes in their attractions over time.
Multisexual was also used to describe multicultural sexual diversity, among other things.
Some plurisexual people may feel represented by the bisexual umbrella, however not every plurisexual identifies as bisexual. While more specific and less known plurisexual identities exist, bisexuality and pansexuality are more established and understood concepts within the LGBT community and among the general public, but they may experience monosexism, erasure, and heteronormativity.
See also
Allosexuality
Gray asexuality
Heteroflexibility
Multiromantic
Non-heterosexual
Sapphism
Pomosexual
Queer
References
Pansexuality
Bisexuality
Neologisms | 0.767587 | 0.984339 | 0.755566 |
Polytechnic (United Kingdom) | A polytechnic was a tertiary education teaching institution in England, Wales and Northern Ireland offering higher diplomas, undergraduate degree and postgraduate education (masters and PhD) that was governed and administered at the national level by the Council for National Academic Awards. At the outset, the focus of polytechnics was on STEM subjects, with a special emphasis on engineering. After the passage of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 they became independent universities, which meant they could award their own degrees. The comparable institutions in Scotland were collectively referred to as Central Institutions.
Like polytechnics or technological universities (institute of technology) in other countries, their aim was to teach both purely academic and professional vocational degrees (engineering, computer science, law, architecture, management, business, accounting, journalism, town planning, etc.). Their original focus was applied education for professional work, and their original roots concentrated on advanced engineering and applied science (STEM subjects); though soon after being founded they also created departments concerned with the humanities. The polytechnic legacy was to advance and excel in undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in engineering and technology (STEM) education that now form a core faculty at many universities in the UK. While many former polytechnics have advanced their research focus, many have retained their original ethos by focusing on teaching for professional practice.
The term 'poly' is used informally for pre-1992 polytechnics.
History
19th century
The London Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster) emerged from the Royal Polytechnic Institution which was founded at Regent Street, London in 1838. The establishment of the polytechnic was a reaction to the rise of industrial power and technical education in France, Germany and the US. Degrees at the London Polytechnic were validated by the University of London.
1960s–1992
Most polytechnics were formed in the expansion of higher education in the 1960s. Academic degrees in polytechnics were validated by the UK Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) from 1965 to 1992. The division between universities and polytechnics was known as the binary divide in UK higher education. The CNAA was chartered by the British government to validate and award degrees, and to maintain national quality assurance standards. The CNAA subject boards from their inception were from the universities; a CNAA degree was formally recognised as equivalent to a university degree, and the courses were under strict scrutiny by assessors external to the polytechnics. Sub-degree courses at these institutions were validated by the Business & Technology Education Council (BTEC).
Some polytechnics were often seen as ranking below universities in the provision of higher education, because they lacked degree-awarding powers, concentrated on applied science and engineering education, and produced less research than the universities, and because the qualifications necessary to gain a place in one were sometimes lower than for a university (the failure rate in the first year of undergraduate courses was high, due to a rigorous filtering process). However, in terms of an undergraduate education, this was a misconception, since many polytechnics offered academic degrees validated by the CNAA, from bachelor's and master's degrees to PhD research degrees. In addition, professional degrees in subjects such as engineering, town planning, law, and architecture were rigorously validated by various professional institutions. Many polytechnics argued that a CNAA degree was superior to many university degrees, especially in engineering, due to the external independent validation process employed by the CNAA, the oversight of the engineering institutions, and innovations such as sandwich degrees. Such innovations made a polytechnic education more relevant for professional work in applying science and advanced technology in industry.
Post-1992
Under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 they became fully fledged universities. After 1992, the former polytechnics ("new universities") awarded their own degrees.
List of former polytechnics
In England, there are:
Anglia Ruskin University, formerly Anglia Polytechnic (located in Cambridge and Chelmsford)
Birmingham City University, formerly Birmingham Polytechnic
University of Brighton, formerly Brighton Polytechnic
Bournemouth University, formerly Bournemouth Polytechnic
University of Central Lancashire, formerly Lancashire Polytechnic and before that Preston Polytechnic (until 1984)
Coventry University, formerly Coventry Polytechnic and Lanchester Polytechnic (until 1987)
De Montfort University Leicester, formerly Leicester Polytechnic
University of East London, formerly North East London Polytechnic and Polytechnic of East London
University of Greenwich, formerly Woolwich Polytechnic (until 1970), then Thames Polytechnic
University of Hertfordshire, formerly Hatfield Polytechnic
University of Huddersfield, formerly Huddersfield Polytechnic
Kingston University, formerly Kingston Polytechnic
Leeds Beckett University, formerly Leeds Polytechnic and as Leeds Metropolitan University from 1998 to 2013
Lincoln University was formed in part from Humberside Polytechnic which was briefly Humberside University
Liverpool John Moores University, formerly Liverpool Polytechnic
London Metropolitan University, formerly City of London Polytechnic and Polytechnic of North London
Manchester Metropolitan University, formerly Manchester Polytechnic
Middlesex University, formerly Middlesex Polytechnic
University of Northumbria at Newcastle, formerly Newcastle Polytechnic
Nottingham Trent University, formerly Trent Polytechnic (later Nottingham Polytechnic)
Oxford Brookes University, formerly Oxford Polytechnic
University of Plymouth, Plymouth Polytechnic (until 1989), then Polytechnic South West
University of Portsmouth, formerly Portsmouth Polytechnic
Sheffield Hallam University, formerly Sheffield Polytechnic
South Bank University, formerly South Bank Polytechnic (in London)
Staffordshire University, formerly Staffordshire Polytechnic and previously North Staffordshire Polytechnic
University of Sunderland, formerly Sunderland Polytechnic
Teesside University, formerly Teesside Polytechnic
University of the West of England, formerly Bristol Polytechnic
University of West London, formerly Polytechnic of West London
University of Westminster, formerly Polytechnic of Central London and the Royal Polytechnic Institution – Regent Street
University of Wolverhampton, formerly Wolverhampton Polytechnic
In addition, Wales has
University of South Wales, formerly Polytechnic of Wales and University of Glamorgan
and Northern Ireland has:
New University of Ulster which was a plate glass university. It absorbed the former Ulster Polytechnic, afterwards it was known as the University of Ulster. It is now known as Ulster University
In Scotland there were comparable Higher Education institutions called Central Institutions but these very rarely used the designation "Polytechnic" in their titles; these also converted into universities.
One institution that did briefly use the designation "Polytechnic" was Edinburgh Napier University. Between 1988 and 1992 the institution was known as Napier Polytechnic.
See also
College of advanced technology (United Kingdom)
Universities in the United Kingdom
Education in Finland § Tertiary education, a similar divide in Finland
References
1969 in education
1969 in the United Kingdom
Business education in the United Kingdom
Higher education in the United Kingdom
History of higher education in the United Kingdom | 0.76275 | 0.990532 | 0.755528 |
Spiral Dynamics | Spiral Dynamics (SD) is a model of the evolutionary development of individuals, organizations, and societies. It was initially developed by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan based on the emergent cyclical theory of Clare W. Graves, combined with memetics. A later collaboration between Beck and Ken Wilber produced Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi). Several variations of Spiral Dynamics continue to exist, both independently and incorporated into or drawing on Wilber's Integral theory. Spiral Dynamics has applications in management theory and business ethics, and as an example of applied memetics. However, it lacks mainstream academic support.
Overview
Spiral Dynamics describes how value systems and worldviews emerge from the interaction of "life conditions" and the mind's capacities. The emphasis on life conditions as essential to the progression through value systems is unusual among similar theories, and leads to the view that no level is inherently positive or negative, but rather is a response to the local environment, social circumstances, place and time. Through these value systems, groups and cultures structure their societies and individuals integrate within them. Each distinct set of values is developed as a response to solving the problems of the previous system. Changes between states may occur incrementally (first order change) or in a sudden breakthrough (second order change). The value systems develop in a specific order, and the most important question when considering the value system being expressed in a particular behavior is why the behavior occurs.
Overview of the levels
Development of the theory
University of North Texas (UNT) professor Don Beck sought out Union College psychology professor Clare W. Graves after reading about his work in The Futurist. They met in person in 1975, and Beck, soon joined by UNT faculty member Chris Cowan, worked closely with Graves until his death in 1986. Beck made over 60 trips to South Africa during the 1980s and 1990s, applying Graves's emergent cyclical theory in various projects. This experience, along with others Beck and Cowan had applying the theory in North America, motivated the development of Spiral Dynamics.
Beck and Cowan first published their extension and adaptation of Graves's emergent cyclical theory in Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change (Exploring the New Science of Memetics) (1996). They introduced a simple color-coding for the eight value systems identified by Graves (and a predicted ninth) which is better known than Graves's letter pair identifiers. Additionally, Beck and Cowan integrated ideas from the field of memetics as created by Dawkins and further developed by Csikszentmihalyi, identifying memetic attractors for each of Graves's levels. These attractors, which they called "VMemes", are said to bind memes into cohesive packages which structure the world views of both individuals and societies.
Diversification of views
While Spiral Dynamics began as a single formulation and extension of Graves's work, a series of disagreements and shifting collaborations have produced three distinct approaches. By 2010, these had settled as Christopher Cowan and Natasha Todorovic advocating their trademarked "SPIRAL DYNAMICS®" as fundamentally the same as Graves's emergent cyclical theory, Don Beck advocating Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi) with a community of practice around various chapters of his Centers for Human Emergence, and Ken Wilber subordinating SDi to his similarly but-not-identically colored Integral AQAL "altitudes", with a greater focus on spirituality.
This state of affairs has led to practitioners noting the "lineage" of their approach in publications.
Timeline
The following timeline shows the development of the various Spiral Dynamics factions and the major figures involved in them, as well as the initial work done by Graves. Splits and changes between factions are based on publications or public announcements, or approximated to the nearest year based on well-documented events.
Vertical bars indicate notable publications, which are listed along with a few other significant events after the timeline.
Bolded years indicate publications that appear as vertical bars in the chart above:
1966: Graves: first major publication (in The Harvard Business review)
1970: Graves: peer reviewed publication in Journal of Humanistic Psychology
1974: Graves: article in The Futurist (Beck first becomes aware of Graves's theory; Cowan a bit later)
1977: Graves abandons manuscript of what would later become The Never Ending Quest
1979: Beck and Cowan found National Values Center, Inc. (NVC)
1981: Beck and Cowan resign from UNT to work with Graves; Beck begins applying theory in South Africa
1986: Death of Clare Graves
1995: Wilber: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (introduces quadrant model, first mention of Graves's ECLET)
1996: Beck and Cowan: Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
1998: Cowan and Todorovic form NVC Consulting (NVCC) as an "outgrowth" of NVC
1998: Cowan files for "Spiral Dynamics" service mark, registered to NVC
1999: Beck (against SD as service mark) and Cowan (against Wilber's Integral theory) cease collaborating
1999: Wilber: The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Vol. 4: Integral Psychology (first Spiral Dynamics reference)
2000: Cowan and Todorovic: "Spiral Dynamics: The Layers of Human Values in Strategy" in Strategy & Leadership (peer reviewed)
2000: Wilber: A Theory of Everything (integrates SD with AQAL, defines MGM: "Mean Green Meme")
2000: Wilber founds the Integral Institute with Beck as a founding associate around this time
2002: Beck: "SDi: Spiral Dynamics in the Integral Age" (launches SDi as a brand)
2002: Todorovic: "The Mean Green Hypothesis: Fact or Fiction?" (refutes MGM)
2002: Graves; William R. Lee (annot.); Cowan and Todorovic (eds.): Levels of Human Existence, transcription of Graves's 1971 three-day seminar
2004: Beck founds the Center for Human Emergence (CHE),
2005: Beck, Elza S. Maalouf and Said E. Dawlabani found the Center for Human Emergence Middle East
2005: Graves; Cowan and Todorovic (eds.): The Never Ending Quest
2005: Beck and Wilber cease collaborating around this time, disagreeing on Wilber's changes to SDi
2006: Wilber: Integral Spirituality (adds altitudes colored to align with both SDi and chakras)
2009: NVC dissolved as business entity, original SD service mark (officially registered to NVC) canceled
2010: Cowan and Todorovic re-file for SD service mark and trademark, registered to NVC Consulting
2015: Death of Chris Cowan
2017: Wilber: Religion of Tomorrow (further elaborates on the altitude concept and coloring)
2018: Beck et al.: Spiral Dynamics in Action
2022: Death of Don Beck
Cowan and Todorovic's "Spiral Dynamics"
Chris Cowan's decision to trademark "Spiral Dynamics" in the US and form a consulting business with Natasha Todorovic contributed to the split between Beck and him in 1999. Cowan and Todorovic subsequently published an article on Spiral Dynamics in the peer-reviewed journal Strategy & Leadership, edited and published Graves's unfinished manuscript, and generally took the position that the distinction between Spiral Dynamics and Graves's ECLET is primarily one of terminology. Holding this view, they opposed interpretations seen as "heterodox."
In particular, Cowan and Todorovic's view of Spiral Dynamics stands in opposition to that of Ken Wilber. Wilber biographer Frank Visser describes Cowan as a "strong" critic of Wilber and his Integral theory, particularly the concept of a "Mean Green Meme." Todorovic produced a paper arguing that research refutes the existence of the "Mean Green Meme" as Beck and particularly Wilber described it.
Beck's "Spiral Dynamics integral" (SDi)
By early 2000, Don Beck was corresponding with integral philosopher Ken Wilber about Spiral Dynamics and using a "4Q/8L" diagram combining Wilber's four quadrants with the eight known levels of Spiral Dynamics. Beck officially announced SDi as launching on January 1, 2002, aligning Spiral Dynamics with integral theory and additionally citing the influence of John Petersen of the Arlington Institute and Ichak Adizes. By 2006, Wilber had introduced a slightly different color sequence for his AQAL "altitudes", diverging from Beck's SDi and relegating it to the values line, which is one of many lines within AQAL.
Later influences on SDi include the work of Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Sherif in the fields of realistic conflict and social judgement, specifically their Assimilation Contrast Effect model and Robber's Cave study
SD/SDi and Ken Wilber's Integral Theory
Ken Wilber briefly referenced Graves in his 1986 book (with Jack Engler and Daniel P. Brown) Transformations of Consciousness, and again in 1995's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality which also introduced his four quadrants model. However, it was not until the "Integral Psychology" section of 1999's Collected Works: Volume 4 that he integrated Gravesian theory, now in the form of Spiral Dynamics. Beck and Wilber began discussing their ideas with each other around this time.
AQAL "altitudes"
By 2006, Wilber was using SDi only for the values line, one of many lines in his All Quadrants, All Levels/Lines (AQAL) framework. In the book Integral Spirituality published that year, he introduced the concept of "altitudes" as an overall "content-free" system to correlate developmental stages across all of the theories on all of the lines integrated by AQAL.
The altitudes used a set of colors that were ordered according to the rainbow, which Wilber explained was necessary to align with color energies in the tantric tradition. This left only Red, Orange, Green, and Turquoise in place, changing all of the other colors to greater or lesser degrees. Furthermore, where Spiral Dynamics theorizes that the 2nd tier would have six stages repeating the themes of the six stages of the 1st tier, in the altitude system the 2nd tier contains only two levels (corresponding to the first two SD 2nd tier levels) followed by a 3rd tier of four spiritually-oriented levels inspired by the work of Sri Aurobindo. Beck and Cowan each consider this 3rd tier to be non-Gravesian.
Wilber critic Frank Visser notes that while Wilber gives a correspondence of his altitude colors to chakras, his correspondence does not actually match any traditional system for coloring chakras, despite Wilber's assertion that using the wrong colors would "backfire badly when any actual energies were used." He goes on to note that Wilber's criticism of the SD colors as "inadequate" ignores that they were not intended to correlate with any system such as chakras. In this context, Visser expresses sympathy for Beck and Cowan's dismay over what Visser describes as "vandalism" regarding the color scheme, concluding that the altitude colors are an "awkward hybrid" of the SD and rainbow/chakra color systems, both lacking the expressiveness of the former and failing to accurately correlate with the latter.
Criticism and limitations
As an extension of Graves's theory, most criticisms of that theory apply to Spiral Dynamics as well. Likewise, to the extent that Spiral Dynamics Integral incorporates Ken Wilber's integral theory, criticism of that theory, and the lack of mainstream academic support for it are also relevant.
In addition, there have been criticisms of various aspects of SD and/or SDi that are specific to those extensions. Nicholas Reitter, writing in the Journal of Conscious Evolution, observes:
On the other hand, the SD authors seem also to have magnified some of the weaknesses in Graves' approach. The occasional messianism, unevenness of presentation and constant business-orientation of Graves' (2005) manuscript is transmuted in the SD authors' book (Beck and Cowan 1996) into a sometimes- bewildering array of references to world history, pop culture and other topics, often made in helter-skelter fashion.
Spiral Dynamics has been criticized by some as appearing to be like a cult, with undue prominence given to the business and intellectual property concerns of its leading advocates.
Metamodernists Daniel Görtz and Emil Friis, writing as Hanzi Freinacht, who created a multi-part system combining aspects of SD with other developmental measurements dismissed the Turquoise level, saying that while there will eventually be another level, it does not currently exist. They argue that attempts to build Turquoise communities are likely to lead to the development of "abusive cults"
Psychologist Keith Rice, discussing his application of SDi in individual psychotherapy, notes that it encounters limitations in accounting for temperament and the unconscious. However, regarding SDi's "low profile among academics," he notes that it can easily be matched to more well-known models "such as Maslow, Loevinger, Kohlberg, Adorno, etc.," in order to establish trust with clients.
Influence and applications
Spiral Dynamics has influenced management theory, which was the primary focus of the 1996 Spiral Dynamics book. John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia write that the vision and values of conscious capitalism as they articulate it are consistent with the "2nd tier" VMEMES of Spiral Dynamics. Rica Viljoen's case study of economic development in Ghana demonstrates how understanding the Purple VMEME allows for organizational storytelling that connects with diverse (non-Western) worldviews.
Spiral Dynamics has also been noted as an example of applied memetics. In his chapter, "'Meme Wars': A Brief Overview of Memetics and Some Essential Context" in the peer-reviewed book Memetics and Evolutionary Economics, Michael P. Schlaile includes Spiral Dynamics in the "organizational memetics" section of his list of "enlightening examples of applied memetics." Schlaile also notes Said Dawlabani's SDi-based "MEMEnomics" as an alternative to his own "economemetics" in his chapter examining memetics and economics in the same book. Elza Maalouf argues that SDi provides a "memetic" interpretation of non-Western cultures that Western NGOs often lack, focusing attention on the "indigenous content" of the culture's value system.
One of the main applications of Spiral Dynamics is to inform more nuanced and holistic systems change strategies. Just like categories in any other framework, the various levels can be seen as memetic lenses to look at the world through in order to help those leading change take a bird's eye view in understanding the diverse perspectives on a singular topic. At best, Spiral Dynamics can help us to synthesize these perspectives and recognize the strength in having a diversity of worldviews and aim to create interventions that take into consideration the needs and values of individuals at every level of the spiral.
Spiral Dynamics continues to influence integral philosophy and spirituality, and the developmental branch of metamodern philosophy. Both integralists and metamodernists connect their philosophies to SD's Yellow VMEME. Integralism also identifies with Turquoise and eventually added further stages not found in SD or SDi, while metamodernism dismisses Turquoise as nonexistent.
SDi has also been referenced in the fields of education,
urban planning,
and cultural analysis.
Notes
Works cited
(Note on page ii: "This study was approved by Indiana University Institutional Review Board (IRB)." Note also that a previous report was published as: Nasser, Ilham (June 2020). "Mapping the Terrain of Education 2018–2019: A Summary Report". Journal of Education in Muslim Societies. Indiana University Press. 1 (2): 3–21. doi:10.2979/jems.1.2.08, but is not freely downloadable.)
Developmental psychology | 0.760847 | 0.992838 | 0.755398 |
Rapport | Rapport is a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned are "in sync" with each other, understand each other's feelings or ideas, and communicate smoothly.
The word derives from the French verb which means literally to carry something back (in the sense of how people relate to each other: what one person sends out the other sends back). For example, people with rapport may realize that they share similar values, beliefs, knowledge, or behaviors around politics, music, or sports. This may also mean that they engage in reciprocal behaviors such as posture mirroring or increased coordination in their verbal and nonverbal interactions.
Rapport has been shown to have benefits for psychotherapy and medicine, negotiation, education, and tourism, among others. In each of these cases, the rapport between members of a dyad (e.g. a teacher and student or doctor and patient) allows the participants to coordinate their actions and establish a mutually beneficial working relationship, or what is often called a "working alliance". In consumer-oriented guided group activities (e.g., a cooking class, a wine tour, and hiking group), rapport is not only dyadic and customer-employee oriented, but also customer-customer and group-oriented as customers consume and interact with each other in a group for an extended period.
Building rapport
There are a number of techniques that are supposed to be beneficial in building rapport. These include matching body language (i.e., posture, gesture, etc.); indicating attentiveness through maintaining eye contact; and matching tempo, terminology, and breathing rhythm. In conversation, some verbal behaviors associated with increased rapport are the use of positivity (or, positive "face management"), sharing personal information of gradually increasing intimacy (or, "self-disclosure"), and reference to shared interests or experiences.
Building rapport can improve community-based research tactics, assist in finding a partner, improve student-teacher relationships, and allow employers to gain trust in employees.
Building rapport takes time. Extroverts tend to have an easier time building rapport than introverts. Extraversion accelerates the process due to an increase in confidence and skillfulness in social settings.
Methods
Coordination
Coordination, also called "mirroring" means getting into rhythm with another person, or resembling their verbal or nonverbal behaviors:
Emotional mirroring Empathizing with someone's emotional state by being on 'their side'. One listens for key words and problems so one can address and question them to better one's understanding of what the other person is saying and demonstrate empathy towards them.
Posture mirroring Matching the tone of a person's body language not through direct imitation (as this can appear as mockery) but through mirroring the general message of their posture and energy.
Tone and tempo mirroring Matching the tone, tempo, inflection, and volume of another person's voice.
Mutual attentiveness
Another way to build rapport is for each partner to indicate their attentiveness to the other. This attentiveness may take the form of nonverbal attentiveness, such as looking at the other person, nodding at appropriate moments, or physical proximity, as seen in work on teachers' "immediacy" behaviors in the classroom. Attentiveness might also be demonstrated through reciprocation of nonverbal behaviors like smiling or nodding, in a similar way to the coordination technique, or in the reciprocal sharing of personal details about the other person that signal one's knowledge and attentiveness to their needs.
Commonality
Commonality is the technique of deliberately finding something in common with a person in order to build a sense of camaraderie and trust.
This is done through references to shared interests, dislikes, and experiences. By sharing personal details or self-disclosing personal preferences or information, interlocutors can build commonality, and thus increase rapport.
Face management
Another way to build rapport is through "positive face management", (or, more simply: positivity). According to some psychologists, we have a need to be seen in a positive light, known as our "face". By managing each other's "face", boosting it when necessary, or reducing negative impacts to it, we build rapport with others.
Benefits
A number of benefits from building interpersonal rapport have been proposed, all of which concern smoother interactions, improved collaboration, and improved interpersonal outcomes, though the specifics differ by the domain. These domains include but are not limited to healthcare, education, business, and social relationships.
In the health domain, provider-patient rapport is often called the "therapeutic alliance" or "therapeutic relationship"—the collaboration quality between provider and patient—which can predict therapy outcomes or patients' treatment adherence.
In education, teacher-student rapport is predictive of students' participation in the course, their course retention, their likelihood to take a course in that domain again, and has sometimes been used to predict course outcomes. Some have argued that teacher-student rapport is an essential element of what makes an effective teacher, or the ability to manage interpersonal relationships and build a positive, pro-social, atmosphere of trust and reduced anxiety. Student-student rapport, on the other hand, while largely out of the teacher's ability to control, is also predictive of reduced anxiety in the course, feelings of a supportive class culture, and improved participation in class discussions. In these relationships, intentionally building rapport through individual meetings has shown an increase in student engagement and level of comfort in the classroom.
In negotiation, rapport is beneficial for reaching mutually beneficial outcomes, as partners are more likely to trust each other and be willing to cooperate and reach a positive outcome. However, interpersonal rapport in negotiation can lead to unethical behavior, particularly in impasse situations, where the interpersonal rapport may influence the negotiators to behave unethically.
In terms of social relationships such as friendship and romantic relationships, establishing rapport can build trust, increase feelings of closeness, and eliminate certain misunderstandings. Rapport is necessary in establishing satisfaction and understanding acceptable behaviors in an interpersonal relationship. Friendships and romantic relationships can overlap with other domains.
The study of rapport
To better study how rapport can lead to the above benefits, researchers generally adopt one of three main approaches: self-report surveys given to the participants, third-party observations from a naive observer, and some form of automated computational detection, using computer vision and machine learning.
Self-report surveys typically consist of a set of questions given at the end of an interpersonal interaction, asking the participants to reflect on their relationship with another person and rate various aspects of that relationship, typically on a Likert scale. Though this is the most common approach, it suffers from unreliability of self-report data, such as the issue of separating participants' reflection on a single interaction with their relationship with the other person more broadly.
A third-party observer can give a rapport rating to a particular segment (often called a "slice") of such an interaction. Other recent work uses techniques from computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to computationally detect the level of rapport between members of a dyad.
Rapport and Technology
In the 21st century, online communication has had a huge impact on how business is conducted and how relationships are formed. In the era of Covid-19 and the shift to remote work and schooling, the way in which rapport is built has evolved. Communicating solely through online channels challenges rapport building. Challenges include technical difficulties interrupting video calls and direct messaging, interruptions and distractions from the user's home, a lack of intimacy and the ability to observe one another, lack of eye contact, mundane interactions, and the "pressure of presence".
See also
References
Further reading
Chapter 8. Communicating to establish rapport – Patient Practitioner Interaction: An Experiential Manual for Developing the Art of Health Care. Carol M. Davis, Helen L. Masin –
Human communication
Semiotics
Interpersonal relationships
Nonverbal communication
Social graces | 0.762596 | 0.990552 | 0.755391 |
AGIL paradigm | The AGIL paradigm is a sociological scheme created by American sociologist Talcott Parsons in the 1950s. It is a systematic depiction of certain societal functions, which every society must meet to be able to maintain stable social life. The AGIL paradigm is part of Parsons's larger action theory, outlined in his notable book The Structure of Social Action, in The Social System and in later works, which aims to construct a unified map of all action systems, and ultimately "living systems". Indeed, the actual AGIL system only appeared in its first elaborate form in 1956, and Parsons extended the system in various layers of complexity during the rest of his intellectual life. Towards the end of his life, he added a new dimension to the action system, which he called the paradigm of the human condition; within that paradigm, the action system occupied the integral dimension.
The functional prerequisites of action systems (including the social system)
Parsons' theory is a part of the paradigm of action theory. AGIL represents the functional scheme for the whole general action system (including the human condition paradigm), so that AGIL also defines the cultural system, the personality system etc. The social system represent the integral part of the action system and is in this way only a subsystem within the greater whole of systems. For example the order of the cultural system vis-à-vis the AGIL functional scheme is:
A: Cognitive symbolization.
G: Expressive symbolization.
I: Moral-evaluative symbolization.
L: Constitutive symbolization.
Society, in this paradigm, is defined as prototypical category of the social system, that meets the essential functional prerequisites that define the system's universal attributes. AGIL scheme outlines four systematic, core functions, that are prerequisites for any society to be able to persist over time. It is a misconception that the system functions are "institutions," they exist on a much higher level of theoretical comprehension than institutions yet each system is inhabited by institutions. Institutions have either universal implications or historical implications depending on their form, nature and specification. The system shapes the "nature" of its institutions—so that the political system is the orbit of "political institutions." The stock-market is common-sensically not regarded as a political institution yet the stock-market might have political functions (which is a different analytical issue).
AGIL is an acronym from the initials of each of the four systemic necessities. The AGIL system is considered a cybernetic hierarchy and has generally the following order L-I-G-A, when the order is viewed from an "informational" point of view; this implies that the L function could "control" or define the I function (and the I the G and so on) approximately in the way in which a computer-game-program "defines" the game. The program does not "determine" the game (which actual outcome would depend on the input of the player, that was what Parsons in a sense called the voluntaristic aspect of action) but it "determined" the logical parameter of the game, which lies implicit in the game's concrete design and rules. In this way, Parsons would say that culture would not determine the social system but it would "define it." The AGIL system had also an energy side (or a "conditional" side), which would go A-G-I-L. So that the Adaptive level would be on the highest level of the cybernetic hierarchy from the energy or "conditional" point of view. However, within these two reverse sequences of the hierarchy Parsons maintained that in the long historical perspective, a system which was high in information (that is, a system that followed the L-I-G-A sequence) would tend to prevail over system which was high in energy. For example in the human body, the DNA is the informational code which will tend to control "the body" which is high in energy. Within the action system, Parsons would maintain that it was culture which was highest in information and which in his way was in cybernetic control over other components of the action system, as well as the social system. However, it is important to maintain that all action systems (including social systems) are always depending on the (historically specific) equilibrium of the overall forces of information and condition, which both shape the outcome of the system. Also it is important to highlight that the AGIL system does not "guarantee" any historical system survival; they rather specify the minimum conditions for whether societies or action systems in principle can survive. Whether a concrete action system survive or not is a sheer historical question.
Adaptation, or the capacity of society to interact with the environment. This includes, among other things, gathering resources and producing commodities to social redistribution.
Goal Attainment, or the capability to set goals for the future and make decisions accordingly. Political resolutions and societal objectives are part of this necessity.
Integration, or the harmonization of the entire society is a demand that the values and norms of society are solid and sufficiently convergent. This requires, for example, the religious system to be fairly consistent, and even in a more basic level, a common language.
Latency, or latent pattern maintenance, challenges society to maintain the integrative elements of the integration requirement above. This means institutions like family and school, which mediate belief systems and values between an older generation and its successor.
These four functions aim to be intuitive. For example a tribal system of hunter-gatherers needs to gather food from the external world by hunting animals and gathering other goods. They need to have a set of goals and a system to make decisions about such things as when to migrate to better hunting grounds. The tribe also needs to have a common belief system that enforces actions and decisions as the community sees fit. Finally there needs to be some kind of educational system to pass on hunting and gathering skills and the common belief system. If these prerequisites are met, the tribe can sustain its existence.
Systematic depiction of AGIL functions
The four functions of AGIL break into external and internal problems, and further into instrumental and consummatory problems. External problems include the use of natural resources and making decisions to achieve goals, whereas keeping the community integrated and maintaining the common values and practices over succeeding generations are considered internal problems. Furthermore, goal attainment and the integral function belong to the consummatory aspect of the systems.
It is common to use a table to illustrate the four functions and their differences in spatial and temporal orientation. (The following only addresses the AGIL component examples for the social system—for example, "political office" is not a unit for the categories on the action-system level).
Each of the four individual functional necessities are further divided into four sub-categories. The four sub-categories are the same four functions as the major four AGIL categories and so on. Hence one subsystem of the societal community is the category of "citizenship," which is a category we today would associate with the concept of civil society. In this way, citizenship (or civil society) represents, according to Parsons, the goal-attainment function within the subsystem of the Societal Community. For example, a community's adaption to the economic environment might consist of the basic "industrial" process of production (adaption), political-strategic goals for production (goal-attainment), the interaction between the economical system and the societal community, which integrates production mechanisms both in regard to economic as well as societal factors (integration), and common cultural values in their "selective" relevance for the societal-economic interchange process (latency (or Pattern Maintenance)). Each of these systemic processes will (within the scope of the cybernetic hierarchy) be regulated by what Talcott Parsons calls generalized symbolic media. Each system level of the general action-paradigm has each their set of generalized symbolic media (so that the set of generalized symbolic media for the social system is not identical with those of the action system or those of the human condition paradigm). In regard to the social system, there are the following four generalized symbolic media:
A: (Economy): Money. G: (Political system): Political power. I: (Societal Community): Influence. L: (Judiciary system): Value-commitment.
Criticism of the AGIL scheme
Parsons' theory has been criticised as being too abstract to be used constructively in any significant empirical research. While the four functions of the AGIL scheme are intuitive and many social systems can be described according to the paradigm of Parsons' structural functionalism, one can question the utility that such an inspection brings to a scientific sociological study. Defenders of the AGIL scheme respond that there have indeed been situations where social systems, such as some industries, have failed to operate because they have neglected one or more of the four functions. Hence, the AGIL scheme can be tested against political or economical systems in operation to see if they meet the criteria. Defenders also highlight that all theoretical systems are abstract (indeed modern physics uses extremely high levels of theoretical abstractions (without anyone "protesting")). Any good theoretical system has to be abstract, since this is the meaning and function of theoretical systems.
Another notable criticism attacks the AGIL schemes' failure to take historical change into account. Critics argue that Parsons' theory is inexcusably static and lacks the flexibility to meet instances of social change. While Parsons purports that the AGIL scheme is a general theory of social functions that can be applied to any social system at any time or place in the history of humankind, critics contend that it is basically just a model of the post-war United States, or, moreover, merely an ideal social structure of the middle-class of United States. Parsons' defenders argue that such criticisms are misplaced inasmuch as Parsons tried to identify the most important systemic features of any society whatsoever: any society would need to meet the functions indicated by AGIL, even if it used different institutions or arrangements for doing so. Moreover, Parsons himself tried to develop a theory of world history, and to explain social change through his system, although his critics have suggested that this amounts to little more than window-dressing. Nevertheless, despite recent sympathetic reappraisals, Parsons no longer dominates Anglophone social theory in the way he once did.
See also
Action theory
Notes
References
External links
AGIL software
Sociological theories | 0.767809 | 0.983813 | 0.75538 |
Concerted cultivation | Concerted cultivation is a style of parenting. The expression is attributed to Annette Lareau. This parenting style or parenting practice is marked by a parent's attempts to foster their child's talents by incorporating organized activities in their children's lives. This parenting style is commonly exhibited in middle class and upper class American families, and is also characterized by consciously developing language use and ability to interact with social institutions. Many have attributed cultural benefits to this form of child-rearing due to the style's use in higher income families, conversely affecting the social habitus of children raised in such a manner. A child that has been concertedly cultivated will often express greater social prowess in social situations involving formality or structure attributed to their increased experience and engagement in organized clubs, sports, musical groups as well as increased experience with adults and power structure. This pattern of child rearing has been linked to an increase in financial and academic success.
Negative considerations have included higher levels of adolescent psychopathology, an overburdened sense of entitlement, potentially disrespectful behavior toward authority figures, lack of creativity, and the psychosomatic inability to play or relax. As a result, advocates of slow parenting prefer less management of childhood activities. None of these effects can be considered without broader cultural and economic considerations.
Concerted cultivation also emphasizes the use of reasoning skills and variations in language use. Parents start to encourage their children to learn how to speak with adults so that they become comfortable and understand the importance of eye contact and speaking properly at an earlier age. According to Lareau, with these type of experiences, middle-class parents try to pursue the concerted cultivation approach. A concerted cultivation approach encourages children to see adults as their equals. Children start to form a certain sense of entitlement because of their early comfort interacting with adults. Children also become more comfortable questioning adults, and it is easier for them to see themselves as equals. With concerted cultivation, the practices often infiltrate into the family life. Frequent gatherings provide opportunities for further cultivation such as eating at the dinner table together.
Structured activities
American middle class parents engage in concerted cultivation parenting by attempting to foster children's talents through organized leisure activities, which theoretically teach them to respect authority and how to interact in a structured environment. Learning how to interact in a structured environment much like a classroom gives students a head start in school because they are identified as intelligent or 'good' students. Other aspects of concerted cultivation include emphasis on reasoning skills and language use. Parents challenge their children to think critically and to speak properly and frequently, especially when interacting with adults. These skills also set the child apart in academic settings as well as give them confidence in social situations. By learning these traits, they are advancing themselves in their surroundings. Another difference is the involvement parents have in their children's lives. Parents are much more involved in following their children's academic progression. Through this process children from a concerted cultivation upbringing supposedly feel more entitled in their academic endeavors and will feel more responsible because they know that their parents are highly involved.
Parenting practices
In social stratification (a specific area of study in sociology) different parenting practices lead children to have different upbringings. Differences in child rearing are identified and associated with different social classes.
The two types of child rearing that are introduced by Annette Lareau are concerted cultivation and natural growth. Concerted cultivation parenting is associated with those parents who have traditionally white collar jobs and those considered to be part of the upper class. Natural growth parenting is associated with blue collar workers of the working class. Parenting practices do not apply exclusively to social classes, but they are highly correlated. She claims that the only defining factor as to how a child is raised is the amount of credit that his or her parents have. There is not an indirect correlation between money and child rearing practices; however, wealth and income are the most significant defining factors as to which child-rearing practice will be used.
Critical overview
The techniques of child rearing that a parent uses when raising a child ultimately have a great effect on the child and how he or she develops . The difference between the two types presented by Annette Lareau is that concerted cultivation will in most cases provide a child with skills and advantages over natural growth children in the classroom and eventually in their careers. This is where parenting practices play into a larger social inequality issue. Social inequality results from a lack of educational and employment opportunities as well as the lower social status for the poor. This creates various difficulties for the poor and there are fewer opportunities to provide attentive care for their children. The natural growth parenting style arises under these disadvantaged circumstances. Natural growth is then perpetuated because these children will not be as well suited for the work force, and therefore, will make less money, and will most likely not be able to give their children a concerted cultivation upbringing. The critical issue is the difference in opportunities. Children of concerted cultivation, along with their upbringing, are typically provided with connections from their parents, friends, and activities that give them a step up in life. These advantages are perpetuated and inequality continues to exist.
Natural growth
Parents in the working class (and typically with lower incomes) engage their children in the accomplishment of natural growth. Children usually have more unstructured time and therefore create their own activities to occupy themselves. This environment does not prepare children to survive in settings that are very structured, such as schools. In working class households, the parents have less time to spend with children and do not have the money to hire help. Accompanying the strain on time, working-class parents are left with less time to get involved with their children's schooling and activities; therefore, they leave this up to the professionals. This approach is often not intentional. Rather, external factors like jobs with little flexibility in hours may cause difficulties scheduling meetings with teachers. Consequently, parents may feel frustrated and powerless, and children do not receive the sense of entitlement and support that comes with concerted cultivation. Having less time outside of jobs can also lead to less congruence between parents in their child-rearing practices. Having less consistency can cause the child to become more inhibited and reserved.
However, natural growth is comparable to slow parenting, advocated by well-informed and financially stable parents who wish their children to be more independent and imaginative.
Ethnic differences in parenting
Though there is evidence that ethnicity is linked to class, in parenting, ethnicity has a much lesser impact on a child's development than social class. Social class, wealth, and income have a much more of an effect on what child rearing practices will be used, rather than the ethnicity of the parents or children. The correlation between ethnicity and social class comes from the perpetuated inequality in the distribution of wealth in the United States of America. The lack of money is the defining factor in the style of child rearing that is chosen, and minorities are more likely to have less wealth or assets available for use in their children's upbringing. Wealth and connections among middle-class parents also defines how these children enter the labor market, with or without help in finding jobs.
Inequality
Inequality exists in the opportunities that lead to different child-rearing practices but they also cause many other differences, such as the quality of schools, as a result of differences in wealth, income, and assets. The schools in the wealthier neighborhoods have more money to hire better teachers, staff, and materials that improve education. In addition to having better teaching and materials, the schools have more money to make renovations, have a better appearance, and the children develop a sense of confidence and entitlement because they feel that they are learning in an environment of excellence. The quality of the parents work life varies dramatically as well, and this plays into how much time and energy parents have to spend engaging their children. If inequality was not such a powerful force in America, resources, funds, and schools would be distributed more evenly.
See also
After-school activity
Educational inequality
Helicopter parent
Hidden curriculum
Mozart effect
Parenting
Slow parenting
Soccer mom
Socialization
References
The book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell in Chapter 4 discusses the concept of Concerted Cultivation.
Child development
Parenting | 0.775249 | 0.974337 | 0.755355 |
Darwin Information Typing Architecture | The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) specification defines a set of document types for authoring and organizing topic-oriented information, as well as a set of mechanisms for combining, extending, and constraining document types. It is an open standard that is defined and maintained by the OASIS DITA Technical Committee.
The name derives from the following components:
Darwin: it uses the principles of specialization and inheritance, which is in some ways analogous to the naturalist Charles Darwin's concept of evolutionary adaptation,
Information Typing: which means each topic has a defined primary objective (procedure, glossary entry, troubleshooting information) and structure,
Architecture: DITA is an extensible set of structures.
Features and limitations
Content reuse
Topics are the foundation for content reuse, and can be reused across multiple publications. Fragments of content within topics can be reused through the use of content references (conref or conkeyref), a transclusion mechanism.
Information typing
The latest version of DITA (DITA 1.3) includes five specialized topic types: Task, Concept, Reference, Glossary Entry, and Troubleshooting. Each of these five topic types is a specialization of a generic Topic type, which contains a title element, a prolog element for metadata, and a body element. The body element contains paragraph, table, and list elements, similar to HTML.
A Task topic is intended for a procedure that describes how to accomplish a task. It lists a series of steps that users follow to produce an intended outcome. The steps are contained in a taskbody element, which is a specialization of the generic body element. The steps element is a specialization of an ordered list element.
Concept information is more objective, containing definitions, rules, and guidelines.
A Reference topic is for topics that describe command syntax, programming instructions, and other reference material, and usually contains detailed, factual material.
A Glossary Entry topic is used for defining a single sense of a given term. In addition to identifying the term and providing a definition, this topic type might also have basic terminology information, along with any acronyms or acronym expansions that may apply to the term.
The Troubleshooting topic describes a condition that the reader may want to correct, followed by one or more descriptions of its cause and suggested remedies.
Maps
A DITA map is a container for topics used to transform a collection of content into a publication. It gives the topics sequence and structure. A map can include relationship tables (reltables) that define hyperlinks between topics. Maps can be nested: they can reference topics or other maps, and can contain a variety of content types and metadata.
Metadata
DITA includes extensive metadata elements and attributes, both at topic level and within elements. Conditional text allows filtering or styling content based on attributes for audience, platform, product, and other properties. The conditional processing profile ( file) is used to identify which values are to be used for conditional processing.
Specialization
DITA allows adding new elements and attributes through specialization of base DITA elements and attributes. Through specialization, DITA can accommodate new topic types, element types, and attributes as needed for specific industries or companies. Specializations of DITA for specific industries, such as the semiconductor industry, are standardized through OASIS technical committees or subcommittees. Many organizations using DITA also develop their own specializations.
The extensibility of DITA permits organizations to specialize DITA by defining specific information structures and still use standard tools to work with them. The ability to define company-specific information architectures enables companies to use DITA to enrich content with metadata that is meaningful to them, and to enforce company-specific rules on document structure.
Topic orientation
DITA content is created as topics, each an individual XML file. Typically, each topic covers a specific subject with a singular purpose, for example, a conceptual topic that provides an overview, or a procedural topic that explains how to accomplish a task. Content should be structured to resemble the file structure in which it is contained.
Creating content in DITA
DITA map and topic documents are XML files. As with HTML, any images, video files, or other files that must appear in the output are inserted via reference. Any XML editor or even text editor can be used to write DITA content, depending on the level of support required while authoring. Aids to authoring featured in specialized editors include WYSIWYG preview rendering, validation, and integration with a DITA processor, like DITA-OT or ditac.
Publishing content written in DITA
DITA is designed as an end-to-end architecture. In addition to indicating what elements, attributes, and rules are part of the DITA language, the DITA specification includes rules for publishing DITA content in HTML, online Help, print, Content Delivery Platform and other formats.
For example, the DITA specification indicates that if the conref attribute of element A contains a path to element B, the contents of element B will display in the location of element A. DITA-compliant publishing solutions, known as DITA processors, must handle the conref attribute according to the specified behaviour. Rules also exist for processing other rich features such as conditional text, index markers, and topic-to-topic links. Applications that transform DITA content into other formats, and meet the DITA specification's requirements for interpreting DITA markup, are known as DITA processors.
Localization
DITA provides support for translation via the localisation attribute group. Element attributes can be set to indicate whether the content of the element should be translated. The language of the element content can be specified, as can the writing direction, the index filtering and some terms that are injected when publishing to the final format. A DITA project can be converted to an XLIFF file and back into its original maps and topics, using the DITA-XLIFF Roundtrip Tool for DITA-OT and computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools, like Swordfish Translation Editor or Fluenta DITA Translation Manager, a tool designed to implement the translation workflow suggested by the article "Using XLIFF to Translate DITA Projects" published by the DITA Adoption TC at OASIS.
History
The DITA standard is maintained by OASIS. The latest (current) version is 1.3, approved December 2015. An errata document for DITA 1.3 was approved in June 2018.
March 2001 Introduction by IBM of the core DTD and XML Schema grammar files and introductory material
April 2004 OASIS DITA Technical Committee formed
February 2005 IBM contributes the original DITA Open Toolkit project to SourceForge; though regularly confused with the DITA standard, DITA-OT is not affiliated with the OASIS DITA Technical Committee
June 2005 DITA v1.0 approved as an OASIS standard
August 2007 DITA V1.1 is approved by OASIS; major features include:
Bookmap specialization
Formal definition of DITAVAL syntax for content filtering
December 2010 DITA V1.2 is approved by OASIS; major features include:
Indirect linking with keys
New content reuse features
Enhanced glossary support, including acronyms
New industry specializations (Training, Machinery)
New support for controlled values / taxonomies (Subject Scheme specialization)
17 December 2015, DITA V1.3 is approved by OASIS; major features include:
Specification now delivered in three packages: Base, Technical content, and All Inclusive (with Learning and Training)
New troubleshooting topic type
Ability to use scoped keys
New domains to support MathML, equations, and SVG
Adds Relax NG XML syntax as the normative grammar for DITA
25 October 2016, DITA V1.3 Errata 01 is approved by OASIS
19 June 2018, DITA V1.3 Errata 02 is approved by OASIS
Code samples
Ditamap file (table of contents) sample
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE map PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Map//EN" "map.dtd">
<map id="map" xml:lang="en">
<topicref format="dita" href="sample.dita" navtitle="Sample" type="topic"/>
</map>
Hello World (topic DTD)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic xml:lang="en" id="sample">
<title>Sample</title>
<body>
<p>Hello World!</p>
</body>
</topic>
.ditaval file sample (for conditionalizing text)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<val>
<prop att="audience" val="novice" action="include" />
<prop att="audience" val="expert" action="exclude" />
</val>
Example of conditionalized text:
<p>
This is information useful for all audiences.
</p>
<p audience="novice">
This is information useful for a novice audience.
</p>
<p audience="expert">
This is information useful for an expert audience.
</p>
Implementations
See also
Comparison of document markup languages
List of document markup languages
References
External links
DITA 1.3 specifications
Document-centric XML-based standards
Markup languages
Technical communication
XML
XML-based standards
Open formats | 0.766418 | 0.985561 | 0.755351 |
Contour drawing | Contour drawing is an art technique in which the artist sketches the style of the subject by drawing lines that result in a drawing that is essentially an outline (the French word meaning "outline"). The purpose of contour drawing is to emphasize the mass and volume of the subject rather than the detail; the focus is on the outlined shape of the subject and not the minor details. However, because contour can convey a three-dimensional perspective, length and width as well as thickness and depth are important; not all contours exist along the outlines of a subject. This technique is manifested in different styles and practiced in drawing development and learning.
Importance
Contour drawing is an essential technique in the field of art because it is a strong foundation for any drawing or painting; it can potentially modify a subjects’ form through variation within the lines. It is widely accepted among schools, art institutions, and colleges as an effective training aid and discipline for beginner artists. In the hands of a talented master, the line that conveys contour can deliver an astonishing amount of visual delight.
Technique
In a continuous-line drawing, the artist looks both at the subject and the paper, moving the medium over the paper, and creating a silhouette of the object. Like blind contour drawing, contour drawing is an artful experience that relies more on sensation than perception; it's important to be guided by instinct. To make a blind contour drawing, an artist does not look at the paper or canvas on which they are working on. Another technique similar to contour drawing is outline drawing; a division between form and the space a subject occupies. All three types of drawing are considered to be gesture drawings; the practice of drawing a series of bodies in still form. An outline drawing does not include the visual amusement of human sight, while a contour drawing contains form, weight, mass, space, and distance.
Styles
By altering the character of the mark, an artist can emulate many aspects of the subject that relate form and space to the viewer. For example, a line can be lighter in value (gradation) to suggest greater distance between objects in the drawing. A darker portion of the contour could represent an object with little or no light source; the space is compressed or the object is lower. Continuous lines used inside the outline of a subject can add accent or cast shadow, depending on the value of the line.
Practice
The purpose of drawing blindly is to force the artist's eye to move along the contour of the subject as their pencil moves along the paper. Initially, this type of drawing may be difficult and slow, but an artist will find that with practice, it is an effective way of defining observation skills such as identifying and underlying the structure of the subject, relating forms, and conveying the sensual experience of the subject. Through thorough practice in this style, they will be skilled at drawing anything quickly and successively.
References
Artistic techniques
Drawing | 0.765708 | 0.986437 | 0.755322 |
Science studies | Science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in broad social, historical, and philosophical contexts. It uses various methods to analyze the production, representation and reception of scientific knowledge and its epistemic and semiotic role.
Similarly to cultural studies, science studies are defined by the subject of their research and encompass a large range of different theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. The interdisciplinary approach may include and borrow methods from the humanities, natural and formal sciences, from scientometrics to ethnomethodology or cognitive science.
Science studies have a certain importance for evaluation and science policy. Overlapping with the field of science, technology and society, practitioners study the relationship between science and technology, and the interaction of expert and lay knowledge in the public realm.
Scope
The field started with a tendency toward navel-gazing: it was extremely self-conscious in its genesis and applications. From early concerns with scientific discourse, practitioners soon started to deal with the relation of scientific expertise to politics and lay people. Practical examples include bioethics, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), pollution, global warming, biomedical sciences, physical sciences, natural hazard predictions, the (alleged) impact of the Chernobyl disaster in the UK, generation and review of science policy and risk governance and its historical and geographic contexts. While staying a discipline with multiple metanarratives, the fundamental concern is about the role of the perceived expert in providing governments and local authorities with information from which they can make decisions.
The approach poses various important questions about what makes an expert and how experts and their authority are to be distinguished from the lay population and interacts with the values and policy making process in liberal democratic societies.
Practitioners examine the forces within and through which scientists investigate specific phenomena such as
technological milieus, epistemic instruments and cultures and laboratory life (compare Karin Knorr-Cetina, Bruno Latour, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger)
science and technology (e.g. Wiebe Bijker, Trevor Pinch, Thomas P. Hughes)
science, technology and society (e.g. Peter Weingart, Ulrike Felt, Helga Nowotny and Reiner Grundmann)
language and rhetoric of science (e.g. Charles Bazerman, Alan G. Gross, Greg Myers)
aesthetics of science and visual culture in science (u.a. Peter Geimer), the role of aesthetic criteria in scientific practice (compare mathematical beauty) and the relation between emotion, cognition and rationality in the development of science.
semiotic studies of creative processes, as in the discovery, conceptualization, and realization of new ideas. or the interaction and management of different forms of knowledge in cooperative research.
large-scale research and research institutions, e.g. particle colliders (Sharon Traweek)
research ethics, science policy, and the role of the university.
History of the field
In 1935, in a celebrated paper, the Polish sociologist couple Maria Ossowska and Stanisław Ossowski proposed the founding of a "science of science" to study the scientific enterprise, its practitioners, and the factors influencing their work. Earlier, in 1923, the Polish sociologist Florian Znaniecki had made a similar proposal.
Fifty years before Znaniecki, in 1873, Aleksander Głowacki, better known in Poland by his pen name "Bolesław Prus", had delivered a public lecture – later published as a booklet – On Discoveries and Inventions, in which he said:
It is striking that, while early 20th-century sociologist proponents of a discipline to study science and its practitioners wrote in general theoretical terms, Prus had already half a century earlier described, with many specific examples, the scope and methods of such a discipline.
Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) increased interest both in the history of science and in science's philosophical underpinnings. Kuhn posited that the history of science was less a linear succession of discoveries than a succession of paradigms within the philosophy of science. Paradigms are broader, socio-intellectual constructs that determine which types of truth claims are permissible.
Science studies seeks to identify key dichotomies – such as those between science and technology, nature and culture, theory and experiment, and science and fine art – leading to the differentiation of scientific fields and practices.
The sociology of scientific knowledge arose at the University of Edinburgh, where David Bloor and his colleagues developed what has been termed "the strong programme". It proposed that both "true" and "false" scientific theories should be treated the same way. Both are informed by social factors such as cultural context and self-interest.
Human knowledge, abiding as it does within human cognition, is ineluctably influenced by social factors.
It proved difficult, however, to address natural-science topics with sociological methods, as was abundantly evidenced by the US science wars. Use of a deconstructive approach (as in relation to works on arts or religion) to the natural sciences risked endangering not only the "hard facts" of the natural sciences, but the objectivity and positivist tradition of sociology itself. The view on scientific knowledge production as a (at least partial) social construct was not easily accepted. Latour and others identified a dichotomy crucial for modernity, the division between nature (things, objects) as being transcendent, allowing to detect them, and society (the subject, the state) as immanent as being artificial, constructed. The dichotomy allowed for mass production of things (technical-natural hybrids) and large-scale global issues that endangered the distinction as such. E.g. We Have Never Been Modern asks to reconnect the social and natural worlds, returning to the pre-modern use of "thing"—addressing objects as hybrids made and scrutinized by the public interaction of people, things, and concepts.
Science studies scholars such as Trevor Pinch and Steve Woolgar started already in the 1980s to involve "technology", and called their field "science, technology and society". This "turn to technology" brought science studies into communication with academics in science, technology, and society programs.
More recently, a novel approach known as mapping controversies has been gaining momentum among science studies practitioners, and was introduced as a course for students in engineering, and architecture schools. In 2002 Harry Collins and Robert Evans asked for a third wave of science studies (a pun on The Third Wave), namely studies of expertise and experience answering to recent tendencies to dissolve the boundary between experts and the public.
Application to natural and man-made hazards
Sheepfarming after Chernobyl
A showcase of the rather complex problems of scientific information and its interaction with lay persons is Brian Wynne's study of Sheepfarming in Cumbria after the Chernobyl disaster. He elaborated on the responses of sheep farmers in Cumbria, who had been subjected to administrative restrictions because of radioactive contamination, allegedly caused by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986. The sheep farmers suffered economic losses, and their resistance against the imposed regulation was being deemed irrational and inadequate. It turned out that the source of radioactivity was actually the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing complex; thus, the experts who were responsible for the duration of the restrictions were completely mistaken. The example led to attempts to better involve local knowledge and lay-persons' experience and to assess its often highly geographically and historically defined background.
Science studies on volcanology
Donovan et al. (2012) used social studies of volcanology to investigate the generation of knowledge and expert advice on various active volcanoes. It contains a survey of volcanologists carried out during 2008 and 2009 and interviews with scientists in the UK, Montserrat, Italy and Iceland during fieldwork seasons. Donovan et al. (2012) asked the experts about the felt purpose of volcanology and what they considered the most important eruptions in historical time. The survey tries to identify eruptions that had an influence on volcanology as a science and to assess the role of scientists in policymaking.
A main focus was on the impact of the Montserrat eruption 1997. The eruption, a classical example of the black swan theory directly killed (only) 19 persons. However the outbreak had major impacts on the local society and destroyed important infrastructure, as the island's airport. About 7,000 people, or two-thirds of the population, left Montserrat; 4,000 to the United Kingdom.
The Montserrat case put immense pressure on volcanologists, as their expertise suddenly became the primary driver of various public policy approaches. The science studies approach provided valuable insights in that situation. There were various miscommunications among scientists. Matching scientific uncertainty (typical of volcanic unrest) and the request for a single unified voice for political advice was a challenge. The Montserrat Volcanologists began to use statistical elicitation models to estimate the probabilities of particular events, a rather subjective method, but allowing to synthesizing consensus and experience-based expertise step by step. It involved as well local knowledge and experience.
Volcanology as a science currently faces a shift of its epistemological foundations of volcanology. The science started to involve more research into risk assessment and risk management. It requires new, integrated methodologies for knowledge collection that transcend scientific disciplinary boundaries but combine qualitative and quantitative outcomes in a structured whole.
Experts and democracy
Science has become a major force in Western democratic societies, which depend on innovation and technology (compare Risk society) to address its risks. Beliefs about science can be very different from those of the scientists themselves, for reasons of e.g. moral values, epistemology or political motivations.The designation of expertise as authoritative in the interaction with lay people and decision makers of all kind is nevertheless challenged in contemporary risk societies, as suggested by scholars who follow Ulrich Beck's theorisation. The role of expertise in contemporary democracies is an important theme for debate among science studies scholars. Some argue for a more widely distributed, pluralist understanding of expertise (Sheila Jasanoff and Brian Wynne, for example), while others argue for a more nuanced understanding of the idea of expertise and its social functions (Collins and Evans, for example).
See also
Logology (study of science)
Merton thesis
Public awareness of science
Science and technology studies
Science and technology studies in India
Social construction of technology
Sociology of scientific knowledge
Sokal affair
References
Bibliography
Science studies, general
Bauchspies, W., Jennifer Croissant and Sal Restivo: Science, Technology, and Society: A Sociological Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
Biagioli, Mario, ed. The Science Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1999).
Bloor, David; Barnes, Barry & Henry, John, Scientific knowledge: a sociological analysis (Chicago: University Press, 1996).
Gross, Alan. Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies. Carbondale: SIU Press, 2006.
Fuller, Steve, The Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies (New York: Routledge, 2006).
Hess, David J. Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction (New York: NYU Press, 1997).
Jasanoff, Sheila, ed. Handbook of science and technology studies (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 1995).
Latour, Bruno, "The Last Critique," Harper's Magazine (April 2004): 15–20.
Latour, Bruno. Science in Action. Cambridge. 1987.
Latour, Bruno, "Do You Believe in Reality: News from the Trenches of the Science Wars," in Pandora's Hope (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)
Vinck, Dominique. The Sociology of Scientific Work. The Fundamental Relationship between Science and Society (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010).
Wyer, Mary; Donna Cookmeyer; Mary Barbercheck, eds. Women, Science and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies, Routledge 200
Haraway, Donna J. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 183–201. Originally published in Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 575–599. (available online)
Foucault, Michel, "Truth and Power," in Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), 109–133.
Porter, Theodore M. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Restivo, Sal: "Science, Society, and Values: Toward a Sociology of Objectivity" (Lehigh PA: Lehigh University Press, 1994).
Medicine and biology
Media, culture, society and technology
Hancock, Jeff. Deception and design: the impact of communication technology on lying behavior
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. Penguin USA, 2004.
MacKenzie, Donald. The Social Shaping of Technology Open University Press: 2nd ed. 1999.
Mitchell, William J. Rethinking Media Change Thorburn and Jennings eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, 2003.
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin USA, 1985.
Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge: Mass., Perseus Publishing. 2002.
External links
Sociology of Science, an introductory article by Joseph Ben-David & Teresa A. Sullivan, Annual Review of Sociology, 1975
The Incommensurability of Scientific and Poetic Knowledge
University of Washington Science Studies Network
Historiography of science
Philosophy of science
Pedagogy
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Sexual ritual | Sexual rituals fall into two categories: culture-created, and natural behaviour, the human animal having developed sex rituals from evolutionary instincts for reproduction, which are then integrated into society, and elaborated to include aspects such as marriage rites, dances, etc. Sometimes sexual rituals are highly formalized and/or part of religious activity, as in the cases of hieros gamos, the hierodule, and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.).
Rites of passage
Part of the rites of passage of growing up are what have been termed "rites of separation from the asexual world... followed by rites of incorporation into the world of sexuality". These may be formal or semi-formal—"for some students, going to college is partly a sexual ritual, like the ceremonial dances of the whooping crane"—or take the form of a more private induction: "formal and artificial... the impression that a long-established rite was to be enacted, among Staffordshire figurs and papier-mâché trays, with the compelling, detached formality of nightmare".
Freud was particularly interested in ethnological accounts of "the 'ceremonial' (purely formal, ritual, or official) coitus, which takes place" in connection with "the taboo of virginity".
Wedding as orgy
Freud also noted that in "numerous examples of marriage ceremonies, there can be no doubt that people other than the bridegroom, for example his assistants and companions (our traditional 'groomsmen'), were granted full sexual access to the bride". To his followers, "the wedding as orgy, with the bride taking on all the men present, is the clear historical reality behind the modern jokes... and the climactic line-up or 'gang'-kissing of the bride, by all the men present".
In such a view, "other examples of sacred or permitted public coitus of all women with all men do survive, in similarly modified 'kissing' form", as under the mistletoe "to revive the dying sun at the winter solstice, when the strongest human 'life-magic', namely ritual intercourse, is to be deployed".
Interaction ritual
To the sociologist looking upon "sexual intercourse as interaction ritual... sexual intercourse is the ritual of love; it both creates and recreates the social tie (since Durkheimian rituals need to be repeated periodically, as solidarity runs down), and symbolizes it". In similar fashion, Margot Anand has pointed out that "rituals pervade our daily life and give it a sense of ceremony and celebration (...) a ritual, through your own unique symbolic gestures... will help you transform your lovemaking into a special and sacred act".
Erving Goffman has noted, however, "the considerable informational delicacy of this form of interaction", and how "individuals may use darkness to ensure strategic ambiguity".
Compulsions
In perversion, sexual rituals may emerge as a necessary part of sexual activity. For the criminologist, "sexual ritual involves repeatedly engaging in an act or series of acts in a certain manner because of a sexual need". Within a relationship, "the Compulsive libido type takes advantages of opportunities to use the specific sexual ritual that causes intense arousal, and in its stronger form, the Compulsive lover can only arouse using the sexual object or ritual". In any relationship, however, "a sexual habit that becomes routine or stylised... can lead to a sexual ritual", so that "if you don't have a way to talk to your partner about your sexual relationship, you may find yourself... stuck in sexual rituals that could be limiting your sexual enjoyment": as a wife might say, "Same old technique, same old Lewis. It's you all right, I'd know that old routine anywhere." Thus one's sex life may all "be about rituals: the ritual of sex in the morning, or the ritual of sex at night; and the ritual of sex at anniversaries, and the ritual of sex at Christmas".
Dharmic art
In the Buddhist art of India, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet, yab-yum is the male deity in sexual union with his female consort. The symbolism is associated with Anuttarayoga tantra where the male figure is usually linked to compassion and skillful means (upāya-kauśalya), and the female partner to 'insight' (prajñā). The symbolism of union and sexual polarity is a central teaching in Tantric Buddhism, especially in Tibet. The union is realised by the practitioner as a mystical experience within one's own body. Yab-yum is generally understood to represent the primordial (or mystical) union of wisdom and compassion. Tantric Buddhism is itself an outcrop of Tantrism, advanced techniques of which included "the ritual sex act (Maithuna) which was a feature of Tantric yoga". Given that "sex is holy to a Tantric... Tantric art, writings and religious rituals glorify sex".
Private worship
A sex organ "makes an admirable fertility symbol, and has been worshipped as such privately from time to time, or even publicly... gives dramatic promise of productivity and protection". Such "worship" may only become more common in late modernity, as "in our secular culture, sexuality often replaces religion as a means of pursuing the meaning of life". Alan Watts maintains that "when you are in love with someone, you do indeed see them as a divine being... through a tremendous outpouring of psychic energy in total devotion and worship for this other person". A woman may 'want someone who adores me... like he was adoring my breasts with his hands". A man (more ambivalently) may muse on "the white breasts he worships; adores; is scared of; detests". For Shakespeare, "this is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity, a green goose a goddess; pure, pure idolatry".
In the further reaches of chick lit, "the male organ... becomes a tower of strength, a tree trunk in girth, the pillar that sustains the universe... a Pillar of Hercules, sustaining heaven"—evidence perhaps that "the phallic religious tendency is alive in the modern and the civilized... a compulsive fascination" with what Jung termed "the phallus as the quintessence of life and fruitfulness". Correspondingly, the Western adept may borrow, in the quest "to create a Sacred Space... names given to the vagina in the East, including Valley of Joy, Great Jewel, Pearl, Lotus Blossom, Moist Cave, Ripe Peach, Enchanted Garden, and Full Moon".
Literature
In the Satyricon, the hero is throughout "hounded by the mighty rage of Priapus of Hellespont"—almost certainly because early on, he "has offended Priapus... by impersonating him in some sexual ceremonies".
See also
References
Further reading
O. E. Wall (2004), Sex and Sex Worship. .
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Information technology law | Information technology law (IT law), also known as information, communication and technology law (ICT law) or cyberlaw, concerns the juridical regulation of information technology, its possibilities and the consequences of its use, including computing, software coding, artificial intelligence, the internet and virtual worlds. The ICT field of law comprises elements of various branches of law, originating under various acts or statutes of parliaments, the common and continental law and international law. Some important areas it covers are information and data, communication, and information technology, both software and hardware and technical communications technology, including coding and protocols.
Due to the shifting and adapting nature of the technological industry, the nature, source and derivation of this information legal system and ideology changes significantly across borders, economies and in time. As a base structure, Information technology law is related to primarily governing dissemination of both (digitized) information and software, information security and crossing-border commerce. It raises specific issues of intellectual property, contract law, criminal law and fundamental rights like privacy, the right to self-determination and freedom of expression. Information technology law has also been heavily invested of late in issues such as obviating risks of data breaches and artificial intelligence.
Information technology law can also relate directly to dissemination and utlilzation of information within the legal industry, dubbed legal informatics. The nature of this utilisation of data and information technology platform is changing heavily with the advent of Artificial Intelligence systems, with major lawfirms in the United States of America, Australia, China, and the United Kingdom reporting pilot programs of Artificial Intelligence programs to assist in practices such as legal research, drafting and document review.
Areas of law
IT law does not constitute a separate area of law; rather, it encompasses aspects of contract, intellectual property, privacy and data protection laws. Intellectual property is an important component of IT law, including copyright and authors' rights, rules on fair use, rules on copy protection for digital media and circumvention of such schemes. The area of software patents has been controversial, and is still evolving in Europe and elsewhere.
The related topics of software licenses, end user license agreements, free software licenses and open-source licenses can involve discussion of product liability, professional liability of individual developers, warranties, contract law, trade secrets and intellectual property.
In various countries, areas of the computing and communication industries are regulated – often strictly – by governmental bodies.
There are rules on the uses to which computers and computer networks may be put, in particular there are rules on unauthorized access, data privacy and spamming. There are also limits on the use of encryption and of equipment which may be used to defeat copy protection schemes. The export of hardware and software between certain states within the United States is also controlled.
There are laws governing trade on the Internet, taxation, consumer protection, and advertising.
There are laws on censorship versus freedom of expression, rules on public access to government information, and individual access to information held on them by private bodies. There are laws on what data must be retained for law enforcement, and what may not be gathered or retained, for privacy reasons.
In certain circumstances and jurisdictions, computer communications may be used in evidence, and to establish contracts.
New methods of tapping and surveillance made possible by computers have wildly differing rules on how they may be used by law enforcement bodies and as evidence in court.
Computerized voting technology, from polling machines to internet and mobile-phone voting, raise a host of legal issues.
Some states limit access to the Internet, by law as well as by technical means.
Regulation
Global computer-based communications cut across territorial borders; issues of regulation, jurisdiction and sovereignty have therefore quickly come to the fore in the era of the Internet. They have been solved pretty quickly as well, because cross-border communication, negotiating or ordering was nothing new; new were the massive amounts of contacts, the possibilities of hiding one's identity and sometime later the colonisation of the terrain by corporations.
Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction is an aspect of state sovereignty and it refers to judicial, legislative and administrative competence. Although jurisdiction is an aspect of sovereignty, it is not coextensive with it. The laws of a nation may have extraterritorial impact extending the jurisdiction beyond the sovereign and territorial limits of that nation. The medium of the Internet, like electrical telegraph, telephone or radio, does not explicitly recognize sovereignty and territorial limitations. There is no uniform, international jurisdictional law of universal application, and such questions are generally a matter of international treaties and contracts, or conflict of laws, particularly private international law. An example would be where the contents stored on a server located in the United Kingdom, by a citizen of France, and published on a web site, are legal in one country and illegal in another. In the absence of a uniform jurisdictional code, legal practitioners and judges have solved these kind of questions according the general rules for conflict of law; governments and supra-national bodies did design outlines for new legal frameworks.
Regulation alternatives
Whether to treat the Internet as if it were physical space and thus subject to a given jurisdiction's laws, or that the Internet should have a legal framework of its own has been questioned. Those who favor the latter view often feel that government should leave the Internet to self-regulate. American poet John Perry Barlow, for example, has addressed the governments of the world and stated, "Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different". Another view can be read from a wiki-website with the name "An Introduction to Cybersecession", that argues for ethical validation of absolute anonymity on the Internet. It compares the Internet with the human mind and declares: "Human beings possess a mind, which they are absolutely free to inhabit with no legal constraints. Human civilization is developing its own (collective) mind. All we want is to be free to inhabit it with no legal constraints. Since you make sure we cannot harm you, you have no ethical right to intrude our lives. So stop intruding!" The project is defining "you" as "all governments", "we" is undefined. Some scholars argue for more of a compromise between the two notions, such as Lawrence Lessig's argument that "The problem for law is to work out how the norms of the two communities are to apply given that the subject to whom they apply may be in both places at once" (Lessig, Code 190).
Conflict of law
With the internationalism of the Internet and the rapid growth of users, jurisdiction became a more difficult area than before, and in the beginning courts in different countries have taken various views on whether they have jurisdiction over items published on the Internet, or business agreements entered into over the Internet. This can cover areas from contract law, trading standards and tax, through rules on unauthorized access, data privacy and spamming to areas of fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and privacy, via state censorship, to criminal law with libel or sedition.
The frontier idea that laws do not apply in "cyberspace" is however not true in a legal sense. In fact, conflicting laws from different jurisdictions may apply, simultaneously, to the same event. The Internet does not tend to make geographical and jurisdictional boundaries clear, but both Internet technology (hardware), the providers of services and its users remain in physical jurisdictions and are subject to laws independent of their presence on the Internet. As such, a single transaction may involve the laws of at least three jurisdictions:
the laws of the state/nation in which the user resides,
the laws of the state/nation that apply where the server hosting the transaction is located, and
the laws of the state/nation which apply to the person or business with whom the transaction takes place.
So a user in one of the United States conducting a transaction with another user that lives in the United Kingdom, through a server in Canada, could theoretically be subject to the laws of all three countries and of international treaties as they relate to the transaction at hand.
In practical terms, a user of the Internet is subject to the laws of the state or nation within which he or she goes online. Thus, in the U.S., in 1997, Jake Baker faced criminal charges for his e-conduct, and numerous users of peer-to-peer file-sharing software were subject to civil lawsuits for copyright infringement. This system runs into conflicts, however, when these suits are international in nature. Simply put, legal conduct in one nation may be decidedly illegal in another. In fact, even different standards concerning the burden of proof in a civil case can cause jurisdictional problems. For example, an American celebrity, claiming to be insulted by an online American magazine, faces a difficult task of winning a lawsuit against that magazine for libel. But if the celebrity has ties, economic or otherwise, to England, he or she can sue for libel in the English court system, where the burden of proof for establishing defamation may make the case more favorable to the plaintiff.
Internet governance is a live issue in international fora such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the role of the current US-based co-ordinating body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was discussed in the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in December 2003.
European Union
Copyright / authors' right
As of 2020, the European Union copyright law consists of 13 directives and 2 regulations, harmonising the essential rights of authors, performers, producers and broadcasters. The legal framework reduces national discrepancies, and guarantees the level of protection needed to foster creativity and investment in creativity. Many of the directives reflect obligations under the Berne Convention and the Rome Convention, as well as the obligations of the EU and its Member States under the World Trade Organisation 'TRIPS' Agreement and the two 1996 World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Internet Treaties: the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. Two other WIPO Treaties signed in 2012 and 2016, are the Beijing Treaty on the Protection of Audiovisual Performances and the Marrakesh VIP Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired or otherwise Print Disabled. Moreover, free-trade agreements, which the EU concluded with a large number of third countries, reflect many provisions of EU law.
Digital Services Act & Digital Markets Act (2023)
In 2022 the European Parliament did adopt landmark laws for internet platforms, the new rules will improve internet consumer protection and supervision of online platforms, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Debates around Internet law
The law that regulates aspects of the Internet must be considered in the context of the geographic scope of the technical infrastructure of Internet and state borders that are crossed in processing data around the globe. The global structure of the Internet raises not only jurisdictional issues, that is, the authority to make and enforce laws affecting the Internet, but made corporations and scholars raise questions concerning the nature of the laws themselves.
In their essay "Law and Borders – The Rise of Law in Cyberspace", from 2008, David R. Johnson and David G. Post argue that territorially-based law-making and law-enforcing authorities find this new environment deeply threatening and give a scientific voice to the idea that became necessary for the Internet to govern itself. Instead of obeying the laws of a particular country, "Internet citizens" will obey the laws of electronic entities like service providers. Instead of identifying as a physical person, Internet citizens will be known by their usernames or email addresses (or, more recently, by their Facebook accounts). Over time, suggestions that the Internet can be self-regulated as being its own trans-national "nation" are being supplanted by a multitude of external and internal regulators and forces, both governmental and private, at many different levels. The nature of Internet law remains a legal paradigm shift, very much in the process of development.
Lawrence Lessig (1999)
Leaving aside the most obvious examples of governmental content monitoring and internet censorship in nations like China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, there are four primary forces or modes of regulation of the Internet derived from a socioeconomic theory referred to as Pathetic dot theory by Lawrence Lessig in his 1999 book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace:
Law: What Lessig calls "Standard East Coast Code", from laws enacted by government in Washington D.C. This is the most self-evident of the four modes of regulation. As the numerous United States statutes, codes, regulations, and evolving case law make clear, many actions on the Internet are already subject to conventional laws, both with regard to transactions conducted on the Internet and content posted. Areas like gambling, child pornography, and fraud are regulated in very similar ways online as off-line. While one of the most controversial and unclear areas of evolving laws is the determination of what forum has subject matter jurisdiction over activity (economic and other) conducted on the internet, particularly as cross border transactions affect local jurisdictions, it is certainly clear that substantial portions of internet activity are subject to traditional regulation, and that conduct that is unlawful off-line is presumptively unlawful online, and subject to traditional enforcement of similar laws and regulations.
Architecture: What Lessig calls "West Coast Code", from the programming code of the Silicon Valley. These mechanisms concern the parameters of how information can and cannot be transmitted across the Internet. Everything from internet filtering software (which searches for keywords or specific URLs and blocks them before they can even appear on the computer requesting them), to encryption programs, to the very basic architecture of TCP/IP protocols and user interfaces falls within this category of mainly private regulation. It is arguable that all other modes of internet regulation either rely on, or are significantly affected by, West Coast Code.
Norms: As in all other modes of social interaction, conduct is regulated by social norms and conventions in significant ways. While certain activities or kinds of conduct online may not be specifically prohibited by the code architecture of the Internet, or expressly prohibited by traditional governmental law, nevertheless these activities or conduct are regulated by the standards of the community in which the activity takes place, in this case internet "users". Just as certain patterns of conduct will cause an individual to be ostracized from our real world society, so too certain actions will be censored or self-regulated by the norms of whatever community one chooses to associate with on the internet.
Markets: Closely allied with regulation by social norms, markets also regulate certain patterns of conduct on the Internet. While economic markets will have limited influence over non-commercial portions of the Internet, the Internet also creates a virtual marketplace for information, and such information affects everything from the comparative valuation of services to the traditional valuation of stocks. In addition, the increase in popularity of the Internet as a means for transacting all forms of commercial activity, and as a forum for advertisement, has brought the laws of supply and demand to cyberspace. Market forces of supply and demand also affect connectivity to the Internet, the cost of bandwidth, and the availability of software to facilitate the creation, posting, and use of internet content.
These forces or regulators of the Internet do not act independently of each other. For example, governmental laws may be influenced by greater societal norms, and markets affected by the nature and quality of the code that operates a particular system.
Net neutrality
Another major area of interest is net neutrality, which affects the regulation of the infrastructure of the Internet. Though not obvious to most Internet users, every packet of data sent and received by every user on the Internet passes through routers and transmission infrastructure owned by a collection of private and public entities, including telecommunications companies, universities, and governments. This issue has been handled in the paast for electrical telegraph, telephone and cable TV. A critical aspect is that laws in force in one jurisdiction have the potential to have effects in other jurisdictions when host servers or telecommunications companies are affected.
The Netherlands became in 2013 the first country in Europe and the second in the world, after Chile, to pass law relating to it. In U.S, on 12 March 2015, the FCC released the specific details of its new net neutrality rule. And on 13 April 2015, the FCC published the final rule on its new regulations.
Free speech on the Internet
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for the protection of free opinion and expression. Which includes right such as freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
In comparison to print-based media, the accessibility and relative anonymity of internet has torn down traditional barriers between an individual and his or her ability to publish. Any person with an internet connection has the potential to reach an audience of millions.
These complexities have taken many forms, three notable examples being the Jake Baker incident, in which the limits of obscene Internet postings were at issue, the controversial distribution of the DeCSS code, and Gutnick v Dow Jones, in which libel laws were considered in the context of online publishing. The last example was particularly significant because it epitomized the complexities inherent to applying one country's laws (nation-specific by definition) to the internet (international by nature). In 2003, Jonathan Zittrain considered this issue in his paper, "Be Careful What You Ask For: Reconciling a Global Internet and Local Law".
In the UK in 2006 the case of Keith-Smith v Williams confirmed that existing libel laws applied to internet discussions.
In terms of the tort liability of ISPs and hosts of internet forums, Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act may provide immunity in the United States.
Internet censorship
In many countries, speech through ICT has proven to be another means of communication which has been regulated by the government. The "Open Net Initiative" by the Harvard University Berkman Klein Center, the University of Toronto and the Canadian SecDev Group whose mission statement is "to investigate and challenge state filtration and surveillance practices" to "...generate a credible picture of these practices," has released numerous reports documenting the filtration of internet-speech in various countries. While China has thus far (2011) proven to be the most rigorous in its attempts to filter unwanted parts of the internet from its citizens, many other countries – including Singapore, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia – have engaged in similar practices of Internet censorship. In one of the most vivid examples of information control, the Chinese government for a short time transparently forwarded requests to the Google search engine to its own, state-controlled search engines.
These examples of filtration bring to light many underlying questions concerning the freedom of speech. For example, do government have a legitimate role in limiting access to information? And if so, what forms of regulation are acceptable? For example, some argue that the blocking of "blogspot" and other websites in India failed to reconcile the conflicting interests of speech and expression on the one hand and legitimate government concerns on the other hand.
The creation of privacy in U.S. Internet law
Warren and Brandeis
At the close of the 19th century, concerns about privacy captivated the general public, and led to the 1890 publication of Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis: "The Right to Privacy". The vitality of this article can be seen today, when examining the USSC decision of Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) where it is cited by the majority, those in concurrence, and even those in dissent.
The motivation of both authors to write such an article is heavily debated amongst scholars, however, two developments during this time give some insight to the reasons behind it. First, the sensationalistic press and the concurrent rise and use of "yellow journalism" to promote the sale of newspapers in the time following the Civil War brought privacy to the forefront of the public eye. The other reason that brought privacy to the forefront of public concern was the technological development of "instant photography". This article set the stage for all privacy legislation to follow during the 20 and 21st centuries.
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy Test and emerging technology
In 1967, the United States Supreme Court decision in Katz v United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) established what is known as the Reasonable Expectation of Privacy Test to determine the applicability of the Fourth Amendment in a given situation. The test was not noted by the majority, but instead it was articulated by the concurring opinion of Justice Harlan. Under this test, 1) a person must exhibit an "actual (subjective) expectation of privacy" and 2) "the expectation [must] be one that society is prepared to recognize as 'reasonable'".
Privacy Act of 1974
Inspired by the Watergate scandal, the United States Congress enacted the Privacy Act of 1974 just four months after the resignation of then President Richard Nixon. In passing this Act, Congress found that "the privacy of an individual is directly affected by the collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of personal information by Federal agencies" and that "the increasing use of computers and sophisticated information technology, while essential to the efficient operations of the Government, has greatly magnified the harm to individual privacy that can occur from any collection, maintenance, use, or dissemination of personal information".
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978
Codified at 50 U.S.C. §§ 1801–1811, this act establishes standards and procedures for use of electronic surveillance to collect "foreign intelligence" within the United States. §1804(a)(7)(B). FISA overrides the Electronic Communications Privacy Act during investigations when foreign intelligence is "a significant purpose" of said investigation. (a)(7)(B) and §1823(a)(7)(B). Another interesting result of FISA, is the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). All FISA orders are reviewed by this special court of federal district judges. The FISC meets in secret, with all proceedings usually also held from both the public eye and those targets of the desired surveillance.
For more information see: Foreign Intelligence Act
(1986) Electronic Communication Privacy Act
The ECPA represents an effort by the United States Congress to modernize federal wiretap law. The ECPA amended Title III (see: Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968) and included two new acts in response to developing computer technology and communication networks. Thus the ECPA in the domestic venue into three parts: 1) Wiretap Act, 2) Stored Communications Act, and 3) The Pen Register Act.
Types of Communication
Wire Communication: Any communication containing the human voice that travels at some point across a wired medium such as radio, satellite or cable.
Oral Communication:
Electronic Communication
The Wiretap Act: For Information see Wiretap Act
The Stored Communications Act: For information see Stored Communications Act
The Pen Register Act: For information see Pen Register Act
(1994) Driver's Privacy Protection Act
The DPPA was passed in response to states selling motor vehicle records to private industry. These records contained personal information such as name, address, phone number, SSN, medical information, height, weight, gender, eye color, photograph and date of birth. In 1994, Congress passed the Driver's Privacy Protection (DPPA), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2721–2725, to cease this activity.
For more information see: Driver's Privacy Protection Act
(1999) Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
-This act authorizes widespread sharing of personal information by financial institutions such as banks, insurers, and investment companies. The GLBA permits sharing of personal information between companies joined or affiliated as well as those companies unaffiliated. To protect privacy, the act requires a variety of agencies such as the SEC, FTC, etc. to establish "appropriate standards for the financial institutions subject to their jurisdiction" to "insure security and confidentiality of customer records and information" and "protect against unauthorized access" to this information.
For more information see: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
(2002) Homeland Security Act
-Passed by Congress in 2002, the Homeland Security Act, , consolidated 22 federal agencies into what is commonly known today as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The HSA, also created a Privacy Office under the DoHS. The Secretary of Homeland Security must "appoint a senior official to assume primary responsibility for privacy policy." This privacy official's responsibilities include but are not limited to: ensuring compliance with the Privacy Act of 1974, evaluating "legislative and regulatory proposals involving the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information by the Federal Government", while also preparing an annual report to Congress.
For more information see: Homeland Security Act
(2004) Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act
-This Act mandates that intelligence be "provided in its most shareable form" that the heads of intelligence agencies and federal departments "promote a culture of information sharing." The IRTPA also sought to establish protection of privacy and civil liberties by setting up a five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. This Board offers advice to both the President of the United States and the entire executive branch of the Federal Government concerning its actions to ensure that the branch's information sharing policies are adequately protecting privacy and civil liberties.
For more information see: Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act
See also
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Bernstein v. United States and Junger v. Daley – on free speech protection of software
Computer forensics
Computer crime
Cultural lag
Data localization
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
Electronic Communications Privacy Act
Export of cryptography
Glossary of legal terms in technology
Software patent debate
Universal v. Reimerdes – test of DMCA
Ouellette v. Viacom International Inc. (DMCA and ADA)
Wassenaar Arrangement
Doe v. 2themart.com Inc. – First Amendment right to speak anonymously
United States v. Ivanov – Applying United States cyber-law to a foreign national operating outside the US
Centers and groups for the study of cyberlaw and related areas
Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School
Centre for Internet and Society, in Bangalore, India.
Institute for Information, Telecommunication and Media Law in Münster, Germany
Institute of Space and Telecommunications Law (IDEST) at University of Paris-Sud, Master's degree in Space Activities and Telecommunications Law
Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law
Stanford Center for Internet and Society, at Stanford Law School
Topics related to cyberlaw
Copyright, especially the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States, and similar laws in other countries
Cyber defamation law
Digital rights management
Intellectual property
Internet censorship
Stop Online Piracy Act
Spamming
Notes
References
A Murray, Information Technology Law: The Law and Society (3rd edn 2016)
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, The Future of Ideas, and Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
Cyber Rights by Mike Godwin
E-Commerce and Internet Law: Treatise with Forms 2d edition, by Ian C. Ballon
External links
Information Technology Law India – Bare Act
Internet Law Resources
Computer law
de:Rechtsinformatik | 0.760424 | 0.993219 | 0.755267 |
Media and gender | Gender plays a role in mass media and is represented within media platforms. These platforms are not limited to film, radio, television, advertisement, social media, and video games. Initiatives and resources exist to promote gender equality and reinforce women's empowerment in the media industry and representations. For example, UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists, elaborated the Gender-sensitive Indicators for Media contributing to gender equality and women's empowerment in all forms of media.
History
Feminist writers, largely gaining prominence in the 1960s during second wave feminism, began examining the relationship between media and the perpetuation of misogyny and sexism, criticizing the Western canon for providing and promoting an exclusively white male world view. Notable feminists include Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin, bell hooks, and Stuart Hall.
These feminists typically perceived gender as a social construct, which is not only reflected in artistic work but also perpetuated by it. Until fairly recently, feminists have mainly directed their studies to gender representations in literature. Recently, a new wave of academic studies focused on gender representations in modern society and culture (such as in the film, advertisement, and cultural industries).
Gender disparity in media careers
Numbers of women in media professions such as journalism are growing: as of 2018 in the United States, 41.7% of the newsroom employees were women; the proportion of women journalists in online-only news organizations even reached 47.8%. However, the media is and has been statistically dominated by men, who hold the vast majority of power positions. Few women have been in leading positions; they made up only 28.3% of the television news directors and 30.5% of the managing editors. Today, many news organizations are striving for gender parity on their employees. A large number of international institutions and nonprofit organizations are advocating for gender equality in the media workplace. For instance, in 2018, UNESCO supported 42 media institutions and 16 universities to implement policies and strategies on gender equality. In addition, coherent with the strategy to empower women and girls through policy implementation, 31 institutions, community radio stations, and national broadcasters adopted policies on gender equality in media.
The Bechdel test, coined by cartoonist Alison Bechdel and originally created to evaluate popular fiction's representation of women and subsequently adapted to employment in the media professions, shows that a number of women are employed but do not benefit from an equal voice. For example, women in radio are typically hired to cover topics such as weather and culture.
In the video game industry, about half of the gamers are women; their presence, though, is still limited in the production of games. Those who tried to publicly challenge this situation, such as A. Sarkeesian, have been subjected to harassment. There is concern in cinema about the low number of female directors and the difficulties of older actresses to find roles. Women in film also earn 2.5 times less in annual income when compared to men in the same jobs.
A survey conducted by Stacy Smith of the University of Southern California shows that only 7% of directors, 13% of writers, and 20% of producers in film and television are women. According to The Writers Guild, an estimated 17% of screenplays over the last decade were written by women. However, increasing numbers of women work in the media as journalists or directors. Therefore, they deal with topics tightly related to women's needs and tend to provide a positive role for women. The rise in female labor force participation can be due to a number of factors: Anti-discrimination laws, growing international emphasis on women's rights, greater accessibility to education and job opportunities, a breakdown of conventional gender roles, reduced economic reliance on men, and affordable housing. No longer only consumers of media but also contributors to media, they get more involved in decision-making and agenda of activities. This empowerment of women gives them abilities to promote balance in gender representations and avoid stereotypes. Media becomes a suitable ground for expressions and claims. For instance, the project "Enhancing a gender responsive film sector in the Maghreb-Mashreq region"—funded by the European Union under the Med Film Program—has demonstrated that women empowerment in their career enhances the image of women in the audiovisual landscape.
Representations of women
In a content analysis in 1970, it was suggested that there are four very common stereotypes that women are seen under:
1) A woman's only place is in her home.
2) Women have no ability to make their own decisions or important ones.
3) A man must always protect women as they are dependent on them.
4) Men only see women as housewives and as sexual objects.
Under-representation and misrepresentation
In spite of their monumental achievements, women's representation in media remains drastically low to that of their male counterparts. Women are the focus of only 10% of news stories, comprise just 20% of experts or spokespeople interviewed, and a mere 4% of news stories are deemed to challenge gender stereotypes. Studies show that men are more likely to be quoted than women in the media, and more likely to cover "serious" topics. Women have been seriously marginalized in certain news categories such as politics, law, and business; only about 30% of the news reports about government refer to women, while less than 20% of the financial news includes female sources. Furthermore, news media regularly cites more ordinary opinions from female witnesses or citizens but leaves the majority of insightful statements to men. A central trend in black feminist thinking is challenging media portrayals of black women as mammies, matriarchs, jezebels, welfare mothers, and tragic mulattoes. "These assumptions represent and misrepresent both the ways in which black women perceive themselves (individually and collectively) and the ways in which they are perceived by others," Hudson claims.
According to the report investigation of female characters in popular films across 11 countries, 1 woman for 2.24 men appeared on the screen between 1 January 2010 and 1 May 2013. In 2009, the Screen Actors Guild (US) also found that men continue to make up the majority of roles, especially Supporting Roles, where they contribute around two roles for every female role. In contrast, females hold a slightly larger proportion of lead roles compared to their proportion of supporting roles, but still occupy fewer lead roles than their male counterparts.
The same is true for television programs. In general, from the 1950s to the 1970s, female accounted for 30–35% of the roles in American television programs. This increased in the 1980s, but there were still twice as many roles for men in television. However, these disparities change depending on the type of program: in mid-1970s sitcoms, there were "nearly equal proportions", whereas in action-adventure shows, "only 15 per cent of the leading characters were women." In the 1980s, female characters represented 43% of roles in comedy shows and only 29% in action-adventure programs; however, they had outnumbered male characters two to one in dramas. Since the 1990s, "gender roles on television seemed to become increasingly equal and non-stereotyped ... although the majority of lead characters were still male."
More recently, studies based on computational approaches showed that women speaking time in French TV and radio used to be 25% in 2001 (75% for men) and evolved to 34% in 2018. Women vocal presence was also lower during high audience time-slots.
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is an organization that has been lobbying the industry for years to expand the roles of women in film.
In the 1960s and 1970s, feminists such as Clare Short, Gaye Tuchman, and Angela McRobbie denounced unfair representations of gender in media and especially in magazines.
Sexualization
Noticing the fact that women are more likely to be presented by photos rather than words in digital news, Sen Jia and his colleagues argued that women's appearance probably serves for visual pleasure. Besides, mass media has become a driving force to discrimination based on gender. Images and expectations of gender roles are highlighted through a variety of platforms and sources like the structure of language, activities, media, school settings, historical passages or art pieces, and the workplace. Sexualization of women, in particular, is heavily centralized in mass media. When these platforms hyper sexualize women, portray them in a lack of clothing, or depict women as subordinate to men, a women's self esteem, body image, and emotional well-being may be negatively affected. One of the earliest studies of role portrayal in advertisement was done in 1971 by Courtney and Lockeretz. These researchers discovered four central themes of female stereotypes: first, a woman's place was in the home; second, women didn't make important decisions; third, women were dependent on their male counterparts; and fourth, women were perceived as sexual objects. Two other follow up studies done by Wagner and Banos, and Belkaoui and Belkaoui reached similar outcomes. The final two points highlight the angle that women are viewed in regards to their sexuality and bodies. For centuries, dating back to when women would pose for paintings or sculptures, the concept that a woman's nature lied within the ground of subordination and submission has been reinforced by media.
The Western ideal of female beauty is that of the fit, young, and thin woman, and the media spreads this ideal through movies, TV shows, fashion shows, advertisements, magazines and newspapers, music videos, and children's cartoons. For women to be considered attractive, they have to conform to images in advertisements, television, and music portraying the ideal woman as tall, white, thin, with a 'tubular' body and blonde hair.
Studies show that typical female roles fall into cultural stereotypes of women and are often sexualized with minimal clothing and sexualized roles. For example, a 2010 content analysis of video games found that "41% of female characters wore revealing clothing and an equal number were partially or totally nude," whereas the male characters were not. In media platforms such as television and video games, women tend to be underrepresented. In video games, women are often depicted as characters in need of assistance or in positions that are either submissive or helpful. More than 80% of female characters in video game magazines are objectified, under dressed, or observed with charm; more than a fifth fall into all three categories. However, sexualization is not the only stereotypical way in which women are represented in the media.
In advertisement, celebrity endorsement of products are thought to be especially effective if the celebrity is a physically attractive woman, as the attractiveness is thought to transfer to the brand's image and studies have shown that audiences respond better to female endorsements. The idea of sexualization is to give something a sexual role. In the media sexualization gets advertised by companies that are trying to promote something or someone. They don't always promote the equality in gender when they are advertised though it may seem like they do. The sexualization in advertisements may matter to some people but others it may not. "Women showed lower product attractiveness and purchase intentions toward products presented with sexualized female models than with neutral ads, whereas men were unaffected by ads' sexualization." Studies have shown that men are less likely to buy something based on the sexualization of the advertisement. The women on the other hand based their purchases off of how the ad was presented whether it was showing sexualization or not showing it at all. Some men would purchase products based on the sexualization and how the product was presented with women in it. "Especially men with higher hostile sexism showed more purchase intentions after viewing female sexualized ads than neutral ads." Whereas women would not buy those products due to negative emotions toward the products that advertise the sexualization. It definitely has an impact on the way that women view each other after seeing the ads.
"The ideal female beauty is the fit, young, and thin women that is seen in the media and on tv. Media effects research has confirmed that sexualizing media exposure can negatively affect preteens' body image and sexual development. While there is a link between sexualizing content and adverse outcomes such as self-objectification and body dissatisfaction, an interest in sexual media content is a normal part of healthy sexual development during the preteen years." As young women watch these shows and movies, they start to worry more about their body image than anything. Some will go as far as even starving themselves to get the right image as the women they see on tv." To what extent do sexual content, appearance-related content, sexual objectification, and objectification occur in Flemish preteens' favorite TV shows? And how are these different types of content related to gender roles? Seeking to address these questions, this article reports on a quantitative content analysis of 24 episodes from five TV shows popular among Flemish preteens."
Objectification of women in the media is transmitted verbally and nonverbally, as well as directly and indirectly. Objectification is not only visual, but can also be expressed subtly by commenting on women's appearance in a humorous way, making jokes and gags, and using double meanings. To advocate against the objectification of women in the media, some programs are implementing projects on this issue. For instance, some trainings and handbooks are being developed by International organizations and nonprofit organizations for media professionals to improve the gender-sensitivity of media representations.
Some shows focused entirely on successful professional women and their "quests for sex, pleasure and romantic love", such as Ally McBeal (1997–2002) and Sex and the City (1998–2004). Even if the main character in Ally McBeal was portrayed as desperate to find a husband, the show had other non-stereotypical female characters and "sided with the women". Sex and the City had assertive female protagonists, especially in matters of sex, and did not punish them for wanting pleasure, knowing how to get it, and being determined to do so, which can be seen especially in the case of Samantha Jones, played by Kim Cattrall. Another female icon from the 1990s is Buffy Summers, the title character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who was portrayed as powerful, heroic, confident, and assertive, characteristics that were generally ascribed to male characters.
In her 1973 article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", feminist film critic Laura Mulvey coined the term male gaze to describe the way that women in film serve as projections of male fantasies.
Domestication
Women are often portrayed in traditional roles in advertisements and television. Television shows have often portrayed marriage, parenthood, and domesticity as more important to women than men. From the mid-1940s to the 1960s, women (predominantly white, middle-class women) were portrayed mostly as housewives who had seemingly "perfect" lives: their houses were always impeccably clean, their children were always healthy, and they were always beautiful and organized. TV didn't portray the reality that by 1960, "40 per cent of women worked outside the home ... [and that] divorce rates spiked twice after World War II". According to a study from 1975 conducted by Jean McNeil, in 74 per cent of the cases studied, women's interactions were "concerned with romance or family problems", whereas men's interactions were concerned with these matters in only 18 per cent of the cases. Furthermore, female characters often didn't have jobs, especially if they were wives and mothers, and were not the dominant characters or decision-makers. The boss is usually a man. Men are portrayed as more assertive or aggressive, adventurous, active, and victorious, while women are shown as passive, weak, ineffectual, victimized, supportive, and laughable. Studies in the 1970s concluded that for domestic product advertisements on television, female demonstrators often used the product as a housewife or mother while the man described the product.
On television, women more frequently play the role of the housekeeper and men more frequently play the roles of professionals. As a reflection of the real world, same stories have happened in the news media. Women are overrepresented as students and homemakers while underrepresented in most other occupations. Even for professional women, their feminine attributes are emphasized in news coverage relating them to topics including age, appearance, and family-career balance. Sports news tended to focus on female athletes' look and personal lives instead of their capabilities and career development. Hanne Vandenberghe, a researcher at KU Leuven, found very similar patterns in news reporting outstanding women in government agencies and the technology industry.
In another study, Souha R. Ezzedeen found that career-driven female characters in film were negatively represented as having conniving personalities, being isolated, and being unable to balance work and family. While 40+ male roles are on the rise in both theatrical and television productions, female 40+ roles represent only 28% of female roles. Actors such as Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood continue to undertake major roles as ageless heroes, whereas the normative structure for older women is that their aging is part of the plot (for example in Mamma Mia! (2008) and Sex and the City (2010)). This is typically seen in relation to female roles relying on sexualization, and the superficial (apparent) effects of aging on their body are presented as something to be hidden. They continue to be defined mainly by their appearance. In gossip culture, the older female body is represented in largely negative terms unless it has been modified "correctly" by cosmetic surgery. Aging female celebrities have become one of the mainstays of gossip magazines and blogs, which endorse a culture of consumption in which cosmetic technologies and procedures are not questioned but in which female celebrities who have used them are either figured as glamorous for getting it right or as monstrous for going too far. Another consequence of portraying aging women in the media, is that in most TV shows, actresses who are playing characters in their 40s and 50s tend to have younger appearing body types. This has led to critiques that these representations are first and foremost framed in terms of how well older actresses are managing their aging bodies. Midlife women have grown accustomed to seeing their age group portrayed in a seemingly unrealistic way, and this had led to an increase of eating disorders and negative body image among this group.
In one court case in 2011, English television actress Miriam O'Reilly successfully sued the BBC for age discrimination after being dropped from a show. It was claimed that she had been told to be careful about her wrinkles and to consider Botox and dyeing her hair.
The commercial potential of older consumers is becoming more significant (an increased 'active lifespan', the baby boom generation entering retirement, retirement ages that are raising). A multiplication of images of successful aging are explicitly tied to consumerism by the anti-ageing industry and older female celebrities advertising their products. Examples abound: Sharon Stone for Christian Dior, Catherine Zeta-Jones for Elizabeth Arden, Diane Keaton and Julianna Margulies for L'Oreal, Christy Turlington for Maybelline, Ellen DeGeneres for CoverGirl, etc. These advertisements are paradoxical in that they allow older celebrities to remain visible while encouraging an ageist and sexist culture in which women are valued for their appearance. Baby boomers are an increasingly important audience group for the cinema industry, resulting in more and new kinds of stories with older protagonists. Romantic comedies in which women protagonists take on the romantic heroine role provide one of the few spaces in popular culture showing appealing representations of older women, such as I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007), Last Chance Harvey (2008), and It's Complicated (2009). They are part of a phenomenon called the "Girling" of older women, where the protagonists and celebrities are portrayed as being just as excited and entitled to be going out on dates as younger women.
Abuse
Heterosexual romantic relationships in media, particularly in film, often romanticize intimate partner violence wherein the woman is the victim. Film like Once Were Warriors (1994) is an example of film in which abusive behavior, such as manipulation, coercion, threats, control and domination, isolation, excessive jealousy, and physical violence, are all exhibited by the male romantic lead. A 2016 study on women's interpretations of abusive behavior found that many women see the sort of abusive behaviors shown in popular films as romantic or desirable. In Netflix's popular hit show, "You," the male main character justifies and romanticizes stalking, emotional manipulation, and even murder as his way of protecting his one true love. This conflation of abuse and romance is widely attributed to the prevalence of abusive tropes in popular media.
Female characters as plot devices for male characters
Referred Pain
In media featuring a male protagonist, women's pain, suffering, or even death are often used as plot devices to further the male protagonist's narrative arc. This is known as the "referred pain" plot device. It involves a situation wherein a woman undergoes a traumatic event, often (but not always) of a sexual nature, but her pain is referred to a male character. This male character's grief and anger due to the trauma experienced by the female character are explored in depth. The female character's emotional or physical response is only addressed briefly or cursorily. This trope is featured in such films as Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), Moulin Rouge (2001), as well as in the Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus and books like Oroonoko.
Disposable Woman
The Disposable Woman trope refers to a trope in which a woman is included in a story for the sole purpose of dying, thus putting the male protagonist through emotional development or inspiring him to embark on a revenge quest. The woman who dies in these situations is referred to as "disposable" because she does not serve a purpose beyond her death. The disposable woman trope in present in many films, including Braveheart (1995), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Dark Knight (2008), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), Deadpool 2 (2018), and Avengers: Infinity War (2018).
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl
The term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" was coined in 2007 by film critic Nathan Rabin to describe a female character who exists solely "to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures." The Manic Pixie Dream Girl improves the life of the male protagonist and makes him a happier and better person, but she has no apparent character arc or complex story; she is simply a plot device. A list of notable instances of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope can be found on the article for Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
Damsel in Distress
Damsel in distress serves as a character in trouble who needs the assistance of a male character to get over her problems. In the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", after being fatally poisoned by her step mother, Snow White's seven dwarf friends mourn her death, "until a handsome prince restores her to life with a kiss." Many of Disney's fairy tale movies, portray the princesses as damsels in distress, whilst enhancing their male protagonists' masculinity, as they rescue these princesses. They are further cleaved to the stereotype of only yearning to find their true love. Similarly with the story of "The Sleeping Beauty" where a beautiful princess cursed to sleep, can only be woken up by her true love's kiss. Even though the story gets its name from the princess, she is helpless and needs a "sword-wielding prince, bursting with testosterone, who chops his way through the forest" to kiss and wake her up from her sleep.
The Item Girl
Mostly popular in Bollywood cinema, the Item girl is "the sexist representation of women subjected to the male gaze." The 1970s introduced Item numbers to Bollywood, which is still prevalent today. Actresses who dance to item numbers usually make guest appearances, and aren't crucial to the story. An item girl dances her way "trying to get through the main lead's heart with their piercing eyes and body movements, trying to hypnotize everyone watching them."
Actress Helen's dance to 'Mehbooba' and 'Ae Mera Dil' in 'Sholay' is an example of an item number.
Actress Malaika Arora rose to fame with her performance in Chaiyya Chaiyya in 1998, Anarkali Disco Chali in 2012, and her performance in Munni Badnam in 2010.
Actress Mallika Sherawat in Jalebi Bai in 2011 was considered an iconic sex symbol in Bollywood.
Nora Fatehi is the recent face for the Bollywood Item Numbers, appearing in many Bollywood movies as the item girl. Some of her numbers include, Dilbar in 2018, O Saki Saki in 2019, Garmi in 2020, Kusu Kusu in 2021.
These women are portrayed as desirable, dancing among a crowd of men at a party, while the male protagonists and antagonists lust over and dances with them. In the song "Aao Raja" in Gabbar is back with Akshay Kumar and Chitrangada Singh, the item number helps enable the protagonist to continue their plot and seek revenge against the lustfully distracted antagonist.
The representation of an item girl reiterates the cultural image of women as ornamental objects whose principal role is to look good and please men and the male gaze.
Women leads as secondary characters
Bollywood has made many women empowerment movies that fail to portray strong female characters as the main leads and protagonists, and instead provide a male protagonist with a motivation to resolve and fix the issues, when he sees the female characters struggle with such issues. Many of Bollywood's 'feminist' or 'women empowerment' movies assert the Male Savior trope, pushing females to serve as secondary characters, in movies addressing 'their' issues.
The 2007 movie, "Chak De India" features a bickering women's hockey team, that is led by coach Shah Rukh Khan, to rebuild their chemistry and win the World Championship–something they weren't capable of until his entry.
The 2018 movie "Padman" with Akshay Kumar is about a man who takes it upon himself to build a machine to create low cost sanitary pads, and distribute it among poor and underprivileged women throughout India at low prices. This movie addresses period poverty, and the high prices of female sanitary products. The male protagonist's motivation is his wife, who refuses to buy the expensive pads, and instead wears unsanitary clothes during her menstrual cycle. In many Bollywood movies, women's issues serve as plot points for male characters to be built around.
The Devoted Wife
The "devoted wife" is the trope where a wife is dedicated to her husband, ignoring his poor behavior, absence and infidelity. She stays in the marriage with her cheating and rebellious husband, as her loyalty serves as a redemption arc for the male protagonist. This is a trope that is mostly popular among Bollywood movies, affirming to the societal expectation that divorce is unacceptable as "family is above the individual" and that women must be accepting of their husbands, even in their worst flaws and continue to stay in oppressive marriages.
In the 1997 film Raja Ki Aayegi Baarat, a woman is forced to marry her rapist, and the abuse continues on after the marriage. She serves as the devoted wife, turning a blind eye to her husband's abuse, while raising a voice against abuse by her husband's family. This movie portrays this trope the best, reinforcing the negative narrative on divorce.
Harassment in the media industry
Harassment within the media industry is something that has been taking place since the beginning of its time. We see this harassment take place in ways such as verbal or physical abuse. The harassment creates toxic work environments that ultimately impact the well-being of its victims. Harassment can be seen in all outlets of the media industry. From newsrooms to film sets, journalists, actors, directors, and other professionals often face harassment, discrimination, and abuse of power.
One of the main ways we see harassment in the media industry is through the imbalance of power dynamics. Power dynamics come into play within companies when there are individuals in higher positions, holding greater responsibility and influence over others. Power imbalance becomes harmful when the higher up individual imposes unfavorable conditions on a weaker party. Most of the time this is seen when a man holds more power over his female employees. This can manifest in many different ways, including sexual harassment and/or sexual assault.
In recent years, many women in the media industry have spoken out about the harassment that they have faced in the industry. These women are repeatedly victims of sexism, exploitation, and abuse. Famous women such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Meghan Markle, Taylor Swift and many others have spoke out about how they have been victims in this toxic environment. It is also important to recognize the intersectionality of gender, understanding that women of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other marginalized groups face unique challenges and forms of discrimination. The nature of gender-based harassment in the industry reflects broader societal power dynamics, where women are often marginalized and their voices silenced.
There have been many men in power, from a range of industries like film, music, sports, fashion, etc. that have been accused of predatory, abusive behavior. The #MeToo movement played a big role in bringing awareness to these issues in the media industry and even played a significant role in taking some of these abusers down.
Representations of men
Men are proportionally represented by media more often compared to women, and these portrayals often draw on sexist stereotypes. Male characters in film and television are typically more tough, aggressive, domineering, etc. than the average man they are meant to represent.
Media often plays a role in the acceptance of negative values as the perceived norm for men and masculinity.
Masculinity is a set of ideas related to the behavior and appearance of men and boys. Some argue that most societies socialize men and boys to assume that they are superior, leader, aggressive and entitled. According to the hegemonic masculinity model of gender studies, men who demonstrate power, strength, bravery, fearlessness, virility, competitiveness etc.. can assert their (supposed) superiority over women and consolidate their general position of dominance over them (physically, intellectually, and sexually).
Media representations of sports and athletes contribute to the construction of a dominant model of masculinity centered on strength and an ambivalent relationship to violence, encouraging boys and men to take risks and to be aggressive.
The UNESCO's section for Media Development and Society advocates for gender equality in sports media. "Sports coverage is hugely powerful in shaping norms and stereotypes about gender. Media has the ability to challenge these norms, promoting a balanced coverage of men's and women's sports and a fair portrayal of sportspeople – irrespective of gender". The campaign "Her Moments Matter" highlighted the fact that biased media representations of sports athletes have repercussions on women's self-confidence and the perception they have of themselves.
Advertisements often use male actors when promoting alcoholic beverages, banking services, or credit cards. When men are acting on a television commercial, they are usually performing activities such as playing sports, driving around girls, repairing cars, drinking, relaxing, and having fun.
Film historian Miriam Hansen argues the way female gaze came to film during the flapper films of the 1920s, specifically citing the famous Italian-American actor Rudolph Valentino as having been used on the screen to draw in a female audience as an embodiment of male beauty.
Following the banning of an advertisement where a wife asks pest exterminators to dispose of pests with one being her husband, CEO Fiona Jolly of the Advertising Standards Authority in Australia said in an interview that it was common for men in advertising to be portrayed as dithery and less capable compared to their partners. Gender stereotyping in British advertisements have been banned since 2017.
A study published in 2021 found that of the top-rated US sitcoms from 1980 to 2017, newer sitcoms portrayed fathers as increasingly foolish, and less likely to demonstrate parenting roles. The study found that 18% of scenes in the 1980s depicted fathers as having incompetent parenting, compared to 56% in the 2010s. This is despite an increase of fathers spending an average of 2.5 hours per week in 1965 to seven hours per week in 2011 on childcare.
Alcoholism
Magazines and sports broadcasts’ images of masculinity are heavily influenced by the alcohol industry (Wenner 1991). Messner and Montex de Oca found that the alcohol ads don’t just pitch the product, they use images to create a scenario in which it seems that the men in the ads are living a “desirable lifestyle”. It was around the mid-1970”s that women and families began to disappear from alcohol ads. This started to push the narrative that drinking was no longer a family social activity and instead was an activity tied to men and masculinity. The 1970s and 80s were full of upsets for America, the loss of the Vietnam War, the Stonewall Riots (1969), 1972 gas crisis, the collapse of Fordism, and many more. It was then that beer ads received a new face. The ads started to push alcohol as the solution to dealing with these things and pushed the narrative of men using alcohol to cover their emotions and solve/forget their problems (Kimmel 1987). The message wasn’t straightforward, it instead casually forced an association between heavy alcohol consumption and a stress-free life.
Representations of transgender and non-binary characters
In 1985, a U.S. non-governmental media monitoring organization called GLAAD was founded by Vito Russo, Jewelle Gomez, and Lauren Hinds with the support of other LGBT people in the media to combat media discrimination. The name "GLAAD" had been an acronym for "Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation", but is also known for its inclusivity of bisexual and transgender people.
While sexually diverse representations of people (including transgender and non-binary people) have been growing steadily in recent years, many fictionalized media representations of trans and non-binary characters are created or produced by cisgender writers. Many of these portrayals attempt to adhere to a narrative that requires a trans character to desire to present as "passable" in order to legitimize or validate their experience as "authentic". Emphasizing the notion of passing perpetuates internalized gender expectations, resulting in a growing pressure to conform to the male gaze and what is acceptable and "passable" media representations, especially in the transfeminine community. This reinforcement of sex and gender norms is also apparent in many representations of transgender men in various media sources from magazine covers to movies and television series to social media. Each of these binarized views of gender implies that to be transgender means to transition from one end of the gender binary to the other, leaving little room for ambiguity when it comes to gender non-conformity and non-binary representations.
There is also an essentialist aspect of the narrative of desired binary-passing as a form of authenticity in that it provides an exceedingly narrow example of the many varied lived experiences of transgender individuals. In concentrating on this singular type of narrative, there is potential for media representations of gender non-conforming people who do not fit neatly into either binary category of male or female to be inadequate. In light of this, there are increasingly more depictions of non-binary, genderfluid, and genderless characters in mainstream television shows like Syd (played by Sheridan Pierce) in One Day at a Time, Crowley (played by David Tennant) in Good Omens, and Janet (played by D'Arcy Carden) in The Good Place, among a growing number of others.
Many mainstream representations of transgender and non-binary people or characters have been portrayed by cisgender actors, such as Hilary Swank's portrayal of Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry (1999) and Eddie Redmayne's portrayal of Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl (2015), leading to some controversy surrounding the ethics of who should be acting the parts of trans and non-binary characters. There has also been some concern raised regarding the sensationalization or "trendiness" of transgender roles as having the potential to be exploited. Despite this, however, there are efforts being made to ensure that trans and non-binary actors are the ones being chosen to play trans and non-binary characters. Some notable examples of this are Laverne Cox's portrayal of Sophia Burset who is a trans woman in Orange is the New Black, Asia Kate Dillon playing Taylor Mason who is non-binary in Billions, and Sara Ramírez who identifies as bisexual and non-binary and portrays the bisexual, non-binary character of Kat Sandoval in Madam Secretary.
While still marginal in numbers, there is also progress being made toward some more mainstream development of television shows created by trans and non-binary writers, such as Transparent by Joey Soloway. There are many more grassroots level efforts to produce positive transgender and non-binary representation, such as crowdfunded projects like Jen Richards' and Laura Zak's online web series Her Story.
Gender expectations
Gender expectations are stereotypes about how men and women should behave in a society. Social expectations develop the minds of youth as it guides them to society's ideals of socialization, social morals and values, and gender roles.
Media
The media can be a source of gender expectations as it stereotypes individuals and groups based on specific genders and sexual preferences. Men are often portrayed as adventurous, dominant, muscular, intelligent, and sexually aggressive, while women tend to be portrayed as young, beautiful, emotionally passive, dependent, and sometimes unintelligent.
In Western media, women are expected to value youth, sexuality, and beauty, while men are taught to value dominance and power. A 2020 study of children's television found that television programs aimed at younger boys tend to promote stereotypically masculine behavior, and that male characters in such programs are more likely to reflect such norms and lack onscreen parents.
Music
In the documentary film Gaga: Five Foot Two, American singer Lady Gaga states that industry creates expectations for female artists to illustrate to the world. As she explains, "the methodology that I used to get out of that category was when they wanted me to be sexy or they wanted me to be pop; I always put some absurd spin on it that made me feel like I was still in control." Taylor Swift has shared similar comments in her documentary Miss Americana, in which many women musicians in this industry battle with the media scrutiny and toxic media culture in their daily lives, as they must be perceived as perfect and beautiful at all times.
Video games
Gender expectations are highly incorporated into the character's gender in video games, where the male gaze is dominant.
Female characters are frequently portrayed as a damsel in distress, which objectifies them and relegates the narrative role to a male protagonist. For example, Princess Peach appears in fourteen of the main Super Mario series and is kidnapped in all but one of them, to be rescued by Mario, though she plays a more central role in spinoff media. Where female characters have a major role in the narrative, they tend to be highly sexualized.
Social media and mental health
In today's society, mental health issues have become directly intertwined with the use of social media. As technology continues to advance, the more access we have to different social media platforms. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and X (formerly Twitter) are all forms of social media that allow for the user to share their lives and opinions while connecting with other users. While there are many studies that show advantages and disadvantages to social media, the statistics that link mental health issues to social media are vast.
According to "GWI 2021; We Are Social 2021", In 2021, 4.3 billion people—more than half of the world population—had a social media account, and the average user spent around two and a half hours per day on social media platforms. The rise in mental health issues is heavily linked to the increase in social media usage since the early/mid-2000s. The World Health Organization reports that in 2019, 970 million people globally were living with a mental disorder, with anxiety and depression the most common.
There are many factors of social media that negatively contribute to a person's mental health and well-being. Users often compare their appearances, and lives to others on social media. This leads to feelings of jealousy, envy, and low self-esteem. Many users also experience cyberbullying. Social media gives users the opportunity to "hide" behind their screens, making it easier to harass and bully. Another common issue that has been studied is the amount of time consumed on technology, especially social media. Regarding US statistics, California State University reports an estimated 10% or 33.19 million Americans are addicted to social media. This addiction can impact productivity, relationships and sleep, which ultimately impacts the person's mental health.
Studies have also revealed a notable gender disparity in the impacts of social media on mental well-being. Females tend to experience these mental health issues more than males. The majority of social media influencers in today's society are females and the majority of their following are young girls. The pressure that is put on both the influencers and the followers to fit a certain standard and persona results in feelings of anxiety and low self-esteem. Studies have shown that women are more likely to engage in social comparisons on social media, leading to feelings of inadequacy when measuring themselves against unattainable beauty standards perpetuated by images posted online. This can result in issues with body image and potentially eating disorders. Cyber bullying and harassment related to a woman's body is often seen on social media influencer posts.
The relationship between social media and mental health is a complex topic that continues to be studied.
Effects on youth
Stereotypes
The media is generally regarded as playing an important role in defining prevailing social norms concerning sexual harassment, especially television, which is "widely accessible and intentionally appealing and engaging, [making] massive use of stereotypical messages that the majority of the people can easily understand". Media affects behaviors and is "of prime importance for adolescents' general ideas of romance, sex, and relationships". Thus, media has important social consequences, among which is greater acceptance of stereotypical attitudes.
In the U.S., for example, exposure to TV has been associated with "more stereotypical sexual attitudes [like the idea that men are sex-driven and the notion that women are sexual objects] and evaluation styles". Also popular is the idea that appearance or sexiness is essential for men and women. Additionally, pop music and music videos have been shown to increase stereotypical gender schemas, and promote the ideas that gender relationships are adversarial and that appearance is fundamental.
The stereotyped portrayals of men and women have been argued to be valued and internalized by younger viewers, especially during puberty and the construction of their sexual identity.
Advertising
Gender norms are created and emphasized even at an early age through the use of visual cues which has been proven to greatly affect a child's interpretation of gender. Studies using "the gender content in an ad – characters, products, settings, role portrayals, peripheral cues (colors, language, voice-over)" have proven that a higher degree of gender flexibility has a positive correlation with children's attitudes when viewing advertisements with gender content which conveys the significance of the effects of media in advertising towards youth.
In the 1940s, companies began differentiating their marketing based on gender to broaden their sales and create a completely separate line of products that would be purposed for solely either a boy or a girl. These products fostered intellectual development; however, with the new gendered division of toys came the reinforcement of masculine and feminine ideals as well as a clear pink and blue colored divide. "Girl" products such as dolls and makeup foster a passive attitude and put emphasis on striving for beauty while "boy" products such as action figures and cars foster a more aggressive and active characterization. A significance behind toys is the initiation of the learning of new skills and even the initiation of curiosities behind professions. As manufacturers begin to shift towards creating a more inclusive environment and creating non-gendered products, the emergence of more gender neutral toys, dolls, and colors that puts more emphasis on personal interests instead of gender ideals is on the rise.
Television
Gender-related content has been portrayed in stereotypical ways in advertising, commercials on multiple platforms, and in Television shows.
Writer Christina Bacchilega in her book Postmodern Fairy Tales stated "Snow White" is a patriarchal frame that takes "two women's beauty as the measure of their (self)worth, and thus defines their relationship as a rivalry." In response, academic Abigail Gurvich, in "Gender Roles as Taught by Fairy Tales", states that "Snow White" could teach children that "their only worth is their appearance, and that a less attractive woman is a rival who will want to hurt them; the story enforced the ideas in the girls of the time that the only things that mattered were appearance and innocence. These are two traits that led to Snow White getting her happy ending." Fairytales continue to teach children about norms that could be harmful concerning values and self-image.
Film genres
At a young age, both girls and boys tend to direct their interests towards different film categories. Boys tend to prefer action movies, while girls tend to prefer films that contain a female protagonist.
Body image
In a 1997 Psychology Today survey, "of 3,452 women who responded... 23% indicated that movie or television celebrities influenced their body image when they were young, and 22% endorsed the influence of fashion magazine models". Some women undergoing cosmetic surgeries request specific body parts from celebrities (such as Kim Kardashian's eyes and jawline).
Body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviors have increased in the UK, Australia, and the US due to a "perceived environmental pressure to conform to a culturally-defined body and beauty ideal" which is promoted mainly by the media. This ideal of unrealistic and artificial female beauty is "impossible for the majority of females to achieve".
Factors involved in the composition of self-image include the emotional, physical, and reasoning aspects of a person, and these aspects affect one another.
One contributor to negative body image is the promotion of the "thin ideal" in media like commercials and magazines. From seeing images of women with extremely thin bodies, some people have an increase of negative emotions, and these individuals tend to take actions like dieting to help relieve the undesirable feelings about their body image. This act of dieting could lead to dangerous behaviors such as eating disorders if the negative perceptions about one's body image does not improve. Considering that an average North American will watch about 35,000 commercials a year, it is to be expected that commercials presenting images of skinny and gorgeous women will have a bigger impact on increasing negative body image than ads in magazines.
Although media's effect on body image has been historically primarily researched for the female gender, there have been increasingly more studies on males. The masculine ideal of a "lean, muscular mesomorphic body type" represents a minuscule portion of the population that is drastically different from the average which results in increased body dissatisfaction (Agliata & Tantleff-Dunn, 2004) and low self confidence in physical attractiveness and muscle satisfaction (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2009). The reason for this causal relationship can be attributed towards Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954) where individuals value themselves based on their performance in comparison to environmental others and Cultivation Theory (Gerbner 1969) which internalizes exposure towards the ideals presented in media.
For the LGBT population, there has been minimal research due to cisgender studies being the primary targets; however, studies have shown that LGBT youth are more likely to exhibit high body image issues than cisgender and heterosexual individuals, given that the timeline for eating disorders and body image dissatisfaction is initiated during adolescence which has a large correlation with the development of sexual orientation. Although the media causes a higher negative impact towards the LGBT population, media has also been proven to be less likely to feature gay individuals due to the "marketer's dilemma" in which companies do not want to diminish the straight consumer base.
Social media
Throughout the world, feminine and masculine ideals are construed through both the social and cultural environment. The emergence of social media creates a consumer motivation towards rapid growth in entertainment, socializing, information sharing, self-expression, and status representation resulting in both negative and positive effects.
In the chapter "Gender" from How the World Changed Social Media, the negative effects found through all nine field sites of their study foster the enforcement of gender stereotypes. For example, Southeast Turkey consists of a predominantly Muslim community in which modesty and purity are the values for women, so this population omits featuring life that does not adhere to those ideals; because social media is particularly prone to analysis, both male and females present gender segregated and conforming posts on their pages. Similarly, in rural China, it is customary for women to delete their social medias after marriage or create a portrait of traditional family and romantic values for both men and women. In Italy, the content of men's pages consist of masculine content: "politics, news, powerful motorcycles and sports" while women place emphasis on feminine content: "roles as wives and mothers". In almost every region, this chapter conveys a feminine ideal of family values and physical aesthetic while the masculine ideal is more individualized and material; however, it has also created new opportunity for the expansion of communication, female access to novel career paths, and access to the external world in the same examined regions.
There was a 115% increase in the number of cosmetic surgeries between 2000 and 2018, possibly because social media distorts how teenagers see themselves, and many surgeons report that looking better in selfies on social media posts is an incentive for patients.
Social media has been used to promote political stances, such as in the referendum to appeal Ireland's eighth amendment. In this case, gender issues were brought to the forefront of social media as a way to transgress politics and push traditionally private female issues into the public. With feminist grassroots organizations, such as Together for Yes, using social media as their primary tool to communicate about abortion laws, the referendum result is viewed as victory for feminist tweeters and a positive outcome of using gender effectively on social media.
Effects in adulthood
Sexualization and Objectification
The objectification of women, both sexually and non-sexually, is prevalent in various media forms such as advertising, television, movies, music videos, video games, and magazines. Sexual objectification, in particular, has received extensive attention in literature, with studies indicating its commonality and negative effects on well-being. This type of representation often portrays women as mere objects of desire, contributing to the perpetuation of sexism and the acceptance of rape myths (Rudman and Mescher 2012). Exposure to sexualized media content has been consistently linked to body dissatisfaction, distorted attitudes about eating, and support for sexist beliefs and behaviors (Frederick et al, 2022).
While research has primarily focused on women, there is evidence suggesting that men are also affected by objectification, albeit through different pathways. Men may experience pressures related to body image from media representations, leading to issues such as body surveillance and dissatisfaction. Additionally, there are specificities related to sexual orientation, with LGBTQ+ individuals facing unique challenges regarding media objectification.
Studies show that the objectification and sexualization of women can also affect the cognitive processes of the people who come in contact with it. “Aubrey and Taylor (2009) reported that undergraduate men exposed to magazine images of sexualized women expressed less confidence in their own romantic capabilities than did men without this exposure”. Schooler (2015) found that when viewing sexually objectified pictures of women, the part of the brain that is activated is not the one that recognizes humans but instead is the part that recognizes objects; supporting this, Bernard, et al 2015, found that objectified women’s body parts were better recognized than the body as a whole, consistent with object recognition.
Responses and movements for change
Feminist response
In the 1970s, TV critics, academics, and women started to point out the way TV shows portrayed female characters. TV Guide magazine called out the industry for "refusing to rise above characterizations of women as pretty, skinny, dopey, hapless housewives or housewife wannabes", and a poll conducted by Redbook magazine in 1972 showed that "75 per cent of 120,000 women agreed that 'the media degrades women by portraying them as mindless dolls'". In that sense, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a television breakthrough because it introduced the first female character whose central relationships were not her husband or boyfriend or her family, but her friends and coworkers. The main character was a sort of stand-in for the "new American female" who put her job before romance and preferred to be alone than with the wrong men, but still had to do stereotypically female office work (like typing and getting coffee) and didn't speak up to her boss and other male coworkers.
Germaine Greer, Australian-born author of The Female Eunuch (1970), offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as womanhood and femininity, arguing that women are forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfill male fantasies of what being a woman entails. Greer wrote that women were perceived as mere consumers benefiting from the purchasing power of their husband. Women become targets for marketing, she said, and their image is used in advertising to sell products. American socialist writer and feminist, Sharon Smith wrote on the first issue of Women and Film that women's roles in film "almost always [revolve] around her physical attraction and the mating games she plays with the male characters" in contrast to men's roles, which according to the author are more varied. In 1973 Marjorie Rosen, an important contributor to feminist film theory, argued that "the Cinema Woman is a Popcorn Venus, a delectable but insubstantial hybrid of cultural distortions". In 1978 Gaye Tuchman wrote of the concept of symbolic annihilation, blaming the media for imposing a negative vision of active women and making an apologia for housewives.
From media representations, feminists paved the way for debates and discussions about gender within the social and political spheres. In 1986, the British MP Clare Short proposed a bill to ban newspapers from printing Page 3 photographs of topless models.
In the early 2000s, feminist critics began analyzing film in terms of the Bechdel test. This feminist assessment of cinema was named after Alison Bechdel, feminist cartoonist and creator of the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. This test determines the level of gender equality present in a film by assessing whether a work of fiction features at least two named women who talk to each other about something other than a man.
International organization and response from nonprofit organizations
UN Women
UN Women is the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. To increase women's leadership, to end violence against women and to engage women in all aspects of peace and security processes, it's important to give women the right place in media landscape, and their representations must be fair and equal. UN Women supports media monitoring studies on how women are depicted in the media. For instance, the organization engage media professionals by raising awareness of gender equality and violence against women, including through special workshops and tool-kits, to encourage gender-sensitive reporting."
UNESCO
In line with UNESCO's Global Priority Gender, "UNESCO is contributing to achieving full gender equality in the media by 2030". To reach this goal, the Organization developed the Gender-sensitive Indicators for Media (GSIM) to measure gender awareness and portrayal within media organizations (e.g. working conditions), but particularly in editorial content. The Organization has been promoting their application by governments, media organizations, journalists unions and associations, journalism schools and the like. They set the basis for gender equality in media operations and editorial content. In addition, each year, UNESCO organizes a campaign named "Women Make the News"; in 2018 the theme was Gender Equality and Sports Media as "Sports coverage is hugely powerful in shaping norms and stereotypes about gender. Media has the ability to challenge these norms, promoting a balanced coverage of men's and women's sports and a fair portrayal of sportspeople irrespective of gender."
The #MeToo Movement
The #Metoo movement gained traction in 2017 on all social media platforms as a way for people to share their stories of sexual assault, sexual harassment and rape. The phrase "Me too" was started by activist Tarana Burke in 2006. Alyssa Milano brought the phrase back in 2017 because she wanted to show society the extent of the issues with sexual harassment. On October 15, 2017 she tweeted “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” As a result of this, the #MeToo campaign soon spread across 85 countries with 1.7 million tweets. This movement displayed the thousands of people that have been victims of some form of sexual harassment. "Me too" gives victims the space to share their experiences and show them that they are not alone. The media has played a crucial role in amplifying the message by providing a platform for survivors to share their stories, have open conversations and raise awareness all over the world.
The MeToo movement is responsible for some key milestones in recent years. It has empowered people to break their silence on traumatic events, it has helped reduce stigma around sexual harassment, and it has taken down many people of power. The MeToo movement has helped change the way we talk about consent and equality. Because of the MeToo movement and its traction on the media, society is able to have a more open conversation about these topics. There are now many support groups and resources for people who may have been victims of sexual harassment, sexual assault and/or rape culture.
Nonprofit organizations
Some nonprofit organizations specialize in topics related to gender and media. These include:
The Geena Davis Institute
International Women's Media Foundation
Womens Media Center
Women’s Media Group (WMG)
Other organizations
Other organizations include:
Alliance for Women in Media (AWM)
HeForShe
See also
Ageing studies
Bisexual literature
Exploitation of women in mass media
Femininity in advertising
Gender representation in video games
Himbo
Language and gender
Portrayal of women in comics
References
Further reading
PDF. Introduction to a special issue of Gender and Language focusing on the media
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
Gender and entertainment
Sexism
Mass media issues
Social constructionism | 0.764549 | 0.987839 | 0.755251 |
Contortion | Contortion (sometimes contortionism) is a performance art in which performers called contortionists showcase their skills of extreme physical flexibility. Contortion acts often accompany acrobatics, circus acts, street performers and other live performing arts. Contortion acts are typically performed in front of a live audience. An act will showcase one or more artists performing a choreographed set of moves or poses, often to music, which require extreme flexibility. The physical flexibility required to perform such acts greatly exceeds that of the general population. It is the dramatic feats of seemingly inhuman flexibility that captivate audiences.
Skills
Many factors affect the flexibility of performers including age, genetics, stature, and adherence to rigorous physical training routines. Most contortionists are generally categorized as "frontbenders" or "backbenders", depending on the direction in which their spine is most flexible. Relatively few performers are equally adept at both.
Skills performed by contortionists include:
Frontbending skills such as folding forward at the waist with the legs straight, or placing one or both legs behind the neck or shoulders with the knees bent (called a human knot).
Backbending skills such as touching one's head to one's feet, or all the way to the buttocks (called a head-seat), while standing, lying on the floor, or in a handstand. A Marinelli bend is a backbend while supported only by a grip at the top of a short post that is held in the mouth.
Splits and oversplits (a split of more than 180 degrees) may be included in frontbending or backbending acts. An oversplit may be performed while the feet are supported by two chairs or by two assistants.
Enterology is the practice of squeezing one's body into a small, knee-high box or other contained space which initially appears to audiences as being too small to contain the performer. Also known as ‘body packing’.
Dislocations of the shoulders or hip joints are sometimes performed as a short novelty act by itself. One example is lifting the arm to the side until it passes behind the head and lies across the top of the shoulders; also referred to as bonebreaking.
Risks
A medical publication from 2008 suggests that long-term damage to the spine, is common in long-term contortion practitioners. A study of five practitioners using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) by Peoples et al. documented limbus vertebrae, intervertebral disc bulges, and disc degeneration. Three of the five practitioners also reported back pain.
Performances
Contortion acts are highly variable; many incorporate elements of humor, drama, shock, sensuality, or a blend of styles. Contortion may be incorporated into other types of performance, such as dance and theater.
An adagio act is an acrobatic dance in which one partner lifts and carries the other partner as she/he performs splits and other flexible poses.
In a rag doll or golliwogg act, one or two assistants bend, shake and carry the contortionist in such a way as to create the illusion that the disguised performer is actually a limp, life-sized doll. The act often ends by stuffing the doll into a small box.
Contortion positions can be performed on a Spanish web, an aerial act consisting of a rope with a hand/foot loop that is spun by someone underneath.
Contortionists might manipulate props during their performance, for instance spinning hula hoops or juggling rings, balancing towers of wine glasses, or playing a musical instrument - such as Max Smith, AKA "The Musical Contortionist," a sideshow performer who played the banjo whilst in a series of contorted positions.
A contortionist may perform alone or may have one or two assistants, or up to four contortionists may perform together as a group.
In the past, contortionists were associated almost exclusively with circuses and fairs. More recently they have also been found performing in nightclubs, amusement parks, in magazine advertisements, at trade shows, on television variety shows, in music videos, and as warmup acts or in the background at music concerts.
The Ross Sisters were American contortionists most famous for their musical rendition of 'Solid Potato Salad' in the 1944 movie Broadway Rhythm. In addition, contortion photos and digital movie clips are traded by fans on the Internet, and several web sites provide original photos of contortion acts for a monthly fee, or sell videotapes of performances through the mail.
Some loose-jointed people are able to pop a joint out of its socket without pain, thereby making it difficult to determine if a joint is dislocated without medical examination such as an X-ray. However, as long as the joint socket is the right shape, most extreme bends can be achieved without dislocating the joint. Actual dislocations are rarely used during athletic contortion acts since they make the joint more unstable and prone to injury, and a dislocated limb cannot lift itself or support any weight.
History
The primary origins of contortion take place in Asian traditions. In China and Mongolia, traditional Buddhist Cham dances would incorporate contortion into their movement. The success of these dances then encouraged the act to expand into other forms of performance. Contortion also found similarities and expressions in the Hindu doctrine of yoga. Throughout daily meditation, yoga practitioners work to assume many similar poses to those in the performance-based contortion. The recognition of these similarities in various practices and thoughts brought contortion into more clear and explicit light. For those in the Chinese tradition, contortion is typically performed as a feat of acrobatics, used to dazzle the audience with the unusual shapes built before them. According to Chinese historical records, early contortionism originated in China during Western Zhou Dynasty (1045-771 BC), which matured in Sui Dynasty (581–618).
List of notable contortionists
Anna McNulty - YouTuber, Canadian Contortionist
Arne Arnardo – Norwegian circus performer
Christine Danton – Australian contortionist who appeared on Australia's Got Talent
Sofie Dossi – American contortionist and YouTuber who appeared in season 11 of America's Got Talent
Leilani Franco – British contortionist who appeared on Britain's Got Talent
Takako Fuji – Japanese actress
Alexey Goloborodko – Russian contortionist
Doug Jones – American actor and creature performer
Irina Kazakova – Russian contortionist and gymnast
Bonnie Morgan – American actress and contortionist who used contortion when playing Colette in Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Olga Pikhienko – Russian contortionist and circus performer
The Ross Sisters – Trio of sisters who were singers, dancers, and acrobats
Daniel Browning Smith – American contortionist nicknamed "Rubberboy" who owes his flexibility to his Ehlers–Danlos syndromes
Major Zamora – Canadian dwarfish dime museum contortionist and escape artist
Glossary
Backbend (backfold) - Any pose with an unusual degree of backward bending at the waist and/or any portion of spine while standing, kneeling, resting on the floor, or while suspended.
Box act (also called: body packing; enterology; packanatomicalization) - Circus act in which a contortionist squeezes his/her body into a small box or transparent container.
Chest stand - Any backbending pose in which the performer's chest is resting on the floor for support.
Dislocate - 1. [verb] To injure a joint by temporarily forcing the bone out of its normal socket. 2. [noun] In men's gymnastics, a rotating of the shoulders when performing a backwards turn on the still rings. Many skills in acrobatics appear to involve dislocating a joint, when they actually do not.
Durvasa's pose or crane pose - Named for the mythological Indian sage, Durvasa, who supposedly assumed this pose during his years of penance: to stand on one foot with the other leg lifted in front and placed behind the neck or shoulders.
Elbow stand - Any inverted pose in which the performer uses only the forearms on the floor for support.
Frontbend - Any pose that features an unusual degree of frontward bending of the waist and/or spine, either with the legs together or parted.
Front split (also called: stride split) - A split in which one leg is extended frontward and the other leg is extended backward, both at right angles to the trunk. Ideally, the hips are square facing to the front, while both legs are turned out from the hips.
Hairpin - A pose in which one kneels down, sits on top of the feet, and bends backwards until the top of the head comes into contact with the tailbone; it may also done with a starting position on hands and knees.
Headsit - An extreme backbend in which the top of the performer's head touches the buttocks; usually in a handstand or chest stand. Sometimes, a more extreme variation is done where the buttocks are positioned past the performer's head, while the lower back is on top of the head; this requires much more neck flexibility.
Leg shouldering - A standing split in which the leg touches the shoulder. Can be done to the front, side, or rear.
Marinelli bend - [from contortionist and international theatrical agent H. B. Marinelli (1864-1924)] A headsit with the legs extended, performed while supported only by a leather mouth grip at the top of a short post.
Needle scale - A front split while standing on the forward foot, with the torso bent downward with the hands touching the floor, while the rear leg is extended vertically toward the ceiling.
Oversplit (also called: hypersplit) - Any split in which the angle formed by the legs measures greater than 180 degrees. It can be done to the front with either or both legs elevated, or in a straddle split with one or both legs elevated.
Passive stretching (also called: static-passive stretching; assisted relaxed stretching) - 1. A static stretch (See: "static stretching") in which an external force (such as the floor or another person) holds the performer in the static position. 2. The practice of having a relaxed limb moved beyond its normal range of motion with the assistance of a partner. In "active stretching", in contrast, the limb is extended to its maximum range using only the muscles of that limb.
Pike - To be bend forward at the waist with the legs and trunk kept straight.
Pointe - In classical ballet, when a dancer uses special shoes (called pointe shoes or toe shoes) to dance en pointe (on their toes). The arch of the top of the foot is at its maximum when the dancer "pushes over", causing the heel of the foot to be almost directly over the toes. Difficult and often painful to learn, both men and women may benefit from studying pointe technique; however, most performance opportunities are for women only. Children do not begin to study pointe until they have years of experience and sufficient ankle strength, as well as being old enough to ensure that their bones are strong enough.
Ragdoll act (also known as a golliwogg act) - A type of circus performance in which a contortionist, dressed in a loose-fitting clown costume, appears to be a lifeless, floppy doll. One or two assistants manipulate the contortionist's body, bending, rolling, and posing it in various ways, creating the illusion of a limp, inanimate object. The act culminates with the assistants squeezing the contortionist into a surprisingly small box, adding to the comedic and astonishing effect of the performance.
Rhythmic gymnastics (also called: rhythmic sportive gymnastics (RSG); rhythmics) - Olympic sport for one woman (or 5 women in group competition) consisting of a balletic floor exercise which demonstrates leaps, turns, balance and flexibility while moving and tossing hand-held apparatus: a ball, a rope, a hoop, two clubs, or a ribbon. Men's rhythmic gymnastics currently exists in Japan, and is gaining worldwide acceptance.
Rope act (also called: Spanish web) - Circus act in which an acrobat (usually female) performs exercises high above the floor while holding on to a long, vertically suspended rope, or hanging from a loop in the rope.
Scale - In acrobatics, when the leg is raised toward the back and may be held with one hand while standing.
Split (also called: the splits) - Any pose in which the legs are extended in opposite directions such that the angle of the legs is 180 degrees.
Straddle split (also called: side split; box split; Chinese split; cut split) - A split in which the legs are extended to the left and right, until a 180 degree angle between the legs is reached.
Tortoise position (also called: pancake) - A seated forward bend with the chest against the floor between the legs; the outstretched arms are also against the floor and underneath the knees.
Triple fold - A variation of a chest stand where the knees bend and lower all the way down to the ground, allowing the shins to lie flat on the floor, resulting in a stacked position with three distinct layers: the chest, the thighs, and the shins, all aligned and in contact with the floor.
Twisting split - An exercise in which the performer changes from a split with the left leg forward, to a straddle split, and then to a split with the right leg forward, by rotating the legs, and without using the hands for support.
See also
Artistic gymnastics
Cirque du Soleil
Rhythmic gymnastics
Synchronised swimming
Yoga
References
Sources
External links
The contortionist's handbook
The Contortion Homepage
Contortionists Unite
Contortion Space
Circus skills | 0.76041 | 0.993173 | 0.755219 |
Composition (language) | The term composition (from Latin com- "with" and ponere "to place") as it refers to writing, can describe authors' decisions about, processes for designing, and sometimes the final product of, a composed linguistic work. In original use, it tended to describe practices concerning the development of oratorical performances, and eventually essays, narratives, or genres of imaginative literature, but since the mid-20th century emergence of the field of composition studies, its use has broadened to apply to any composed work: print or digital, alphanumeric or multimodal. As such, the composition of linguistic works goes beyond the exclusivity of written and oral documents to visual and digital arenas.
Elements of composition
Theoretical and applied studies in narratology, rhetoric, and composition studies have identified elements like the following as relevant to the processes of composing language. This list is neither exclusive nor sequential:
Goal, the desired aims or objectives to be achieved by the end of composition
Outline, the organisation of thoughts and/or ideas which are used to project sequence and arrangement
Plot, the course or arrangement of events
Theme, the unifying subject or idea
Dialogue, a reciprocal conversation between two or more persons
Characterisation, the process of creating characters
Setting, the time and location in which the composition takes place
Description, definitions of things in the composition
Style, specifically, the linguistic style of the composition
Setting tone or mood, conveying one or more emotions or feelings through words
Voice, the individual writing style of the author
Tone, which encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and the audience
Justification, or reasoning in support of the topic
Arrangement, strategic use of written, oral, visual and/or digital to inform, persuade, or motivate an audience in a given situation.
Oral discourse
Traditionally, oratory, or classical rhetoric, is composed of five stages, or canons:
Invention, "the search of persuasive ways to present information and formulate arguments"
Arrangement, "the organization of the parts of speech to ensure that all means of persuasion are present and properly disposed"
Style, "the use of correct, appropriate, and striking language throughout the speech"
Memory, "the use of mnemonics and practice of speech"
Delivery, "the use of effective gestures and vocal modulation to present the speech"
Typically, in any speech classroom, these stages are still prevalent in the composing process. Other such qualities to be included, especially when considering one's audience and methods of persuasion, would be the rhetorical appeals:
Logos, appeals to logic and reason, evidence and support
Ethos, appeals to ethics, the speaker's credibility, trustworthiness, and morals
Pathos, appeals to emotion, connecting with an audience through shared feelings
Kairos, appeals to timing, presenting key information at the best moment, typically to persuade or to provoke action
Written discourse
As oral discourse shifted to more written discourse, the stage of memory and delivery began to fade, yet the first three stages hold their rank in the writing process of most composition classrooms. The rhetorical appeals also prove important in written texts, as the strategies of using these appeals become more complex as writers understand their audience's needs when not in physical view.
Visual
While, strictly speaking, even a printed page of text is multimodal, the teaching of composition has begun to attend to the language of visuals. Some have suggested privileging only the linguistic mode limits the opportunity to engage in multiple symbols that create meaning and speak rhetorically. In thinking about how visuals are used to communicate, and how they are composed or analyzed in a rhetorical work, Foss argues that one considers:
Nature, the present elements/physical features and suggested elements/concepts and ideas
Function, the action it communicates
Evaluation, assessed rhetorically
Foss, who acknowledges visual rhetoric, demonstrates that composition studies have to consider other definitions and incorporations of language.
Digital
This composition refers to work produced in digital spaces. The writer or speaker must not only consider all the composing processes of the above-mentioned discourse (like purpose, arrangement, etc.) but also the relationship medium plays in the composing and decision process of that work. In digital discourse, the fifth canon of delivery takes on new meaning, and digital spaces change how traditional views of authority, circulation, and context are understood, like composing in Wikipedia. Thus digital rhetoric, or eRhetoric offers new ways of composing.
See also
Composition studies
Conference on College Composition and Communication
Creative writing
Kishotenketsu
Non-linear writing
Writing process
References | 0.767344 | 0.984195 | 0.755216 |
Gender roles in non-heterosexual communities | Gender roles in non-heterosexual communities are a topic of much debate; some people believe traditional, heterosexual gender roles are often erroneously enforced on non-heterosexual relationships by means of heteronormative culture and attitudes towards these non-conformative relationships.
History
Gender roles in non-heterosexual communities have been the subject of debate in Western society. Peter M. Nardi of Pitzer College says:
The connection between sexual orientation and gender roles has been confused by many people. Too often, assumptions about homosexuality or heterosexuality have led to assumptions about masculinity or femininity ... Understanding the differences between sexual identity and gender roles is enhanced when focusing on the issues of friendship and sex among gay men. For many people, being gay has been interpreted in terms of not being masculine or, more specifically, being seen as feminine.
According to human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell:
Queers subvert the gender system. Gay men love males and are not adequately macho and aggressive. Lesbians love women and are insufficiently passive and dependent on men. That's why we're persecuted. Our nonconformity threatens the system which sustains the social hegemony of male heterosexuality and misogyny.
This has been described as "gender fuck politics".
Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud thought homosexuality resulted from reversed gender roles. Most modern scientists accept there is no strong evidence that a homosexual or bisexual orientation must be associated with atypical gender roles. Many factors have been linked to homosexuality, including genetic factors, anatomical factors, birth order, and hormones in the prenatal environment.
Terms such as butch, are used within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), and cross-dressing subcultures to ascribe or acknowledge a masculine identity with its associated traits, behaviours, styles, and self-perception.
Gay and bisexual communities
Although many bisexual and pansexual people may consider themselves "gender blind", writers on bisexual issues often disagree with the idea that bisexuals make a conscious decision to disregard socially-constructed gender roles.
Women
The application of the traditional "man" and traditional "woman" in lesbian relationships is common, as with gay male relationships, although questions such as "who's the man in the relationship?" are believed to stem from heteronormative and patriarchal setups of traditional heterosexual relationships.
Men
Dr. Joseph Pleck says the hierarchy of masculinities among men exist largely in a dichotomy of homosexual and heterosexual males, and says, "our society uses the male heterosexual-homosexual dichotomy as a central symbol for all the rankings of masculinity, for the division on any grounds between males who are 'real men' and have power, and males who are not".
Gay men are considered by some to "deviate from the masculine norm", and are benevolently stereotyped as "gentle and refined" (even among other gay men), and pertain a specific mode of masculinity for themselves, according to human rights activists such as Peter Tatchell, which each make their contributions to society.
In a documentary called The Butch Factor, a number of gay men—one of them transgender—were asked about their views on masculinity. The consensus was that showing masculine traits was an advantage, both in and out the closet. For the "butch" gay men, this allowed them to conceal their sexual orientation for longer when doing masculine activities such as playing sports, as effeminacy is often incorrectly associated with homosexuality— so much so that they doubted their own sexual orientation; because they did not see themselves as effeminate, they did not feel they were gay. Because of this, they did not feel as much of a connection with gay culture. Men who had a more feminine appearance were the first to come out of the closet; they were the first to be labelled gay by their peers. They were more likely to face bullying and harassment throughout their lives; many gay men have been taunted using derogatory words that imply feminine qualities, for example, sissy. Effeminate or camp-acting gay men sometimes use what John R. Ballew describes as "camp humour", such as referring to one another using female pronouns as "a funny way of defusing hate directed toward [gay men]". Ballew has also said this "can cause [gay men] to become confused in relation to how we feel about being men".
Some feminine gay men in the documentary felt uncomfortable about their femininity, even if they were comfortable with their sexuality. Feminine gay men are often looked down upon by stereotypically masculine men in the gay community.
A study conducted by researchers from the Center for Theoretical Study at Charles University in Prague and The Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic found there are significant differences in the shape of faces of heterosexual and gay men; gay men have masculine features, which they say "undermined stereotypical notions of gay men as more feminine looking".
Following a period of non-recognition from the media, gay men have been presented in the media in a stereotypical feminine way, which is open to ridicule (as well as lesbians and transvestites). Films such as Brokeback Mountain challenge this stereotype, though there is disagreement over the definition of the lead characters' sexuality. A newer portrayal of gay men in the LGBT community is as bears—a sub-culture of gay men who celebrate rugged masculinity and "secondary sexual characteristics of the male: facial hair, body hair, proportional size, baldness". Smyth (2004) identified four classic stereotypes of gay men as effeminate, mentally ill, predatory or libido-driven maniacs; these stereotypes arrived in popular discourse during different time periods. This is significant, as if an individual does not interact with LGBT people on a regular basis, they may rely on the mass media for information on LGBT people and LGBT issues and thus retain these stereotypes.
Feminine gender roles
Multiple studies have correlated childhood gender nonconformity with eventual homosexual or bisexual outcomes in males, and gay and bisexual boys who adopted more feminine gender roles at a younger age are at higher risk of reporting suicide.
In the United States, boys are often homosocial, and gender role performance determines social rank. While homosexual boys receive the same enculturation, they are far less compliant. Martin Levine says:
Harry (1982, 51–52), for example, found that 42 percent of his gay respondents were 'sissies' during childhood. Only 11 percent of his heterosexual samples were gender role nonconformists. Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith (1981, 188) reported that half of their man homosexual subjects practiced gender-inappropriate behaviour in childhood. Among their heterosexual men, the rate of noncompliance was 25 percent. Saghir and Robins (1973, 18) found that one-third of their gay man respondents conformed to gender role dictates. Only 3 percent of their heterosexual men deviated from the norm. Thus, effeminate boys, or sissies, are physically and verbally harassed, causing them to feel worthless and to "de-feminise" themselves.
Prior to the Stonewall riots, changes in stereotypical gender role performance were observed among certain segments of the gay male population: According to Stearn:
They have a different face for different occasions. In conversations with each other, they often undergo a subtle change. I have seen men who appeared to be normal suddenly smile roguishly, soften their voices, and simper as they greeted homosexual friends ... Many times I saw these changes occur after I had gained a homosexual's confidence and he could safely risk my disapproval. Once as I watched a luncheon companion become an effeminate caricature of himself, he apologised, [saying] "It is hard to always remember that one is a man."Levine, 1998, pp. 21–23
Pre-Stonewall "closet" culture accepted homosexuality as effeminate behaviour, and thus emphasised camp, drag, and swish behaviour, including an interest in fashion and decorating. Masculine gay men were marginalised and formed their own communities, such as the leather subculture and bear subculture, and wore clothes such as sailor uniforms that were commonly associated with working-class people. Post-Stonewall, "clone culture" became dominant and effeminacy is now marginalised. This is evident in a definite preference shown in personal ads for masculine-behaving men. Sheila Jeffreys termed this the butch shift of the 1970s, described it as having been inspired by the success of the gay liberation movement, and saw it as being exemplified in the Village People dance music group.
The avoidance of effeminacy by men, including gay ones, has been linked to possible impedance of personal and public health. Regarding HIV/AIDS, masculine behaviour was stereotyped as being unconcerned about safe sex practices while engaging in promiscuous sexual behaviour. Early reports from New York City indicated more women had been tested for HIV/AIDS at their own behest than men.
David Halperin compares "universalising" and "minoritising" notions of gender deviance. He says, "'Softness' either may represent the specter of potential gender failure that haunts all normative masculinity, an ever-present threat to the masculinity of every man, or it may represent the disfiguring peculiarity of a small class of deviant individuals." The term "effeminaphobia" was coined to describe strong anti-effeminacy. In 1995, J. Michael Bailey coined the similar term, "femiphobia", to describe the ambivalence gay men and culture have about effeminate behaviour. Gay author Tim Bergling also coined the term "sissyphobia" in his work Sissyphobia: Gay Men and Effeminate Behavior.
Top, bottom and versatile
In gay slang, to top means to have anal sex in an insertive capacity (penetrating with one's penis); to bottom means to have anal sex in a receptive capacity (being penetrated). When the terms are used as designations of self-identity, a top may be a man who has a clear preference for topping, and a bottom may be a man who has a clear preference for bottoming; versatile refers to a man who enjoys both and has no clear preference. Studies suggest that most gay men are in this sense versatiles. One study has found that a top is also more likely to act as an insertive partner in other forms of penetrative sex, such as penetrative fellatio and sex toy play.
Because in heterosexual penetrative sex a man normally performs an insertive function and a woman normally performs a receptive function, popular opinion associates topping with masculinity and bottoming with femininity. Gender roles often color power dynamics in a hierarchical manner. Although this is not a requirement, some expect a top to be dominant in a relationship or at least during sex, while a bottom may be expected to be submissive. The expression power bottom refers to a bottom who tends to be dominant during sex.
Parenting, marriage and the family
There is considerable debate as to whether childhood gender stereotypes are inborn or are influenced by environmental factors. The presence of homosexual or heterosexual relationships in families influences play patterns in children: children of same-sex couples are raised differently, resulting in gender roles different from those of opposite-sex parents, according to the gender binary. A study by Goldberg, Kashy and Smith shows that sons of lesbian mothers play in a less-masculine way than sons of homosexual fathers or of heterosexual parents.
Non-traditional families, that is families where e.g. the mothers work, are now in a majority in the United States; with the advent of artificial insemination, surrogate mothering, and adoption, families do not have to be formed by the biological union of a male and a female.
The consequences of these changes for the adults and children involved are much debated. In a 2009 Massachusetts spousal benefits case, developmental psychologist Michael Lamb testified that parental sexual orientation does not negatively affect childhood development. Columnist Maggie Gallagher says heteronormative social structures are beneficial to society because they are optimal for the raising of children. Psychologists, Costa and Davies (2012), found that enforcing conservative gender roles, a social structure, is correlated with holding negative feelings and ideas for the LGBT community. Australian-Canadian ethicist Margaret Somerville says, "giving same-sex couples the right to found a family unlinks parenthood from biology".
There has also been much research into childhood gender nonconformity and sexual orientation. Gay men often report having been feminine boys and lesbian women often report having been masculine girls. In men, CGN is a strong predictor of sexual orientation in adulthood, but this relationship is not as well understood in women. Women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia reported more male-typical play behaviours and showed less heterosexual interest.
Division of labour
Maura Kelly and Elizabeth Hauck conducted research on the division of labour within same-sex relationships through interviewing a sample of same-sex couples (2015). Kelly and Hauck's study found that labour in same-sex couples is divided on the basis of time availability and personal preference.These factors are more influential in the division of labour than the belief that the labour should be divided evenly between the partners in same-sex couples.
Kelly and Hauck's research found that divisions of labour within a same-sex relationship cannot be viewed as setting a precedent as to what gender roles are normal. A female partner in a same-sex relationship may perform chores that are considered feminine, like cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing. However, the other female partner may perform chores that are considered masculine, like outside work and employment outside of the home. The partners' behaviours do not support gender roles because all the roles performed are done by women. There is not an inherent distinction made between masculine and feminine because women are performing both types of chores. This lack of gender role discrimination would be true in same-sex relationships between two men as well.
Feminism
One large myth about lesbians is that they are all feminists. While this is not true, there is a specific branch of feminism called "lesbian feminism", a cultural movement in the Western world, most influential in the 1970s–1980s, that advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism.
Vanessa Thorpe says in The Observer, "... key members of the Votes For Women movement led a promiscuous lesbian lifestyle". The women's suffrage movement is generally considered a feminist movement.
Lesbian feminism typically situates the state of being a lesbian as a form of resistance to patriarchal institutions. Sexual orientation is posited here as a choice, or at least a conscious response to a situation. It is also seen as a critique of male supremacy, chauvinism, and masculinity in general. Lesbian separatism is a form of separatist feminism specific to lesbians. In separatist feminism, lesbianism is posited as a key feminist strategy that enables women to invest their energies in other women, creating new space and dialogue about women's relationships, and typically limits their dealings with men.
Second-wave pro-feminism paid increased attention to issues of sexuality, particularly the relationship between homosexual men and hegemonic masculinity. This shift led to more cooperation between the men's liberation and gay liberation movements. In part, this cooperation arose because masculinity was understood to be a social construction, and as a response to the universalization of "men" seen in previous men's movements. In 2010, Elizabeth Wilson wrote that the Gay Liberation Front and feminism worked alongside one another to "spark a way of thinking about human relations in society that has led to significant change"; Peter Tatchell wrote about the GLF's "idealistic vision [that] involved creating a new sexual democracy, without homophobia, misogyny, racism and class privilege".
Footnotes
See also
Association of gender variance with sexual orientation
Effeminacy and gay men
Gender role
Gendered sexuality
Hegemonic masculinity
Heteronormativity
Human sexuality
Masculinity and LGBT communities
Pansexuality
Sexual orientation hypothesis
Sissy
Sociology of gender
Sociology of the family
Tomboy
Western stereotype of the male ballet dancer
Notes
Bibliography
Darryl B. Hill, "Feminine" Heterosexual Men: Subverting Heteropatriarchal Sexual Scripts? (The Journal of Men's Studies, Spring 2006, Men's Studies Press; ISSN 1060-8265)
Bergling, Tim (2001). Sissyphobia: Gay Men and Effeminate Behavior. New York: Harrington Park Press. .
Saghir and Robins (1973).
Karlen, Arno (1978). "Homosexuality: The Scene and Its Student", The Sociology of Sex: An Introductory Reader, James M. Henslin and Edward Sagarin eds. New York: Schocken.
Cory, Donald W. and LeRoy, John P. (1963). The Homosexual and His Society: A View from Within. New York: Citadel Press.
Newton, Esther (1972). Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Stearn, Jess (1962). The Sixth Man. New York: MacFadden.
Bailey, Michael; Kim, Peggy; Hills, Alex; and Linsenmeier, Joan (1997). "Butch, Femme, or Straight Acting? Partner Preferences of Gay Men and Lesbians.", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(5), pp. 960–973.
Halperin, David M. (2002). How To Do The History of Homosexuality, p. 125. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. .
Bailey, Michael (1995). "Gender Identity", The Lives of Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals, p. 71–93. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Androgyny
Bisexual culture
Butch and femme
Effeminacy
Feminism and sexual orientation
Gender roles
Lesbian culture
Gay culture
Masculinity
Queer culture | 0.777689 | 0.971024 | 0.755154 |
Christian culture | Christian culture generally includes all the cultural practices which have developed around the religion of Christianity. There are variations in the application of Christian beliefs in different cultures and traditions.
Christian culture has influenced and assimilated much from the Middle Eastern, Zoroastrianism, Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Western culture, Slavic and Caucasian culture. During the early Roman Empire, Christendom has been divided in the pre-existing Greek East and Latin West. Consequently, different versions of the Christian cultures arose with their own rites and practices, Christianity remains culturally diverse in its Western and Eastern branches.
Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization, in particular, the Catholic Church and Protestantism. Western culture, throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture. Outside the Western world, Christianity has had an influence on various cultures, such as in Africa and Asia.
Christians have made a noted contributions to human progress in a broad and diverse range of fields, both historically and in modern times, including science and technology, medicine, fine arts and architecture, politics, literatures, music, philanthropy, philosophy, ethics, humanism, theatre and business. According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of Nobel prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that (65.4%) of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference.
Cultural influence
The Bible has had a profound influence on Western civilization and on cultures around the globe; it has contributed to the formation of Western law, art, texts, and education. With a literary tradition spanning two millennia, the Bible is one of the most influential works ever written. From practices of personal hygiene to philosophy and ethics, the Bible has directly and indirectly influenced politics and law, war and peace, sexual morals, marriage and family life, toilet etiquette, letters and learning, the arts, economics, social justice, medical care and more. The Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed in Europe using movable type.
Since the spread of Christianity from the Levant to Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Europe, North Africa and Horn of Africa during the early Roman Empire, Christendom has been divided in the pre-existing Greek East and Latin West. Consequently, different versions of the Christian cultures arose with their own rites and practices, centered around the cities such as Rome (Western Christianity) and Carthage, whose communities was called Western or Latin Christendom, and Constantinople (Eastern Christianity), Antioch (Syriac Christianity), Kerala (Indian Christianity) and Alexandria, among others, whose communities were called Eastern or Oriental Christendom. The Byzantine Empire was one of the peaks in Christian history and Christian civilization. From the 11th to 13th centuries, Latin Christendom rose to the central role of the Western world and Western culture.
Outside the Western world, Christianity has had an influence on various cultures, such as in Africa, the Near East, Middle East, Central Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Scholars and intellectuals agree Christians in the Middle East have made significant contributions to Arab and Islamic civilization since the introduction of Islam, and they have had a significant impact contributing the culture of the Mashriq, Turkey, and Iran. Eastern Christian scientists and scholars of the medieval Islamic world (particularly Jacobite and Nestorian Christians) contributed to the Arab Islamic civilization during the reign of the Umayyad and the Abbasid, by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards, to Arabic. They also excelled in philosophy, science, theology, and medicine.
Historian Paul Legutko of Stanford University said the Catholic Church is "at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions which constitute what we call Western civilization." The Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, and the Near East. The Oriental Orthodox Churches have played a prominent role in the history and culture of Armenia, Egypt, Turkey, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and parts of the Middle East and India. Protestants have extensively developed a unique culture that has made major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts, and many other fields.
Influence on Western culture
Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization, in particular, the Catholic Church and Protestantism. Western culture, throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture, and much of the population of the Western hemisphere could broadly be described as cultural Christians. The notion of Europe and the Western world has been intimately connected with the concept of Christianity and Christendom, many even consider Christianity to be the link that created a unified European identity, although some progress originated elsewhere: Renaissance and Romanticism began with the curiosity and passion of the pagan world of old.
Although Western culture contained several polytheistic religions during its early years under the Greek and Roman Empires, as the centralized Roman power waned, the dominance of the Catholic Church was the only consistent force in Western Europe. Until the Age of Enlightenment, Christian culture guided the course of philosophy, literature, art, music, and science. Christian disciplines of the respective arts have subsequently developed into Christian philosophy, Christian art, Christian music, Christian literature, etc. Art and literature, law, education, and politics were preserved in the teachings of the Church, in an environment that, otherwise, would have probably seen their loss. The Church founded many cathedrals, universities, monasteries and seminaries, some of which continue to exist today. Medieval Christianity created the first modern universities. The Catholic Church established a hospital system in Medieval Europe that vastly improved upon the Roman valetudinaria. These hospitals were established to cater to "particular social groups marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age", according to historian of hospitals, Guenter Risse. Christianity also had a strong impact on all other aspects of life: marriage and family, education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy, and the arts.
Christianity had a significant impact on education and science and medicine as the church created the basis of the Western system of education, and was the sponsor of founding universities in the Western world as the university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting. Many clerics throughout history have made significant contributions to science and Jesuits in particular have made numerous significant contributions to the development of science. Some scholars state that Christianity contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution. Protestantism also has had an important influence on science. According to the Merton Thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand, and early experimental science on the other.
The cultural influence of Christianity includes social welfare, founding hospitals, economics (as the Protestant work ethic), natural law (which would later influence the creation of international law), politics, architecture, literature, personal hygiene (ablution), and family life. Historically, extended families were the basic family unit in the Christian culture and countries.
Christianity played a role in ending practices common among pagan societies, such as human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide and polygamy. Scientists such as Newton and Galileo believed that God would be better understood if God's creation was better understood.
Architecture
The architecture of cathedrals, basilicas and abbey churches is characterised by the buildings' large scale and follows one of several branching traditions of form, function and style that all ultimately derive from the Early Christian architectural traditions established in the Constantinian period.
Cathedrals in particular, as well as many abbey churches and basilicas, have certain complex structural forms that are found less often in parish churches. They also tend to display a higher level of contemporary architectural style and the work of accomplished craftsmen, and occupy a status both ecclesiastical and social that an ordinary parish church does not have. Such a cathedral or great church is generally one of the finest buildings within its region and is a focus of local pride. Many cathedrals and basilicas, and a number of abbey churches are among the world's most renowned works of architecture. These include St. Peter's Basilica, Notre Dame de Paris, Cologne Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Prague Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral, the Basilica of St Denis, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Basilica of San Vitale, St Mark's Basilica, Westminster Abbey, Saint Basil's Cathedral, Washington National Cathedral, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, Gaudí's incomplete Sagrada Familia and the ancient church of Hagia Sophia, now a museum. Hagia Sophia has been described as architectural and cultural icon of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox civilization.
The earliest large churches date from Late Antiquity. As Christianity and the construction of churches and cathedrals spread throughout the world, their manner of building was dependent upon local materials and local techniques. Different styles of architecture developed and their fashion spread, carried by the establishment of monastic orders, by the posting of bishops from one region to another and by the travelling of master stonemasons who served as architects. The styles of the great church buildings are successively known as Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, various Revival styles of the late 18th to early 20th centuries and Modern. Overlaid on each of the academic styles are the regional characteristics. Some of these characteristics are so typical of a particular country or region that they appear, regardless of style, in the architecture of churches designed many centuries apart.
Art
Christian art is sacred art which uses themes and imagery from Christianity. Most Christian groups use or have used art to some extent, although some have had strong objections to some forms of religious image, and there have been major periods of iconoclasm within Christianity.
Images of Jesus and narrative scenes from the Life of Christ are the most common subjects, and scenes from the Old Testament play a part in the art of most denominations. Images of the Virgin Mary and saints are much rarer in Protestant art than that of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Christianity makes far wider use of images than related religions, in which figurative representations are forbidden, such as Islam and Judaism. However, there is also a considerable history of aniconism in Christianity from various periods.
Illumination
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration. The earliest surviving substantive illuminated manuscripts are from the period AD 400 to 600, primarily produced in Ireland, Constantinople and Italy. The majority of surviving manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many illuminated manuscripts survive from the 15th-century Renaissance, along with a very limited number from Late Antiquity.
Most illuminated manuscripts were created as codices, which had superseded scrolls; some isolated single sheets survive. A very few illuminated manuscript fragments survive on papyrus. Most medieval manuscripts, illuminated or not, were written on parchment (most commonly of calf, sheep, or goat skin), but most manuscripts important enough to illuminate were written on the best quality of parchment, called vellum, traditionally made of unsplit calfskin, although high quality parchment from other skins was also called parchment.
Iconography
Christian art began, about two centuries after Christ, by borrowing motifs from Roman Imperial imagery, classical Greek and Roman religion and popular art. Religious images are used to some extent by the Abrahamic Christian faith, and often contain highly complex iconography, which reflects centuries of accumulated tradition. In the Late Antique period iconography began to be standardised, and to relate more closely to biblical texts, although many gaps in the canonical Gospel narratives were plugged with matter from the apocryphal gospels. Eventually the Church would succeed in weeding most of these out, but some remain, like the ox and ass in the Nativity of Christ.
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Orthodox Christianity. Christianity has used symbolism from its very beginnings. In both East and West, numerous iconic types of Christ, Mary and saints and other subjects were developed; the number of named types of icons of Mary, with or without the infant Christ, was especially large in the East, whereas Christ Pantocrator was much the commonest image of Christ.
Christian symbolism invests objects or actions with an inner meaning expressing Christian ideas. Christianity has borrowed from the common stock of significant symbols known to most periods and to all regions of the world. Religious symbolism is effective when it appeals to both the intellect and the emotions. Especially important depictions of Mary include the Hodegetria and Panagia types. Traditional models evolved for narrative paintings, including large cycles covering the events of the Life of Christ, the Life of the Virgin, parts of the Old Testament, and, increasingly, the lives of popular saints. Especially in the West, a system of attributes developed for identifying individual figures of saints by a standard appearance and symbolic objects held by them; in the East they were more likely to identified by text labels.
Each saint has a story and a reason why he or she led an exemplary life. Symbols have been used to tell these stories throughout the history of the Church. A number of Christian saints are traditionally represented by a symbol or iconic motif associated with their life, termed an attribute or emblem, in order to identify them. The study of these forms part of iconography in Art history.
Eastern Christian art
The dedication of Constantinople as capital in 330 AD created a great new Christian artistic centre for the Eastern Roman Empire, which soon became a separate political unit. Major Constantinopolitan churches built under Constantine and his son, Constantius II, included the original foundations of Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles. As the Western Roman Empire disintegrated and was taken over by "barbarian" peoples, the art of the Byzantine Empire reached levels of sophistication, power and artistry not previously seen in Christian art, and set the standards for those parts of the West still in touch with Constantinople.
This achievement was checked by the controversy over the use of graven images, and the proper interpretation of the Second Commandment, which led to the crisis of Iconoclasm or destruction of religious images, which racked the Empire between 726 and 843. The restoration of Orthodoxy resulted in a strict standardization of religious imagery within the Eastern Church. Byzantine art became increasingly conservative, as the form of images themselves, many accorded divine origin or thought to have been be painted by Saint Luke or other figures, was held to have a status not far off that of a scriptural text. They could be copied, but not improved upon. As a concession to Iconoclast sentiment, monumental religious sculpture was effectively banned. Neither of these attitudes were held in Western Europe, but Byzantine art nonetheless had great influence there until the High Middle Ages, and remained very popular long after that, with vast numbers of icons of the Cretan School exported to Europe as late as the Renaissance. Where possible, Byzantine artists were borrowed for projects such as mosaics in Venice and Palermo. The enigmatic frescoes at Castelseprio may be an example of work by a Greek artist working in Italy.
The art of Eastern Catholicism has always been rather closer to the Orthodox art of Greece and Russia, and in countries near the Orthodox world, notably Poland, Catholic art has many Orthodox influences. The Black Madonna of Częstochowa may well have been of Byzantine origin – it has been repainted and this is hard to tell. Other images that are certainly of Greek origin, like the Salus Populi Romani and Our Lady of Perpetual Help, both icons in Rome, have been subjects of specific veneration for centuries.
Although the influence has often been resisted, especially in Russia, Catholic art has also affected Orthodox depictions in many respects, especially in countries like Romania, and in the post-Byzantine Cretan School, which led Greek Orthodox art under Venetian rule in the 15th and 16th centuries. El Greco left Crete when relatively young, but Michael Damaskinos returned after a brief period in Venice, and was able to switch between Italian and Greek styles. Even the traditionalist Theophanes the Cretan, working mainly on Mount Athos, nevertheless shows unmistakable Western influence.
Many Eastern Orthodox states in Eastern Europe, as well as to some degree the Muslim states of the eastern Mediterranean, preserved many aspects of the empire's culture and art for centuries afterward. A number of states contemporary with the Byzantine Empire were culturally influenced by it, without actually being part of it (the "Byzantine commonwealth"). These included Bulgaria, Serbia, and Kievan Rus', as well as some non-Orthodox states like the Republic of Venice and the Kingdom of Sicily, which had close ties to the Byzantine Empire despite being in other respects part of western European culture. Art produced by Eastern Orthodox Christians living in the Ottoman Empire is often called "post-Byzantine". Certain artistic traditions that originated in the Byzantine Empire, particularly in regard to icon painting and church architecture, are maintained in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Russia and other Eastern Orthodox countries to the present day.
Catholic art
Roman Catholic art consists of all visual works produced in an attempt to illustrate, supplement and portray in tangible form the teachings of the Catholic Church. This includes sculpture, painting, mosaics, metalwork, embroidery and even architecture. Catholic art has played a leading role in the history and development of Western art since at least the 4th century. The principal subject matter of Catholic art has been the life and times of Jesus Christ, along with those of his disciples, the saints, and the events of the Jewish Old Testament.
The earliest surviving art works are the painted frescoes on the walls of the catacombs and meeting houses of the persecuted Christians of the Roman Empire. The Christian Church in Rome was influenced by the Roman style of art and the religious Christian artists of the time. The stone sarcophagi of Roman Christians exhibit the earliest surviving carved statuary of Jesus, Mary and other biblical figures. The legalisation of Christianity transformed Catholic art, which adopted richer forms such as mosaics and illuminated manuscripts. The iconoclasm controversy briefly divided the eastern and western churches, after which artistic development progressed in separate directions. Romanesque and Gothic art flowered in the Western Church as the style of painting and statuary moved in an increasingly naturalistic direction. The Protestant Reformation produced new waves of image-destruction, to which the Church responded with the dramatic and emotive Baroque and Rococo styles. In the 19th century the leadership in western art moved away from the Catholic Church which, after embracing historical revivalism was increasingly affected by the modernist movement, a movement that in its "rebellion" against nature, counters the Church's emphasis on nature as a good creation of God.
Renaissance artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Bernini, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, and Titian, were among a multitude of innovative virtuosos sponsored by the Church.
British art historian Kenneth Clark wrote that Western Europe's first "great age of civilisation" was ready to begin around the year 1000. From 1100, he wrote, monumental abbeys and cathedrals were constructed and decorated with sculptures, hangings, mosaics and works belonging one of the greatest epochs of art and providing stark contrast to the monotonous and cramped conditions of ordinary living during the period. Abbot Suger of the Abbey of St. Denis is considered an influential early patron of Gothic architecture and believed that love of beauty brought people closer to God: "The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material". Clarke calls this "the intellectual background of all the sublime works of art of the next century and in fact has remained the basis of our belief of the value of art until today".
Later, during The Renaissance and Counter-Reformation, Catholic artists produced many of the unsurpassed masterpieces of Western art – often inspired by biblical themes: from Michelangelo's Moses and David and Pietà sculptures, to Da Vinci's Last Supper and Raphael's various Madonna paintings. Referring to a "great outburst of creative energy such as took place in Rome between 1620 and 1660", Kenneth Clarke wrote:
[W]ith a single exception, the great artists of the time were all sincere, conforming Christians. Guercino spent much of his mornings in prayer; Bernini frequently went into retreats and practised the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius; Rubens attended Mass every morning before beginning work. The exception was Caravaggio, who was like the hero of a modern play, except that he happened to paint very well.
This conformism was not based on fear of the Inquisition, but on the perfectly simple belief that the faith which had inspired the great saints of the preceding generation was something by which a man should regulate his life.
Protestant art
The Protestant Reformation during the 16th century in Europe almost entirely rejected the existing tradition of Catholic art, and very often destroyed as much of it as it could reach. A new artistic tradition developed, producing far smaller quantities of art that followed Protestant agendas and diverged drastically from the southern European tradition and the humanist art produced during the High Renaissance. In turn, the Catholic Counter-Reformation both reacted against and responded to Protestant criticisms of art in Roman Catholicism to produce a more stringent style of Catholic art. Protestant religious art both embraced Protestant values and assisted in the proliferation of Protestantism, but the amount of religious art produced in Protestant countries was hugely reduced. Artists in Protestant countries diversified into secular forms of art like history painting, landscape painting, portrait painting and still life.
Prominent painters with Protestant background were, for example, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh. World literature was enriched by the works of Edmund Spenser, John Milton, John Bunyan, John Donne, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, William Wordsworth, Jonathan Swift, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Arnold, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Theodor Fontane, Washington Irving, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Stearns Eliot, John Galsworthy, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, John Updike, and many others.
Education
The university is generally regarded as an institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting. Prior to the establishment of universities, European higher education took place for hundreds of years in Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools (Scholae monasticae), in which monks and nuns taught classes; evidence of these immediate forerunners of the later university at many places dates back to the 6th century AD.
Missionary activity for the Catholic Church has always incorporated education of evangelized peoples as part of its social ministry. History shows that in evangelized lands, the first people to operate schools were Roman Catholics. In some countries, the Church is the main provider of education or significantly supplements government forms of education. Presently, the Church operates the world's largest non-governmental school system. Many of Western Civilization's most influential universities were founded by the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church founded the West's first universities, which were preceded by the schools attached to monasteries and cathedrals, and generally staffed by monks and friars. Universities began springing up in Italian towns like Salerno, which became a leading medical school, translating the work of Greek and Arabic physicians into Latin. Bologna University became the most influential of the early universities, which first specialised in canon law and civil law. Paris University, specialising in such topics as theology, came to rival Bologna under the supervision of Notre Dame Cathedral. Oxford University in England later came rival Paris in Theology and Salamanca University was founded in Spain in 1243. According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey, the universities benefitted from the use of Latin, the common language of the Church, and its internationalist reach, and their role was to "teach, argue and reason within a Christian framework". The medieval universities of Western Christendom were well-integrated across all of Western Europe, encouraged freedom of enquiry and produced a great variety of fine scholars and natural philosophers, including Robert Grosseteste of the University of Oxford, an early expositor of a systematic method of scientific experimentation; and Saint Albert the Great, a pioneer of biological field research The Catholic church has always been involved in education, since the founding of the first universities of Europe. It runs and sponsors thousands of primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities throughout the world.
As the Reformers wanted all members of the church to be able to read the Bible, education on all levels got a strong boost. Compulsory education for both boys and girls was introduced. For example, the Puritans who established Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628 founded Harvard College only eight years later. About a dozen other colleges followed in the 18th century, including Yale University (1701). Pennsylvania also became a centre of learning. While Princeton University was a Presbyterian foundation. Protestantism also initiated translations of the Bible into national languages and hereby supported the development of national literatures.
A large number of mainline Protestants have played leadership roles in many aspects of American life, including politics, business, science, the arts, and education. They founded most of the country's leading institutes of higher education. The Ivy League universities have strong White Anglo-Saxon Protestant historical ties, and their influence continues today. Until about World War II, Ivy League universities were composed largely of WASP students.
Some of the first colleges and universities in America, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury, and Amherst, all were founded by the Mainline Protestantism, as were later Carleton, Duke, Oberlin, Beloit, Pomona, Rollins and Colorado College.
According to Pew Center study there is correlation between education and income, about (59%) of American Anglican have a graduate and post-graduate degree, and about (56%) of Episcopalians and (47%) of Presbyterians and (46%) United Church of Christ, have a graduate and post-graduate degree.
A Pew Center study about religion and education around the world in 2016, found that Christians ranked as the second most educated religious group around in the world after Jews with an average of 9.3 years of schooling, and the highest of years of schooling among Christians found in Germany (13.6), New Zealand (13.5) and Estonia (13.1). Christians were also found to have the second highest number of graduate and post-graduate degrees per capita while in absolute numbers ranked in the first place (220 million). Between the various Christian communities, Singapore outranks other nations in terms of Christians who obtain a university degree in institutions of higher education (67%), followed by the Christians of Israel (63%), and the Christians of Georgia (57%).
According to the study, Christians in North America, Europe, Middle East, North Africa and Asia-Pacific regions are highly educated since many of the world universities were built by the historic Christian Churches, in addition to the historical evidence that "Christian monks built libraries and, in the days before printing presses, preserved important earlier writings produced in Latin, Greek and Arabic". According to the same study, Christians have a significant amount of gender equality in educational attainment, and the study suggests that one of the reasons is the encouragement of the Protestant Reformers in promoting the education of women, which led to the eradication of illiteracy among females in Protestant communities.
According to the same study "there is a large and pervasive gap in educational attainment between Muslims and Christians in sub-Saharan Africa" as Muslim adults in this region are far less educated than their Christian counterparts, with scholars suggesting that this gap is due to the educational facilities that were created by Christian missionaries during the colonial era for fellow believers.
Literature and poetry
Christian literature is writing that deals with Christian themes and incorporates the Christian world view. This constitutes a huge body of extremely varied writing. Christian poetry is any poetry that contains Christian teachings, themes, or references. The influence of Christianity on poetry has been great in any area that Christianity has taken hold. Christian poems often directly reference the Bible, while others provide allegory.
While falling within the strict definition of literature, the Bible is not generally considered literature. However, the Bible has been treated and appreciated as literature; the Bible is a corner stone of Western civilization. The King James Version in particular has long been considered a masterpiece of English prose, whatever may be thought of its religious significance. The Authorized Version has been called "the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language", "the most important book in English religion and culture", and "the most celebrated book in the English-speaking world". David Crystal has estimated that it is responsible for 257 idioms in English, examples include feet of clay and reap the whirlwind. Furthermore, prominent atheist figures such as the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have praised the King James Version as being "a giant step in the maturing of English literature" and "a great work of literature", respectively, with Dawkins then adding, "A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian". Several retellings of the Bible, or parts of the Bible, have also been made with the aim of emphasising its literary qualities. With estimated sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the best-selling book of all time. It sells approximately 100 million copies annually, and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West, where the Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed using movable type.
In Byzantine literature, four different cultural elements are recognised: the Greek, the Christian, the Roman, and the Oriental. Byzantine literature is often classified in five groups: historians and annalists, encyclopaedists (Patriarch Photios, Michael Psellus, and Michael Choniates are regarded as the greatest encyclopaedists of Byzantium) and essayists, and writers of secular poetry. The only genuine heroic epic of the Byzantines is the Digenis Acritas. The remaining two groups include the new literary species: ecclesiastical and theological literature, and popular poetry. And it was in Alexandria that Graeco-Oriental Christianity had its birth. There the Septuagint translation had been made; there that that fusion of Greek philosophy and Jewish religion took place which culminated in Philo; there flourished the mystic speculative Neoplatonism associated with Plotinus and Porphyry. At Alexandria the great Greek ecclesiastical writers worked alongside pagan rhetoricians and philosophers; several were born here, e.g. Origen, Athanasius, and his opponent Arius, also Cyril and Synesius. On Egyptian soil monasticism began and thrived. After Alexandria, Antioch held great prestige, where a school of Christian commentators flourished under St. John Chrysostom and where later arose the Christian universal chronicles. In surrounding Syria, we find the germs of Greek ecclesiastical poetry, while from neighboring Palestine came St. John of Damascus, one of the Greek Fathers.
The list of Catholic authors and literary works is vast. With a literary tradition spanning two millennia, the Bible and Papal Encyclicals have been constants of the Catholic canon but countless other historical works may be listed as noteworthy in terms of their influence on Western society. From late Antiquity, St Augustine's book Confessions, which outlines his sinful youth and conversion to Christianity, is widely considered to be the first autobiography of ever written in the canon of Western Literature. Augustine profoundly influenced the coming medieval worldview. The Summa Theologica, written 1265–1274, is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274), and although unfinished, "one of the classics of the history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature." It is intended as a manual for beginners in theology and a compendium of all of the main theological teachings of the Church. It presents the reasoning for almost all points of Christian theology in the West. The epic poetry of the Italian Dante and his Divine Comedy of the late Middle Ages is also considered immensely influential. The English statesman and philosopher, Thomas More, wrote the seminal work Utopia in 1516. St Ignatius Loyola, a key figure in the Catholic counter-reformation, is the author of an influential book of meditations known as the Spiritual Exercises.
Catholics have also given greater value to the world through literary works by Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Dryden, Walker Percy, Jack Kerouac, Evelyn Waugh, Alexander Pope, Honoré de Balzac, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Merton, Toni Morrison, Ernest Hemingway, J.R.R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, Claude McKay, Paul Verlaine, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, Tennessee Williams, Francois Mauriac, Flannery O'Connor, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Paul Claudel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Michel de Montaigne, Siegfried Sassoon, John Henry Newman, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Rimbaud, Joseph Conrad, Miguel de Cervantes, Czeslaw Milosz, Hilaire Belloc, John of the Cross, Luis Vaz De Camoes, Edith Sitwell, Thomas More, among others.
Medicine and health care
The administration of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires split and the demise of the Western Empire by the 6th century was accompanied by a series of violent invasions and precipitated the collapse of cities and civic institutions of learning, along with their links to the learning of classical Greece and Rome. For the next thousand years, medical knowledge would change very little. A scholarly medical tradition maintained itself in the more stable East, but in the West, scholarship virtually disappeared outside of the Church, where monks were aware of a dwindling range of medical texts. Hospitality was considered an obligation of Christian charity and bishops' houses and the valetudinaria of wealthier Christians were used to tend the sick. And the legacy of this early period was, in the words of Porter, that "Christianity planted the hospital: the well-endowed establishments of the Levant and the scattered houses of the West shared a common religious ethos of charity."
The Byzantine Empire was one of the first empires to have flourishing medical establishments. Prior to the Byzantine Empire the Roman Empire had hospitals specifically for soldiers and slaves. However, none of these establishments were for the public. The hospitals in Byzantium were originally started by the church to act as a place for the poor to have access to basic amenities. Hospitals were usually separated between men and women. Although the remains of these hospitals have not been discovered by archaeologists, recordings of hospitals from the Byzantine Empire describe large buildings that had the core feature of an open hearth. The establishments of the Byzantine Empire resembled the beginning of what we now know as modern hospitals. The first hospital was erected by Leontius of Antioch between the years 344 to 358 and was a place for strangers and migrants to find refuge. Around the same time, a deacon named Marathonius was in charge of hospitals and monasteries in Constantinople. His main objective was to improve urban aesthetics, illustrating hospitals as a main part of Byzantine cities. These early hospitals were designed for the poor. In fact, most hospitals throughout the Byzantine Empire were almost exclusively utilized by the poor. This may be due to descriptions of hospitals similar to "Gregory Nazianzen who called the hospital a stairway to heaven, implying that it aimed only to ease death for the chronically or terminally ill rather than promote recovery". There is debate between scholars as to why these institutions were started by the church. Many scholars believe that the church founded hospitals in order to receive additional donations. Whatever the case for these hospitals, they began to diffuse across the empire. Soon after, St. Basil of Caesarea developed a place for the sick in which provided refuge for the sick and homeless.
Geoffrey Blainey likened the Catholic Church in its activities during the Middle Ages to an early version of a welfare state: "It conducted hospitals for the old and orphanages for the young; hospices for the sick of all ages; places for the lepers; and hostels or inns where pilgrims could buy a cheap bed and meal". It supplied food to the population during famine and distributed food to the poor. This welfare system the church funded through collecting taxes on a large scale and possessing large farmlands and estates. It was common for monks and clerics to practice medicine and medical students in northern European universities often took minor Holy orders. Mediaeval hospitals had a strongly Christian ethos, and were, in the words of historian of medicine Roy Porter, "religious foundations through and through", and Ecclesiastical regulations were passed to govern medicine, partly to prevent clergymen profiting from medicine. During Europe's Age of Discovery, Catholic missionaries, notably the Jesuits, introduced the modern sciences to India, China and Japan. While persecutions continue to limit the spread of Catholic institutions to some Middle Eastern Muslim nations, and such places as the People's Republic of China and North Korea, elsewhere in Asia the church is a major provider of health care services - especially in Catholic Nations like the Philippines.
Today the Roman Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care services in the world. It has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals, with 65 percent of them located in developing countries. In 2010, the Church's Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers said that the Church manages 26% of the world's health care facilities. The Church's involvement in health care has ancient origins.
Music
Christian music is music that has been written to express either personal or a communal belief regarding Christian life and faith. Common themes of Christian music include praise, worship, penitence, and lament, and its forms vary widely across the world.
Like other forms of music the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of Christian music varies according to culture and social context. Christian music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace.
In music, Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation in order to standardize liturgy throughout the worldwide Church, and an enormous body of religious music has been composed for it through the ages. This led directly to the emergence and development of European classical music, and its many derivatives. The Baroque style, which encompassed music, art, and architecture, was particularly encouraged by the post-Reformation Catholic Church as such forms offered a means of religious expression that was stirring and emotional, intended to stimulate religious fervor.
The list of Catholic composers and Catholic sacred music which have a prominent place in Western culture is extensive, but includes Ludwig van Beethoven's Ode to Joy; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Ave verum corpus; Franz Schubert's Ave Maria, César Franck's Panis angelicus, and Antonio Vivaldi's Gloria.
Martin Luther, Paul Gerhardt, George Wither, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, William Cowper, and many other authors and composers created well-known church hymns. Musicians like Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frederick Handel, Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms, and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy composed great works of music.
Philosophy
Christian philosophy is a term to describe the fusion of various fields of philosophy with the theological doctrines of Christianity. Scholasticism, which means "that [which] belongs to the school", and was a method of learning taught by the academics (or school people) of medieval universities c. 1100–1500. Scholasticism originally started to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with medieval Christian theology. Scholasticism is not a philosophy or theology in itself but a tool and method for learning which places emphasis on dialectical reasoning.
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages, roughly extending from the Christianization of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance. Medieval philosophy is defined partly by the rediscovery and further development of classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate the then widespread sacred doctrines of Abrahamic religion (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) with secular learning.
The history of western European medieval philosophy is traditionally divided into two main periods: the period in the Latin West following the Early Middle Ages until the 12th century, when the works of Aristotle and Plato were preserved and cultivated; and the "golden age" of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries in the Latin West, which witnessed the culmination of the recovery of ancient philosophy, and significant developments in the field of philosophy of religion, logic and metaphysics.
The medieval era was disparagingly treated by the Renaissance humanists, who saw it as a barbaric "middle" period between the classical age of Greek and Roman culture, and the "rebirth" or renaissance of classical culture. Yet this period of nearly a thousand years was the longest period of philosophical development in Europe, and possibly the richest. Jorge Gracia has argued that "in intensity, sophistication, and achievement, the philosophical flowering in the thirteenth century could be rightly said to rival the golden age of Greek philosophy in the fourth century B.C."
Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation.
Philosophers from the Middle Ages include the Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, Anselm, Gilbert of Poitiers, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan; the Jewish philosophers Maimonides and Gersonides; and the Muslim philosophers Alkindus, Alfarabi, Alhazen, Avicenna, Algazel, Avempace, Abubacer, Ibn Khaldūn, and Averroes. The medieval tradition of Scholasticism continued to flourish as late as the 17th century, in figures such as Francisco Suarez and John of St. Thomas.
Aquinas, father of Thomism, was immensely influential in Catholic Europe, placed a great emphasis on reason and argumentation, and was one of the first to use the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological writing. His work was a significant departure from the Neoplatonic and Augustinian thinking that had dominated much of early Scholasticism.
The Renaissance ("rebirth") was a period of transition between the Middle Ages and modern thought, in which the recovery of classical texts helped shift philosophical interests away from technical studies in logic, metaphysics, and theology towards eclectic inquiries into morality, philology, and mysticism. The study of the classics and the humane arts generally, such as history and literature, enjoyed a scholarly interest hitherto unknown in Christendom, a tendency referred to as humanism. Displacing the medieval interest in metaphysics and logic, the humanists followed Petrarch in making man and his virtues the focus of philosophy.
These new movements in philosophy developed contemporaneously with larger religious and political transformations in Europe: the Reformation and the decline of feudalism. Though the theologians of the Protestant Reformation showed little direct interest in philosophy, their destruction of the traditional foundations of theological and intellectual authority harmonized with a revival of fideism and skepticism in thinkers such as Erasmus, Montaigne, and Francisco Sanches. Meanwhile, the gradual centralization of political power in nation-states was echoed by the emergence of secular political philosophies, as in the works of Niccolò Machiavelli (often described as the first modern political thinker, or a key turning point towards modern political thinking), Thomas More, Erasmus, Justus Lipsius, Jean Bodin, and Hugo Grotius.
Science and technology
Earlier attempts at reconciliation of Christianity with Newtonian mechanics appear quite different from later attempts at reconciliation with the newer scientific ideas of evolution or relativity. Many early interpretations of evolution polarized themselves around a struggle for existence. These ideas were significantly countered by later findings of universal patterns of biological cooperation. According to John Habgood, all man really knows here is that the universe seems to be a mix of good and evil, beauty and pain, and that suffering may somehow be part of the process of creation. Habgood holds that Christians should not be surprised that suffering may be used creatively by God, given their faith in the symbol of the Cross.
Robert John Russell has examined consonance and dissonance between modern physics, evolutionary biology, and Christian theology.
Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas held that scriptures can have multiple interpretations on certain areas where the matters were far beyond their reach, therefore one should leave room for future findings to shed light on the meanings. The "Handmaiden" tradition, which saw secular studies of the universe as a very important and helpful part of arriving at a better understanding of scripture, was adopted throughout Christian history from early on. Also the sense that God created the world as a self operating system is what motivated many Christians throughout the Middle Ages to investigate nature.
Modern historians of science such as J.L. Heilbron, Alistair Cameron Crombie, David Lindberg, Edward Grant, Thomas Goldstein, and Ted Davis have reviewed the popular notion that medieval Christianity was a negative influence in the development of civilization and science. In their views, not only did the monks save and cultivate the remnants of ancient civilization during the barbarian invasions, but the medieval church promoted learning and science through its sponsorship of many universities which, under its leadership, grew rapidly in Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church's "model theologian", not only argued that reason is in harmony with faith, he even recognized that reason can contribute to understanding revelation, and so encouraged intellectual development. He was not unlike other medieval theologians who sought out reason in the effort to defend his faith. Some of today's scholars, such as Stanley Jaki, have claimed that Christianity with its particular worldview, was a crucial factor for the emergence of modern science. Some scholars and historians attributes Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution.
Professor Noah J Efron says that "Generations of historians and sociologists have discovered many ways in which Christians, Christian beliefs, and Christian institutions played crucial roles in fashioning the tenets, methods, and institutions of what in time became modern science. They found that some forms of Christianity provided the motivation to study nature systematically..." Virtually all modern scholars and historians agree that Christianity moved many early-modern intellectuals to study nature systematically.
Individual scientists' beliefs
Christian Scholars and Scientists have made noted contributions to science and technology fields, as well as Medicine, Many well-known historical figures who influenced Western science considered themselves Christian such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton Robert Boyle, Francis Bacon, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Emanuel Swedenborg, Alessandro Volta, Antoine Lavoisier, André-Marie Ampère, John Dalton, James Clerk Maxwell, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Louis Pasteur, Michael Faraday, and J. J. Thomson.
Isaac Newton, for example, believed that gravity caused the planets to revolve about the Sun, and credited God with the design. In the concluding General Scholium to the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, he wrote: "This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." Other famous founders of science who adhered to Christian beliefs include Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Blaise Pascal.
Prominent modern scientists advocating Christian belief include Nobel Prize–winning physicists Charles Townes (United Church of Christ member) and William Daniel Phillips (United Methodist Church member), evangelical Christian and past head of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins, and climatologist John T. Houghton.
According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of Nobel prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that (65.4%) of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference. Overall, Christians have won a total of 72.5% in Chemistry between 1901 and 2000, 65.3% in Physics, 62% in Medicine, 54% in Economics.
Eastern Christianity
Byzantine science was essentially classical science, and played an important and crucial role in the transmission of classical knowledge to the Islamic world and to Renaissance Italy. Many of the most distinguished classical scholars held high office in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Therefore, Byzantine science was in every period closely connected with ancient-pagan philosophy, and metaphysics. Despite some opposition to pagan learning, many of the most distinguished classical scholars held high office in the Church. The writings of antiquity never ceased to be cultivated in the Byzantine empire due to the impetus given to classical studies by the Academy of Athens in the 4th and 5th centuries, the vigor of the philosophical academy of Alexandria, and to the services of the University of Constantinople, which concerned itself entirely with secular subjects, to the exclusion of theology, which was taught in the Patriarchical Academy. Even the latter offered instruction in the ancient classics, and included literary, philosophical, and scientific texts in its curriculum. The monastic schools concentrated upon the Bible, theology, and liturgy. Therefore, the monastic scriptoria expended most of their efforts upon the transcription of ecclesiastical manuscripts, while ancient-pagan literature was transcribed, summarized, excerpted, and annotated by laymen or clergy like Photios, Arethas of Caesarea, Eustathius of Thessalonica, and Basilius Bessarion. Byzantine scientists preserved and continued the legacy of the great Ancient Greek mathematicians and put mathematics in practice. In early Byzantium (5th to 7th century) the architects and mathematicians Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles used complex mathematical formulas to construct the great Hagia Sophia church, a technological breakthrough for its time and for centuries afterwards due to its striking geometry, bold design and height. In late Byzantium (9th to 12th century) mathematicians like Michael Psellos considered mathematics as a way to interpret the world.
Middle Eastern Christians especially the adherents of the Church of the East (Nestorians), contributed to the Arab Islamic Civilization during the Umayyad and the Abbasid periods by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic. During the 4th through the 7th centuries, scholarly work in the Syriac and Greek languages was either newly initiated, or carried on from the Hellenistic period. Centers of learning and of transmission of classical wisdom included colleges such as the School of Nisibis, and later the School of Edessa, and the renowned hospital and medical academy of Jundishapur; libraries included the Library of Alexandria and the Imperial Library of Constantinople; other centers of translation and learning functioned at Merv, Salonika, Nishapur and Ctesiphon, situated just south of what later became Baghdad.
Many scholars of the House of Wisdom were of Christian background;
the House of Wisdom was a library, translation institute, and academy established in Abbasid-era Baghdad, Iraq. Nestorians played a prominent role in the formation of Arab culture, with the Jundishapur school being prominent in the late Sassanid, Umayyad and early Abbasid periods. Notably, eight generations of the Nestorian Bukhtishu family served as private doctors to caliphs and sultans between the 8th and 11th centuries.
The migration waves of Byzantine scholars and émigrés in the period following the Crusader sacking of Constantinople in 1204 and the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek and Roman studies that led to the development of the Renaissance humanism, and science. These émigrés brought to Western Europe the relatively well-preserved remnants and accumulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization, which had mostly not survived the Early Middle Ages in the West. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica: "Many modern scholars also agree that the exodus of Greeks to Italy as a result of this event marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance".
Catholic Church
While refined and clarified over the centuries, the Roman Catholic position on the relationship between science and religion is one of harmony, and has maintained the teaching of natural law as set forth by Thomas Aquinas. For example, regarding scientific study such as that of evolution, the church's unofficial position is an example of theistic evolution, stating that faith and scientific findings regarding human evolution are not in conflict, though humans are regarded as a special creation, and that the existence of God is required to explain both monogenism and the spiritual component of human origins. Catholic schools have included all manners of scientific study in their curriculum for many centuries.
Galileo once stated "The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." In 1981 John Paul II, then pope of the Roman Catholic Church, spoke of the relationship this way: "The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer".
The influence of the Church on Western letters and learning has been formidable. The ancient texts of the Bible have deeply influenced Western art, literature and culture. For centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, small monastic communities were practically the only outposts of literacy in Western Europe. In time, the Cathedral schools developed into Europe's earliest universities and the church has established thousands of primary, secondary and tertiary institutions throughout the world in the centuries since. The Church and clergymen have also sought at different times to censor texts and scholars. Thus different schools of opinion exist as to the role and influence of the Church in relation to western letters and learning.
The Catholic Cistercian order used its own numbering system, which could express numbers from 0 to 9999 in a single sign. According to one modern Cistercian, "enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit" have always been a part of the order's identity, and the Cistercians "were catalysts for development of a market economy" in 12th-century Europe. Until the Industrial Revolution, most of the technological advances in Europe were made in the monasteries. According to the medievalist Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had a model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its floor." Waterpower was used for crushing wheat, sieving flour, fulling cloth and tanning – a "level of technological achievement [that] could have been observed in practically all" of the Cistercian monasteries. The English science historian James Burke examines the impact of Cistercian waterpower, derived from Roman watermill technology such as that of Barbegal aqueduct and mill near Arles in the fourth of his ten-part Connections TV series, called "Faith in Numbers". The Cistercians made major contributions to culture and technology in medieval Europe: Cistercian architecture is considered one of the most beautiful styles of medieval architecture; and the Cistercians were the main force of technological diffusion in fields such as agriculture and hydraulic engineering.
One view, first propounded by Enlightenment philosophers, asserts that the Church's doctrines are entirely superstitious and have hindered the progress of civilization. Communist states have made similar arguments in their education in order to inculcate a negative view of Catholicism (and religion in general) in their citizens. The most famous incidents cited by such critics are the Church's condemnations of the teachings of Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler.
The Church's priest-scientists, many of whom were Jesuits, have been among the leading lights in astronomy, genetics, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology, and solar physics, becoming some of the "fathers" of these sciences. Examples include important churchmen such as the Augustinian abbot Gregor Mendel (pioneer in the study of genetics), Roger Bacon (a Franciscan friar who was one of the early advocates of the scientific method), and Belgian priest Georges Lemaître (the first to propose the Big Bang theory). Other notable priest scientists have included Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Nicholas Steno, Francesco Grimaldi, Giambattista Riccioli, Roger Boscovich, and Athanasius Kircher. Even more numerous are Catholic laity involved in science:Henri Becquerel who discovered radioactivity; Galvani, Volta, Ampere, Marconi, pioneers in electricity and telecommunications; Lavoisier, "father of modern chemistry"; Vesalius, founder of modern human anatomy; and Cauchy, one of the mathematicians who laid the rigorous foundations of calculus.
Throughout history many of the Roman Catholic clerics have made contributions to science, mostly during periods of Church domination of public life. These cleric-scientists include Nicolaus Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaître, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Roger Joseph Boscovich, Marin Mersenne, Bernard Bolzano, Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, Robert Grosseteste, Christopher Clavius, Nicolas Steno, Athanasius Kircher, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, William of Ockham, and others. The Catholic Church has also produced many lay scientists and mathematicians, including 20th-century Nobel laureates like chemist Mario J. Molina, chemist John Polanyi, physicist Riccardo Giacconi, among many others.
Jesuit in science
The Jesuits have made numerous significant contributions to the development of science. For example, the Jesuits have dedicated significant study to earthquakes, and seismology has been described as "the Jesuit science". The Jesuits have been described as "the single most important contributor to experimental physics in the seventeenth century". According to Jonathan Wright in his book God's Soldiers, by the 18th century the Jesuits had "contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light."
Protestant
Protestantism had an important influence on science. According to the Merton Thesis there was a positive correlation between the rise of Puritanism and Protestant Pietism on the one hand and early experimental science on the other. The Merton Thesis has two separate parts: Firstly, it presents a theory that science changes due to an accumulation of observations and improvement in experimental techniques and methodology; secondly, it puts forward the argument that the popularity of science in 17th-century England and the religious demography of the Royal Society (English scientists of that time were predominantly Puritans or other Protestants) can be explained by a correlation between Protestantism and the scientific values. In his theory, Robert K. Merton focused on English Puritanism and German Pietism as having been responsible for the development of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. Merton explained that the connection between religious affiliation and interest in science was the result of a significant synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science. Protestant values encouraged scientific research by allowing science to study God's influence on the world and thus providing a religious justification for scientific research.
According of Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States by Harriet Zuckerman, a review of American Nobel prizes winners awarded between 1901 and 1972, 72% of American Nobel Prize laureates, have identified from Protestant background. Overall, Protestant have won a total of 84.2% of all the American Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, 60% in Medicine, 58.6% in Physics, between 1901 and 1972.
Thought and work ethic
The notion of "Christian finance" refers to banking and financial activities which came into existence several centuries ago. Whether the activities of the Knights Templar (12th century), Mounts of Piety (appeared in 1462) or the Apostolic Chamber attached directly to the Vatican, a number of operations of a banking nature (money loan, guarantee, etc.) or a financial nature (issuance of securities, investments) is proved, despite the prohibition of usury and the Church distrust against exchange activities (opposed to production activities).
Francisco de Vitoria, a disciple of Thomas Aquinas and a Catholic thinker who studied the issue regarding the human rights of colonized natives, is recognized by the United Nations as a father of international law, and now also by historians of economics and democracy as a leading light for the West's democracy and rapid economic development. Joseph Schumpeter, an economist of the 20th century, referring to the Scholastics, wrote, "it is they who come nearer than does any other group to having been the 'founders' of scientific economics." Other economists and historians, such as Raymond de Roover, Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson, and Alejandro Chafuen, have also made similar statements.
The Protestant concept of God and man allows believers to use all their God-given faculties, including the power of reason. That means that they are allowed to explore God's creation and, according to Genesis 2:15, make use of it in a responsible and sustainable way. Thus a cultural climate was created that greatly enhanced the development of the humanities and the sciences. Another consequence of the Protestant understanding of man is that the believers, in gratitude for their election and redemption in Christ, are to follow God's commandments. Industry, frugality, calling, discipline, and a strong sense of responsibility are at the heart of their moral code. In particular, John Calvin rejected luxury. Therefore, craftsmen, industrialists, and other businessmen were able to reinvest the greater part of their profits in the most efficient machinery and the most modern production methods that were based on progress in the sciences and technology. As a result, productivity grew, which led to increased profits and enabled employers to pay higher wages. In this way, the economy, the sciences, and technology reinforced each other. The chance to participate in the economic success of technological inventions was a strong incentive to both inventors and investors. The Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. This idea is also known as the "Protestant ethic thesis". In the book The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself Lawrence E. Harrison argues that Protestantism along with Confucianism, and Judaism have been more successful in promoting progress, culture and society. Due to the Protestant virtues of education, achievement, work ethic, merit, frugality, and honesty.
Some mainline Protestant denominations such as Episcopalians and Presbyterians and congregationalist tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated (having high proportion of graduate and post-graduate degrees per capita) than most other religious groups in America, and are disproportionately represented in the upper reaches of American business, law and politics, especially the Republican Party. Large numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families as the Vanderbilts, the Astors, Rockefeller, Du Pont, Roosevelt, Forbes, Whitneys, Mellons, the Morgans and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families. The Boston Brahmins, who were regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites, were often associated with the American upper class, Harvard University; and the Episcopal Church. The Old Philadelphianss were often associated with the American upper class and the Episcopal Church and Quakerism. These families were influential in the development and leadership of arts, culture, science, medicine, law, politics, industry and trade in the United States.
The rise of Protestantism in the 16th contributed to the development of banking in Northern Europe. In the late 18th century, Protestant merchant families began to move into banking to an increasing degree, especially in trading countries such as the United Kingdom (Barings), Germany (Schroders, Berenbergs) and the Netherlands (Hope & Co., Gülcher & Mulder) At the same time, new types of financial activities broadened the scope of banking far beyond its origins. One school of thought attributes Calvinism with setting the stage for the later development of capitalism in northern Europe. The Morgan family is an American Episcopal Church family and banking dynasty, which became prominent in the U.S. and throughout the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Catholic banking families includes House of Medici, Welser family, Fugger family, and Simonetti family.
Some academics have theorized that Lutheranism, the dominant traditional religion of the Nordic countries, had an effect on the development of social democracy there and the Nordic model. Schröder posits that Lutheranism promoted the idea of a nationwide community of believers and led to increased state involvement in economic and social life, allowing for nationwide welfare solidarity and economic co-ordination. Esa Mangeloja says that the revival movements helped to pave the way for the modern Finnish welfare state. During that process, the church lost some of its most important social responsibilities (health care, education, and social work) as these tasks were assumed by the secular Finnish state. Pauli Kettunen presents the Nordic model as the outcome of a sort of mythical "Lutheran peasant enlightenment", portraying the Nordic model as the result of a sort of "secularized Lutheranism"; however, mainstream academic discourse on the subject focuses on "historical specificity", with the centralized structure of the Lutheran church being but one aspect of the cultural values and state structures that led to the development of the welfare state in Scandinavia.
Festivals
Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Christians, and traditional Protestant communities frame worship around the liturgical year. The liturgical cycle divides the year into a series of seasons, each with their theological emphases, and modes of prayer, which can be signified by different ways of decorating churches, colours of paraments and vestments for clergy, scriptural readings, themes for preaching and even different traditions and practices often observed personally or in the home.
Western Christian liturgical calendars are based on the cycle of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, and Eastern Christians use analogous calendars based on the cycle of their respective rites. Calendars set aside holy days, such as solemnities which commemorate an event in the life of Jesus or Mary, the saints, periods of fasting such as Lent, and other pious events such as memoria or lesser festivals commemorating saints. Christian groups that do not follow a liturgical tradition often retain certain celebrations, such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost: these are the celebrations of Christ's birth, resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, respectively. A few denominations make no use of a liturgical calendar.
Christmas (or Feast of the Nativity) is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. Christmas Day is a public holiday in many of the world's nations, is celebrated religiously by a majority of Christians, as well as culturally by many non-Christians, and forms an integral part of the holiday season centered around it. Popular modern customs of the holiday include gift giving; completing an Advent calendar or Advent wreath; Christmas music and caroling; viewing a Nativity play; an exchange of Christmas cards; church services; a special meal; and the display of various Christmas decorations, including Christmas trees, Christmas lights, nativity scenes, garlands, wreaths, mistletoe, and holly. In addition, several closely related and often interchangeable figures, known as Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, and Christkind, are associated with bringing gifts to children during the Christmas season and have their own body of traditions and lore.
Easter or Resurrection Sunday, is a festival and holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred on the third day after his burial following his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary 30 AD. Easter customs vary across the Christian world, and include sunrise services, exclaiming the Paschal greeting, clipping the church, and decorating Easter eggs (symbols of the empty tomb). The Easter lily, a symbol of the resurrection, traditionally decorates the chancel area of churches on this day and for the rest of Eastertide. Additional customs that have become associated with Easter and are observed by both Christians and some non-Christians include egg hunting, the Easter Bunny, and Easter parades. There are also various traditional Easter foods that vary regionally.
Religious life
Roman Catholic theology enumerates seven sacraments: Baptism (Christening), Confirmation (Chrismation), Eucharist (Communion), Penance (Reconciliation), Anointing of the Sick (before the Second Vatican Council generally called Extreme Unction), Matrimony
In Christian belief and practice, a sacrament is a rite, instituted by Christ, that mediates grace, constituting a sacred mystery. The term is derived from the Latin word sacramentum, which was used to translate the Greek word for mystery. Views concerning both what rites are sacramental, and what it means for an act to be a sacrament vary among Christian denominations and traditions.
The most conventional functional definition of a sacrament is that it is an outward sign, instituted by Christ, that conveys an inward, spiritual grace through Christ. The two most widely accepted sacraments are Baptism and the Eucharist (or Holy Communion), however, the majority of Christians also recognize five additional sacraments: Confirmation (Chrismation in the Orthodox tradition), Holy orders (ordination), Penance (or Confession), Anointing of the Sick, and Matrimony (see Christian views on marriage).
Taken together, these are the Seven Sacraments as recognized by churches in the High Church tradition—notably Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Independent Catholic, Old Catholic, many Anglicans, and some Lutherans. Most other denominations and traditions typically affirm only Baptism and Eucharist as sacraments, while some Protestant groups, such as the Quakers, reject sacramental theology. Christian denominations, such as Baptists, which believe these rites do not communicate grace, prefer to call Baptism and Holy Communion ordinances rather than sacraments.
Today, most Christian denominations are neutral about religious male circumcision, neither requiring it nor forbidding it. The practice is customary among the Coptic, Ethiopian, and Eritrean Orthodox Churches, and also some other African churches, as they require that their male members undergo circumcision. Even though most Christian denominations does not require male circumcision, male circumcision is widely in many predominantly Christian countries and many Christian communities. Christian communities in Africa, the Anglosphere countries, the Philippines, the Middle East, South Korea and Oceania have high circumcision rates, While Christian communities in Europe and South America have low circumcision rates. The United States and the Philippines are the largest majority Christian countries in the world to extensively practice circumcision. Scholar Heather L. Armstrong writes that, as of 2021, about half of Christian males worldwide are circumcised, with most of them being located in Africa, Anglosphere countries, and the Philippines.
Worship can be varied for special events like baptisms or weddings in the service or significant feast days. In the early church, Christians and those yet to complete initiation would separate for the Eucharistic part of the worship. In many churches today, adults and children will separate for all or some of the service to receive age-appropriate teaching. Such children's worship is often called Sunday school or Sabbath school (Sunday schools are often held before rather than during services).
Family life
Christian culture puts notable emphasis on the family, and according to the work of scholars Max Weber, Alan Macfarlane, Steven Ozment, Jack Goody and Peter Laslett, the huge transformation that led to modern marriage in Western democracies was "fueled by the religio-cultural value system provided by elements of Judaism, early Christianity, Roman Catholic canon law and the Protestant Reformation". Historically, extended families were the basic family unit in the Catholic culture and countries.
Most Christian denominations practice infant baptism to enter children into the faith. Some form of confirmation ritual occurs when the child has reached the age of reason and voluntarily accepts the religion. Ritual circumcision is used to mark Coptic Christian and Ethiopian Orthodox Christian infant males as belonging to the faith. During the early period of capitalism, the rise of a large, commercial middle class, mainly in the Protestant countries of the Netherlands and England, brought about a new family ideology centred around the upbringing of children. Puritanism stressed the importance of individual salvation and concern for the spiritual welfare of children. It became widely recognized that children possess rights on their own behalf. This included the rights of poor children to sustenance, membership in a community, education, and job training. The Poor Relief Acts in Elizabethan England put responsibility on each Parish to care for all the poor children in the area. And prior to the 20th century, three major branches of Christianity—Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism—as well as leading Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin generally held a critical perspective of birth control.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints puts notable emphasis on the family, and the distinctive concept of a united family which lives and progresses forever is at the core of Latter-day Saint doctrine. Church members are encouraged to marry and have children, and as a result, Latter-day Saint families tend to be larger than average. All sexual activity outside of marriage is considered a serious sin. All homosexual activity is considered sinful and same-sex marriages are not performed or supported by the LDS Church. Latter-day Saint fathers who hold the priesthood typically name and bless their children shortly after birth to formally give the child a name and generate a church record for them. Mormons tend to be very family-oriented and have strong connections across generations and with extended family, reflective of their belief that families can be sealed together beyond death. Mormons also have a strict law of chastity, requiring abstention from sexual relations outside heterosexual marriage and fidelity within marriage.
A Pew Center study about Religion and Living arrangements around the world in 2019, found that Christians around the world live in somewhat smaller households, on average, than non-Christians (4.5 vs. 5.1 members). 34% of world's Christian population live in two parent families with minor children, while 29% live in household with extended families, 11% live as couples without other family members, 9% live in household with least one child over the age of 18 with one or two parents, 7% live alone, and 6% live in single parent households. Christians in Asia and Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, overwhelmingly live in extended or two parent families with minor children. While more Christians in Europe and North America live alone or as couples without other family members.
Cuisine
In mainstream Nicene Christianity, there is no restriction on kinds of animals that can be eaten. This practice stems from Peter's vision of a sheet with animals, in which Saint Peter "sees a sheet containing animals of every description lowered from the sky." Nonetheless, the New Testament does give a few guidelines about the consumption of meat, practiced by the Christian Church today; one of these is not consuming food knowingly offered to pagan idols, a conviction that the early Church Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen preached. In addition, Christians traditionally bless any food before eating it with a mealtime prayer (grace), as a sign of thanking God for the meal they have.
Slaughtering animals for food is often done without the trinitarian formula, although the Armenian Apostolic Church, among other Orthodox Christians, have rituals that "display obvious links with shechitah, Jewish kosher slaughter." The Bible states Norman Geisler, stipulates one to "abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meat of strangled animals". In the New Testament, Paul of Tarsus notes that some devout Christians may wish to abstain from consuming meat if it causes "my brother to stumble" in his faith with God. As such, some Christian monks, such as the Trappists, have adopted a policy of Christian vegetarianism. In addition, Christians of the Seventh-day Adventist tradition generally "avoid eating meat and highly spiced food". Christians in the Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and Orthodox denominations traditionally observe a meat-free day, and meat free seasons especially during the liturgical season of Lent.
Some Christian denominations condone the moderate drinking of alcohol (moderationism), such as Anglicans, Catholics, Lutherans, and the Orthodox, although others, such as Adventists, Baptists, Methodists, and Pentecostals either abstain from or prohibit the consumption of alcohol (abstentionism and prohibitionism). However, all Christian Churches, in view of the biblical position on the issue, universally condemn drunkenness as sinful.
Christian cooking combines the food of many cultures in which Christian have lived. A special Christmas family meal is traditionally an important part of the holiday's celebration, and the food that is served varies greatly from country to country. Some regions, such as Sicily, have special meals for Christmas Eve, when 12 kinds of fish are served. In the United Kingdom and countries influenced by its traditions, a standard Christmas meal includes turkey, goose or other large bird, gravy, potatoes, vegetables, sometimes bread and cider. Special desserts are also prepared, such as Christmas pudding, mince pies, fruit cake and Yule log.
Cleanliness
The Bible has many rituals of purification relating to menstruation, childbirth, sexual relations, nocturnal emission, unusual bodily fluids, skin disease, death, and animal sacrifices. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church prescribes several kinds of hand washing for example after leaving the latrine, lavatory or bathhouse, or before prayer, or after eating a meal. The women in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church are prohibited from entering the church temple during menses; and the men do not enter a church the day after they have had intercourse with their wives.
Christianity has always placed a strong emphasis on hygiene, Despite the denunciation of the mixed bathing style of Roman pools by early Christian clergy, as well as the pagan custom of women naked bathing in front of men, this did not stop the Church from urging its followers to go to public baths for bathing, which contributed to hygiene and good health according to the Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian. The Church also built public bathing facilities that were separate for both sexes near monasteries and pilgrimage sites; also, the popes situated baths within church basilicas and monasteries since the early Middle Ages. Pope Gregory the Great urged his followers on value of bathing as a bodily need.
Great bath houses were built in Byzantine centers such as Constantinople and Antioch, and the popes allocated to the Romans bathing through diaconia, or private Lateran baths, or even a myriad of monastic bath houses functioning in the 8th and 9th centuries. The popes maintained their baths in their residences, and bath houses including hot baths incorporated into Christian Church buildings or those of monasteries, which known as "charity baths" because they served both the clerics and needy poor people. Public bathing were common in medivail Christendom larger towns and cities such as Paris, Regensburg and Naples. Catholic religious orders of the Augustinians' and Benedictines' rules contained ritual purification, and inspired by Benedict of Nursia encouragement for the practice of therapeutic bathing; Benedictine monks played a role in the development and promotion of spas. Protestant Christianity also played a prominent role in the development of the British spas.
Contrary to popular belief bathing and sanitation were not lost in Europe with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Soapmaking first became an established trade during the so-called "Dark Ages". The Romans used scented oils (mostly from Egypt), among other alternatives. By the 15th century, the manufacture of soap in the Christendom had become virtually industrialized, with sources in Antwerp, Castile, Marseille, Naples and Venice. By the mid-19th century, the English urbanised middle classes had formed an ideology of cleanliness that ranked alongside typical Victorian concepts, such as Christianity, respectability and social progress. The Salvation Army has adopted movement of the deployment of the personal hygiene, and by providing personal hygiene products.
The use of water in many Christian countries is due in part to the biblical toilet etiquette which encourages washing after all instances of defecation. The bidet is common in predominantly Catholic countries where water is considered essential for anal cleansing, and in some traditionally Orthodox and Protestant countries such as Greece and Finland respectively, where bidet showers are common.
Christian pop culture
Christian pop culture (or Christian popular culture), is the vernacular Christian culture that prevails in any given society. The content of popular culture is determined by the daily interactions, needs and desires, and cultural 'movements' that make up everyday lives of Christians. It can include any number of practices, including those pertaining to cooking, clothing, mass media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports and literature.
In modern urban mass societies, Christian pop culture has been crucially shaped by the development of industrial mass production, the introduction of new technologies of sound and image broadcasting and recording, and the growth of mass media industries—the film, broadcast radio and television, radio, video game, and the book publishing industries, as well as the print and electronic news media.
Items of Christian pop culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of Christians. Some argue that broad-appeal items dominate Christian pop culture because profit-making Christian companies that produce and sell items of Christian pop culture attempt to maximize their profits by emphasizing broadly appealing items. And yet the situation is more complex. To take the example of Christian pop music, it is not the case that the music industry can impose any product they wish. In fact, highly popular types of music have often first been elaborated in small, counter-cultural circles such as Christian punk rock or Christian rap.
Because the Christian pop industry is significantly smaller than the secular pop industry, a few organizations and companies dominate the market and have a strong influence over what is dominant within the industry.
Another source of Christian pop culture which makes it differ from pop culture is the influence from mega churches. Christian pop culture reflects the current popularity of megachurches, but also the uniting of smaller community churches. The culture has been led by Hillsong Church in particular, which resides in many countries including Australia, France, and the United Kingdom.
Film industry
The Christian film industry is an umbrella term for films containing a Christian themed message or moral, produced by Christian filmmakers to a Christian audience, and films produced by non-Christians with Christian audiences in mind. They are often interdenominational films, but can also be films targeting a specific denomination of Christianity. Popular mainstream studio productions of films with strong Christian messages or biblical stories, like Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, The Passion of the Christ, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Book of Eli, Machine Gun Preacher, The Star, The Flying House, Superbook and Silence, are not specifically part of the Christian film industry, being more agnostic about their audiences' religious beliefs. These films generally also have a much higher budget, production values and better known film stars, and are received more favourably with film critics.
The 2014 film God's Not Dead is one of the all-time most successful independent Christian films and the 2015 film War Room became a Box Office number-one film.
Televangelism
Televangelism (tele- "distance" and "evangelism", meaning "ministry", sometimes called teleministry) is the use of media, specifically radio and television, to communicate Christianity. Televangelists are ministers, whether official or self-proclaimed, who devote a large portion of their ministry to television broadcasting. Some televangelists are also regular pastors or ministers in their own places of worship (often a megachurch), but the majority of their followers come from TV and radio audiences. Others do not have a conventional congregation, and work primarily through television. The term is also used derisively by critics as an insinuation of aggrandizement by such ministers.
Televangelism began as a uniquely American phenomenon, resulting from a largely deregulated media where access to television networks and cable TV is open to virtually anyone who can afford it, combined with a large Christian population that is able to provide the necessary funding. It became especially popular among Evangelical Protestant audiences, whether independent or organized around Christian denominations. However, the increasing globalisation of broadcasting has enabled some American televangelists to reach a wider audience through international broadcast networks, including some that are specifically Christian in nature, such as Trinity Broadcasting Network (the world's largest religious television network), The God Channel, Christian Broadcasting Network, Australian Christian Channel, SAT-7 and Emmanuel TV. Domestically produced televangelism is increasingly present in some other nations such as Brazil. Christian television may include broadcast television or cable television channels whose entire broadcast programming schedule is television programs directly related to Christianity or shows including comedy, action, drama, reality, dramatizations and variety shows, movies, and mini-series; which are part of the overall programming of a general-interest television station.
Some countries have more regulated media with either general restrictions on access or specific rules regarding religious broadcasting. In such countries, religious programming is typically produced by TV companies (sometimes as a regulatory or public service requirement) rather than private interest groups.
Christianophile
A Christianophile is a person who expresses a strong interest in or appreciation for Christianity, Christian culture, Christian history, Christendom or the Christian people. That affinity may include Christianity itself or its history, philosophy, theology, music, literature, art, architecture, festivals etc. The term "Christianophile" can be contrasted with Christianophobe, someone who shows hatred or other forms of negative feelings towards all that is Christian.
Christianity and Christian culture has a generally positive image in a number of non-Christian societies such as Hong Kong, Macau, India, Japan, Lebanon, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. In number of traditional Christian societies in Europe, there has been a revival of what has been called by some scholars "Christianophile", and a sympathy for Christianity and its culture, with politicians increasingly speaking of the "Christian roots and heritage" of their countries; this includes Austria, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom.
G. K. Chesterton has been called a Christianophile; he wrote in the early 20th century about the benefits of Christianity. Famous for his use of paradox, Chesterton explained that while Christianity had the most mysteries, it was the most practical religion. He pointed to the advance of Christian civilizations as proof of its practicality. T. S. Eliot has shown a strong affinity to the Christian culture; according to him, the common tradition of Christianity and its culture which has made Europe what it is, and the culture of Europe been rooted in Christianity. Winston Churchill has shown a strong affinity to Protestant culture because he felt it "a step nearer Reason". Historian Geoffrey Blainey on his book A Short History of Christianity, discussed the role of Christianity in civilization, and the extent of Christian influence on the world. Some scholars criticize the concept Eurocentrism as a "Christianophile myth" because it has favored the components (mainly Christianity) of European civilization and allowed eurocentrists to brand diverging societies and cultures as "uncivilized".
See also
Aristotelianism
Astrotheology
Assyrian culture
Celtic Christianity
Christianese
Christian influences in Islam
Christian values
Culture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Cynicism (philosophy)
Gnosticism
International law
Judeo-Christian values
Multiculturalism and Christianity
Natural law
Neoplatonism and Christianity
Platonism
Protestant culture
Role of Christianity in civilization
Stoicism
Syriac Christianity
The night of churches
References
Works cited
.
Further reading
Eva Baer. Ayyubid metalwork with Christian images. BRILL, 1989
Culture | 0.761168 | 0.992097 | 0.755153 |
Walking art | Walking art refers to a variety of artistic practices that position walking as the central process, experience or outcome. Walking artists have diverse interests and it 'has gathered practitioners from nearly every field'.:43 Despite emerging from a variety of artistic and literary traditions, a 'common feature [of walking art] is the engagement of the body in a process of walking through a landscape based on a specific artistic design.':161 Some artists consider walking an artistic end in itself, while others use walking as a means of mark-making, storytelling, social practice, or to create work in other artistic media.
Origins
In her influential book Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit traces the origins of walking as an artistic practice to the 1960s, when 'a new realm of walking opened up [ . . . ] walking as art.':267 Other scholars, such as Francesco Careri and Blake Morris, highlight the importance of the Dada excursion of 1921, when the French contingent of the Dada movement led a walk at the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre in Paris.:34 Scholars also note the strong connection between writing, walking, and philosophy, from the peripatetic school of the Ancient Greeks to the walks of Romantic poets and artists, to the phenomenological works of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.
Literary precedents
The Romantics
Scholars cite the British Romantics as exercising 'an outsized influence on contemporary considerations of walking' in the Western world.:24 For example, Solnit suggests that Romantics such as John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and William and Dorothy Wordsworth, helped establish walking as 'an expressive medium'.:101 In the United States, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman were influential in establishing the relationship between writing and walking.
The flâneur
The French figure of the flâneur — a 'passionate spectator', typically male,:40 who goes on detached strolls through urban environments — is another important precedent. Fiona Wilkie argues it is one of the 'standard positions from which to theorize one's walking'.:19 The concept was popularised through the writings of Charles Baudelaire, who himself was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's short story, 'The Man of the Crowd',:8 and Walter Benjamin's subsequent theorisations of those writings.
Eastern traditions
Eastern literary traditions have influenced the development of walking as an artistic practice. The seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō was a peripatetic poet who is credited for formalizing haiku, and for whom the aesthetics of poetry and walking were closely linked. Hamish Fulton has cited Bashō as an influence on both his walking and writing practices. Bashō is also an inspiration for Alec Finlay, as seen in his 2011 work The Road North, which draws on Bashō's journals.
Historical avant-garde
Dadaism
Numerous scholars have agreed that the Dada excursion of 1921 was the first work where the act of walking itself was the art.:13 The excursion was organized by artists who would go on to found the Surrealist art movement, such as André Breton and Louis Aragon, as well as important members of the Dada movement, including Tristan Tzara and Francis Picabia.:34
Surrealism
Walking is a core element of canonical Surrealist texts, such as Aragon's Le Paysan de Paris (1926), Breton's Nadja (1928) and Philippe Soupault's Last Nights of Paris (1928). For the Surrealists, walking was 'a medium through which to enter into contact with the unconscious part of the territory.':79 From 'unplanned group walks through Paris to Meret Oppenheim's fabled walks on high ledges',:36 walking played a central role in surrealist practice.
Surrealist deambulations aimed for 'the achievement of a state of hypnosis by walking, a disorienting loss of control.':79 In one ill-fated deambulation, André Breton, Louis Aragon, Max Morise, and Roger Vitrac traveled to Blois, a town selected at random from a map, and set off for a walk in the countryside, during which they made observations and experimented with automatic writings.:36 The walk ended in 'mounting hostility, fatigue, and disorientation', though for the Surrealists this was 'hardly disappointing, no matter how narrow its range, because it probed the boundaries between waking life and dream life'.
The Letterist and Situationist Internationals
The Situationist International was formed in 1957 by members of the Letterist International, The International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and the London Psychogeographical Society.:29 These groups, and particularly the Letterists, had started to explore the potential of walking as a revolutionary and artistic practice. The Situationist International, which cited the Dadaists and Surrealists as key influences,:181 continued to develop walking tactics that have been influential to contemporary artists and activists.
Essential to their programme was the development of the Letterist practice of the dérive. Dérive, which literally means drift in French, is an intentional method of exploring, understanding and participating in the urban landscape. Unlike the absurdity of the Dada excursion, or the aimlessness of Surrealist deambulations, the dérive follows certain procedures in order to understand and intervene in the urban environment. The Situationists were interested in both the internal and external effects of the dérive: the walker was meant to study the world around them and experience an internal sense of emotional disorientation. In many cases, disorientation was achieved with the aid of alcohol. In this way, it is essential to the development of psychogeography.
Neo-avant-garde
Fluxus
For Fluxus, walking fit into a larger strategy of making art out of everyday experiences. Fluxus artists defamiliarized the everyday by calling attention to overlooked details and emphasised simplicity, presence in time, and the unity of art and life. Art historian and critic Lori Waxman contrasts the psychoanalytical individualism of Surrealism and overt politics of the Situationists with a more experimental, collective ethos in Fluxus. By creating participatory works and scores for other artists to follow, Fluxus expanded how walking could be considered as an art practice. Benjamin Patterson exemplifies this approach with a piece called Stand Erect in his artists' book Methods and Processes (1961). The text piece describes the process of walking in a set of instructions that are both accurate and all but impossible to follow. One particularly influential piece is La Monte Young's 1960 Composition 1960 #10: 'Draw a straight line and follow it.'
Dematerialization and Sculpture in the Expanded Field
Richard Long's A Line Made by Walking (1967) — a photograph depicting 'a patch of grass Long trampled underfoot through a repetitive walking practice' — is 'routinely cited as the first work of walking art'.:5:26 Rosalind Krauss includes Long's work in her discussion of sculpture in the expanded field.
Lucy Lippard identifies A Line Made by Walking as part of the dematerialization of art. Lippard and John Chandler identify two strains of dematerialized art: art as idea and art as action. Walking art often falls into the latter category — art as action. Lippard cites Stanley Brouwn as an artist whose walking art stems from the dematerialization of conceptual art. The following piece from 1962, quoted in its entirety, illustrates Brouwn's approach: 'a walk from a to b.' She also includes Vito Acconci, whose Following Piece (1969), saw Acconci executing the following instructions for nearly a month: Each day I pick out, at random, a person walking in the street. I follow a different person every day; I keep following until that person enters a private place (home, office, etc) where I can’t get in. The same year Yoko Ono created Rape (1969), a 'candid recording' in which a camera crew pursues a foreign woman through London, following her into her apartment until she collapses, terrified, in the corner. The well-known photographs that comprise the work were re-staged after the fact.
Contemporary Practices
Since the early 2000s there has been an increased interest in walking as an artistic practice. This has been exemplified by the establishment of a variety of walking networks, for example, the Walking Artists Network.
Major themes and motifs
Psychogeography
Merlin Coverly has argued that the playful, avant-garde origins of the dérive ultimately resisted Debord's call for rigor, with the vague definition of psychogeography allowing numerous artists to identify with the practice without yielding many tangible results. Other scholars have identified tangible results, for example Morag Rose identifies 'three brands of contemporary psychogeography: literary, activist and creative', which overlap and intersect.:81
Examples of contemporary psychogeography include Manchester's Loiterers Resistance Movement, which Rose founded in 2006 and is 'the most consistently active psychogeography group in the United Kingdom.':81Paul Harfleet's Pansy Project, in which the artist plants pansies at locations where he has been subjected to homophobic slurs and documents them online. Artist Blake Morris has created site-specific memory palaces, such as his Former Fresnans project in Fresno, California, to record memories of walks.
Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage continues to inform aesthetic and spiritual interpretations of walking and artists take advantage of these strong associations. Hamish Fulton followed an ancient route from Winchester to Canterbury for his 165-mile walk, The Pilgrim's Way (1971). Fulton has also explored non-Western spiritual walking, as in Kora (2009), which references the Tibetan Kora — a circumambulatory meditation or pilgrimage.
Protests and processions
Protests and processions are a frequent reference point for walking artists, whether walking solo or with a group. For The Modern Procession (2002), Francis Alÿs borrowed the trappings of an elaborate religious procession to ritually move works from MoMA in Manhattan to Queens. Following a Peruvian brass band, palanquins bearing (replica) works from MoMA's collection were carried by over 150 volunteers through the streets of New York City and across the Queensboro Bridge.
In 2011, Hamish Fulton staged Slowalk (In support of Ai Weiwei) as a protest against the artist's imprisonment. Slowalk was a collective piece in which ninety-nine participants attempted to silently traverse Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in precisely thirty minutes. The protest coincided with Ai Weiwei's exhibition Sunflower Seeds, also at the Tate.
In 2012, Clare Qualmann devised Perambulator, a 'mass processional' of people pushing strollers and prams through the streets of London, in order to highlight 'the inhospitable environment for pram walking' in London. In 2014, she created another version of the walk in Scotland, as part of Deveron Project's Slow Marathon in Huntly, Scotland.:121
Regina José Galindo's Who Can Erase the Traces? (2003) protests an unconstitutional election, but does so with a track of bloody footprints between government buildings.
Following
Following is another strategy used by walking artists. As Debbie Kent points out, The idea of artists following strangers has a long heritage, as well as a natural affinity with the city, where anonymity is the rule and it is easy to hide in the crowds. Its ancestor can be found in The Man of the Crowd, an 1840 short story by Edgar Allan Poe, in which the narrator pursues a mysterious stranger through the streets of London – then the biggest city in the world – for no apparent reason. in 1980, Sophie Calle followed a man for thirteen days in Venice and noted his movements like a detective. Eventually she is discovered, but continues the project, which becomes the artists' book Suite Vénitienne in 1983 and an exhibition in 1996.
Artist Alisa Oleva applies following as a strategy in a variety of works. In one piece she 'mapped her explorations of one of Moscow’s “sleeping districts” (the residential zones where the vast majority of the city’s workers live) by following commuters home from a metro station.'
Endurance
Endurance is a component of many walking artists' practice. Guido van der Werve is an artist and marathon runner whose work explores repetition, endurance, and exhaustion. In 2011 he completed Nummer dertient, effugio C: you're always only half a day away, in which he ran laps around his house for twelve hours. Other artists test their endurance over great distances. This is the case in Two Lovers — the Great Wall Walk (1988) by performance artists Marina Abramović and Ulay. The two walked from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and, after ninety days, met in the middle, embraced, and then parted ways to complete their journey from end to end.
Pushing and pulling
Pushing and pulling often accompany walking, especially for artists interested in endurance or absurdity. David Hammons walked down the streets of New York City, kicking a metal bucket, in his work Phat Free (1995–1999). Alÿs pushed an ice block down the streets of Mexico City until it melted in Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing (1997). In House and Universe (2012–2013), Mary Mattingly bundled all of her belongings into a massive ball, which she then dragged through the streets behind her.
Migration and borders
Migration and borders are frequent themes for walking artists since they represent extreme cases of mobility and its limit. Janine Antoni and Paul Ramirez-Jonas explore politics and power dynamics in their piece Migration (1999). The video piece shows the barefoot artists following literally in one another's footsteps on a beach, obliterating the other's footprint with each step. Francis Alÿs created The Green Line (Sometimes Doing Something Poetic Can Become Political, and Sometimes Doing Something Political Can Become Poetic) (2004) by dripping green paint from a can while he walked the green line that separates Jewish and Arab quarters of Jerusalem.
Deveron Project's Slow Marathon, a 'mass participation walk of twenty-six miles', has been examining borders and migration since Mihret Kebede and Claudia Zieske developed it in 2013.:108 Kebede originally wanted to walk from her home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Scotland, but 'the combination of visa restrictions, harsh desert terrain, and the dangerous landscape' made the journey impossible. Instead she developed Slow Marathon: A 5,850 Miles Walk from Addis to Scotland and Back (2013), 'an accumulative marathon and shoelace exchange that combined the steps of a variety of participants from Huntly, Addis Ababa and other locations throughout the world to walk the 5,850 miles that make up the journey.' The project 'set up an intercultural exchange that interrogated borders and boundaries – physical, bureaucratic and imagined – through the act of walking'. The project has since occurred seven times with different artists. In 2018 it occurred simultaneously in Gaza and Huntly, a collaboration between artists May Murad in Palestine and Rachel Ashton in Scotland. Murad was unable to leave Palestine, and the limited terrain her group was able to walk, highlighted the different 'experiences of boundaries, borders, and access to land.':120
Mapping
Mapping serves as a reference point as well as a form of documentation for many walking artists. John Baldessari's California Map Project (1969) imagines that the text on a map is actually a feature of the landscape, as if viewed from above. The artist walked the land to spell CALIFORNIA in large letters made from ephemeral materials in the geographic locations where those letters appeared on a map. The Naked City: Illustration de l'hypothèse des plaques tournantes en psychogéographique (1957) by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn fragments and reconfigures a map of Paris to convey the experience of walking, or drifting, through the city. The map reflects what Debord found interesting rather than the city's actual geography. Richard Long sometimes traces his (often circular) walks onto conventional maps, as in Cerne Abbas Walk (1975). Long also makes experimental maps like Wind Line (1985) and Dartmoor Wind Circle (1988) which spatially represent the direction of the wind during his walk.
Footprints
Footprints are a direct way for artists to leave a visible trace of their walking activity. Rudolf Stingel left his footprints in a Styrofoam slab by treading in boots soaked with acetone. Stuart Horodner comments that the untitled work from 2000 recalls the iconic images of the first footprints on the moon. In a series called Dirt Events, Curtis Mitchell fixes his footprints by caking dirt onto a store-bought rug and then walking on it until the rug reemerges. Gutai artist Akira Kanayama's 1956 work Ashiato (footprints) was a continuous sheet of vinyl with uniform painted footprints, running nearly 100 meters through the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition in Ashiya Park.
Footwear
Footwear has also been used by artists to represent walking or to stand in for an absent walker. In her series 100 Boots (1971–1973), Eleanor Antin photographed formations of empty boots to reference the Vietnam War. In his score,Taking a Shoe for a Walk 1989, Allan Kaprow calls for 'pulling a shoe on a string through the city' and bandaging one's own shoes as the shoe being dragged wears out. The art collective GRAV invited passers-by to wear spring-loaded shoes during their event, A Day in the Street (1966), which was designed to encourage more active engagement with the city. Marcus Coates made custom footwear for his 1999 piece Stoat, for which each shoe is a short wooden board balanced on two wooden pegs, which Coates lashed to his feet. Video shows the artist wobbling and shuffling down a gravel path.
Group walks and guided walks
Carmen Papalia, a blind artist who creates participatory art, developed the work Blind Field Shuttle (2017) in which participants walk in a single-file line with their eyes closed, maintaining physical contact with one another, to follow Papalia on a guided walk. Simon Pope brings along one walker at a time for his series Memorial Walks (2007–2012). Participants were asked to view a landscape painting before walking and then to envision a particular tree from the painting on their walk, mentally transplanting it into the countryside. Mowry Baden creates interactive sculptures that guide the way the viewer walks through them. His work K Walk (1969) is a set of metal bars that perfectly match the gait of Baden's wife but impede anyone else who tries to walk through the sculpture.
Documenting walking art
Artists often use walking as a process for creating work in other media, or present their walks through documentation, rather than the walk itself. Francis Alÿs, who often uses walking as part of his artistic process, has noted that any work a visual artist is likely to produce, I would say more than 90% of its perception will happen through documentation and not the live event, documentation being a film, a photograph, a text, any possible media.:7 Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, artists that helped establish walking as an art form, are particularly known for their use of walking to produce work in other artistic media.:5 Fulton, however, has argued that any document or artwork based on a walk 'will contradict the spirit of the walk', noting, '[e]ither you completed the walk or you didn't, and if two people make the same walk they will experience it in different ways.':192 Other artists use video to capture the duration of their walks, like David Hammons. Janet Cardiff and her partner George Bures Miller also work in video, but they are especially known for sound pieces, including audio walks.
Notable walking artists
Marina Abramović
Vito Acconci
Francis Alÿs
Janine Antoni
Janet Cardiff
Alec Finlay
Hamish Fulton
Sharon Harper
Deirdre Heddon
Akira Kanayama
Richard Long
Tom Marioni
George Bures Miller
Curtis Mitchell
François Morelli
Yoko Ono
Clare Qualmann
Ulay
Richard Wentworth
See also Category:Walking artists.
Organizations
Loiterers Resistance Movement
Walking Artists Network
The Walking Institute
Exhibitions
'Walking and Thinking and Walking'. 1996, Louisiana Art Museum, Denmark.
Les Figures de la marche, un siècle d'arpenteurs de Rodin à Neuman. 2000-2001. Musée Picasso, Antibes.
Horodner, Stuart, curator. Walk Ways. 2002–2004, Independent Curators International. traveling exhibition.
Walk On: 40 Years of Walking. 2013, Pitshangar Manor Gallery, Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Midlands Art Centre Birmingham, Plymouth City Museum and Gallery.
Artists Walks and the Persistence of Peripateticism. 2013, Dorsky Curatorial Gallery, New York City.
Walking Artists Network. The Walking Encyclopaedia. 2014, Airspace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent.
Walking Sculpture 1967-2015. 2015, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Qualmann, Clare and Amy Sharrocks. WALKING WOMEN. 2016, Somerset House, London and Edinburgh Fringe.
Loitering with Intent. 2016, People's History Museum, Manchester.
Adams, Rachel, curator. Wanderlust: Actions, Traces, Journeys, 1967–2017. 2017–2018, University at Buffalo Art Galleries and Des Moines Art Center, traveling exhibition.
S.T.E.P. 2018. Flux Factory and Queens Museum, New York City.
References
Walking art | 0.78544 | 0.961433 | 0.755148 |
Triple helix model of innovation | The triple helix model of innovation refers to a set of interactions between academia (the university), industry and government, to foster economic and social development, as described in concepts such as the knowledge economy and knowledge society. In innovation helical framework theory, each sector is represented by a circle (helix), with overlapping showing interactions. The initial modelling has advanced from two dimensions to show more complex interactions, for example over time. The framework was first theorized by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff in the 1990s, with the publication of "The Triple Helix, University-Industry-Government Relations: A laboratory for Knowledge-Based Economic Development". Interactions between universities, industries and governments have given rise to new intermediary institutions, such as technology transfer offices and science parks, and Etzkowitz and Ledersdorff theorized the relationship between the three sectors and explained the emergence of these new hybrid organizations. The triple helix innovation framework has been widely adopted and as applied by policy makers has participated in the transformation of each sector.
Three components of the model
The triple helix model of innovation, as theorized by Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, is based on the interactions between the three following elements and their associated 'initial role': universities engaging in basic research, industries producing commercial goods and governments that are regulating markets. As interactions increase within this framework, each component evolves to adopt some characteristics of the other institution, which then gives rise to hybrid institutions. Bilateral interactions exist between university, industry and government.
University-industry interactions
Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff argue that the initial role of universities is to provide education to individuals and basic research. Therefore, interactions between university and industry revolve initially around those two elements. In a linear model of innovation, universities are supposed to provide the research which industry will build upon to produce commercial goods. The other interactions take place through the involvement of industry managers and university faculty in both sectors. According to Etzkowitz, the transfer of people between university and industry constitutes a very important transfer of knowledge. This can be a permanent move in one direction or the other, or in other cases, entire careers spent between the two spheres. He gives the example of Carl Djerassi, a research director for a pharmaceutical company who joined Stanford University while continuing his industrial activity.
However, other scholars have pointed out that consulting activities of faculty members could also have drawbacks, like a reduced focus on educating the students, and potential conflict of interests relating to the use of university resources for the benefit of industry. Additional transfer of knowledge between university and industry happens through informal communication, conferences or industrial interest in university publications. Another type of interaction, for example, is the creation of co-op programs like the MIT-General Electric course which aims at integrating an industry approach into the students' curricula.
University-government interactions
The strength of the interactions between the government and universities depends on the government's general relationship to and policy towards higher education. Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff's model uses a spectrum to define the extent of these interactions. On the one hand, when higher education is largely public, as in continental western Europe, the government has a higher influence on universities and the research they conduct by being the main source of funding. On the other end of the spectrum, typically associated with the United States, universities still receive some government funding but overall have a higher degree of independence from government influence. However, the two ends of this spectrum are used as ideal-types that are not necessarily reflective of the reality. The changing circumstances can push the government to create closer ties with academia, for example in wartime, and/or through funding of strategic disciplines, like physics. For example, in the United States, the Department of Defense has extensively funded physics research during World War II and the Cold War. Another example of state involvement in higher education is the establishment of new universities, as through the Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 encouraging the creation of land-grant colleges. Cornell University, the University of Florida and Purdue University are three of the seventy-six institutions created under the land-grant.
Government-industry interactions
The relationship between governments and industry depends on the government's attitude towards the market. In liberal economies the role of the government will be limited to preventing market failures. On the other hand, where the government is more involved in the economy, the government's role is the regulation of the industry. These are also two ends of a spectrum, leaving room for substantial variation, based on circumstances and disciplines. For example, as pointed out by Bhaven Sampat, in the 1960s, the government created a regulation to prevent patenting by or licensing to industry of university research funded by the National Institutes of Health. One key role of the government in its interaction with industry is the establishment of intellectual property law and its enforcement.
Strength of interaction
Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff initially argued that the strength of the interactions between governments, industry and university depends on which component is the driving force in the framework. In a statist model, a strong state is driving interactions between the three components in a top-down implementation. It creates stronger ties and a more integrated model. In a laissez-faire model, in which the industry and market forces are the leading forces, the ties are weaker and each institution tends to remain very independent. However, the distinction between the two models is not always clear cut, as the government can choose to adopt a strong or a weak stance depending on the context and the industry. Strength of interactions can also vary according to the development of a country, with a silo model predominating in an underdeveloped country, moderate interactions developing in a middle-income country due to the push for economic growth on the one hand and the pull for a competitive market-driven technological advancement on the other, and strong interactions developing in a developed country, for example in the form of a science park. In a recent paper, Etzkowitz emphasized that the shift towards a knowledge-based society has given a bigger role to universities. Indeed, as innovation is increasingly based on scientific knowledge, the role of universities as creators of knowledge is more valued. As a result, he argues that university, industry and government are more equal, and that no particular element is necessarily the driving force of the triple helix model of innovation.
Evolution and hybridization
The triple helix model of innovation also blurred the boundaries of the traditional basic roles of university, industry and government. According to Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, this marks the second step in the triple helix of innovation framework. For example, universities increasingly take part in commercial activity through patenting and licensing, moving beyond the production of basic research. The next step is the emergence of intermediaries between the three elements as well as the hybridization of the three entities. Nevertheless, each entity retains a strong primacy in its original field of expertise: the university remains the main source of knowledge production, industry is the primary vehicle of commercialization and the government retains its regulatory role.
Technology transfer offices have been established by universities to foster the transformation of university basic or applied research with a commercial value into commercial goods. One of the aims of TTOs is to create some revenues for the university, thus enhancing its role as an economic actor. However, the average profitability of TTOs remains very low. For example, the revenues earned through the licensing of patents by TTOs in American universities are, on average, ten times larger than for European TTOs according to the Innovation Policy Platform. Science parks have also emerged as the result of the collaboration of industries and universities with the government. They can stem from the initiative of an industrial region to modernize itself with the impulse of a university. On the other hand, they can be the result of a university initiative to attract industry, as was the case with the development of Stanford's science park around the university or the Research Triangle in North Carolina.
The 'entrepreneurial university' is another hybrid element which Etzkowitz defines around the following elements: the capitalization of knowledge, strong ties with industry and governments, a high degree of independence, and permanent evolution of the relationships between universities, industry and government. Etzkowitz recognizes MIT as a great example of an 'entrepreneurial university'.
Extensions of the model
Quadruple helix model
Building on the triple helix model, the quadruple helix model adds a fourth component to the framework of interactions between university, industry and government: the public, consisting of civil society and the media. It was first suggested in 2009 by Elias G. Carayannis and David F.J. Campbell. The framework aims to bridge the gaps between innovation and civil society, and it claims that under the triple helix model, the emerging technologies do not always match the demands and needs of society, thus limiting their potential impact. The framework consequently emphasizes a societal responsibility of universities, in addition to their role of educating and conducting research. The quadruple helix is the approach that the European Union has intended to take for the development of a competitive knowledge-based society. Subsequently, the quadruple helix has been applied to European Union-sponsored projects and policies, including the EU-MACS (EUropean MArket for Climate Services) project, a follow-up project of the European Research and Innovation Roadmap for Climate Services, and the European Commission's Open Innovation 2.0 (OI2) policy for a digital single market that supports open innovation.
Quintuple helix model
The quintuple helix model was co-developed by Elias G. Carayannis and David F.J. Campbell in 2010. It is based on the triple and quadruple helix models and adds as fifth helix the natural environment. The quintuple helix views the natural environments of society and the economy as drivers for knowledge production and innovation, thus defining socio-ecological opportunities for the knowledge society and knowledge economy, such as innovation to address sustainable development, including climate change. The quintuple helix can be described in terms of the models of knowledge that it extends, the five subsystems (helices) it incorporates, and the steps involved in the circulation of knowledge. How to define both the quadruple and quintuple helices has been debated, and some researchers see them as additional helices, while others see them as different types of helix which overarch the previous helices.
Triple helix and policy making
The triple helix model has been used as a lens through which evolving relationships between university, industry and government can be analyzed. However, according to Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, it can also be a policy making tool. It has been applied for both purposes by government organizations, such as the United States Department of Energy. Etzkowitz argues that after the end of the Soviet Era, triple helix inspired policies were implemented in Eastern Europe to promote their growth. In Sweden, the triple helix policy aimed at tying together innovation initiatives at different scales to increase their overall efficiency. The triple helix model has also been applied to developing countries and regions.
Criticism of the model
The triple helix model as a policy-making tool for economic growth and regional development has been criticized by many scholars. One main criticism is that Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff's framework was developed within Western developed countries, which means that it is based on a particular set of infrastructures and under circumstances. For example, the model takes for granted that knowledge intensive activities are linked to economic growth, that intellectual property rights will be protected, and that the state has a democratic and market oriented culture. Further scholarly criticism of the model focuses on the conditions that enable the implementation of a triple helix innovation policy. It argues that Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff's model is too vague and takes for granted those necessary preconditions within their model. Therefore, according to critics, the triple helix model is not a relevant policy making tool for developing countries where at least one of these conditions is missing. However, others have argued that the triple helix model is capable of both describing the situation in developing countries and is useful for planning policy.
See also
Innovation economics
Innovation system
Knowledge economy
Knowledge society
Linear model of innovation
Quadruple and quintuple innovation helix framework
References
Innovation economics | 0.764511 | 0.987708 | 0.755113 |
Connectivism | Connectivism is a theoretical framework for understanding learning in a digital age. It emphasizes how internet technologies such as web browsers, search engines, wikis, online discussion forums, and social networks contributed to new avenues of learning. Technologies have enabled people to learn and share information across the World Wide Web and among themselves in ways that were not possible before the digital age. Learning does not simply happen within an individual, but within and across the networks.
What sets connectivism apart from theories such as constructivism is the view that "learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing". Connectivism sees knowledge as a network and learning as a process of pattern recognition. Connectivism has similarities with Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD) and Engeström's activity theory. The phrase "a learning theory for the digital age" indicates the emphasis that connectivism gives to technology's effect on how people live, communicate, and learn. Connectivism is an integration of principles related to chaos, network, complexity, and self-organization theories.
History
Connectivism was first introduced in 2004 on a blog post which was later published as an article in 2005 by George Siemens. It was later expanded in 2005 by two publications, Siemens' Connectivism: Learning as Network Creation and Stephen Downes' An Introduction to Connective Knowledge. Both works received significant attention in the blogosphere and an extended discourse has followed on the appropriateness of connectivism as a learning theory for the digital age. In 2007, Bill Kerr entered into the debate with a series of lectures and talks on the matter, as did Forster, both at the Online Connectivism Conference at the University of Manitoba. In 2008, in the context of digital and e-learning, connectivism was reconsidered and its technological implications were discussed by Siemens' and Ally.
Nodes and links
The central aspect of connectivism is the metaphor of a network with nodes and connections. In this metaphor, a node is anything that can be connected to another node such as an organization, information, data, feelings, and images. Connectivism recognizes three node types: neural, conceptual (internal) and external. Connectivism sees learning as the process of creating connections and expanding or increasing network complexity. Connections may have different directions and strength. In this sense, a connection joining nodes A and B which goes from A to B is not the same as one that goes from B to A. There are some special kinds of connections such as "self-join" and pattern. A self-join connection joins a node to itself and a pattern can be defined as "a set of connections appearing together as a single whole".
The idea of organisation as cognitive systems where knowledge is distributed across nodes originated from the Perceptron (Artificial neuron) in an Artificial Neural Network, and is directly borrowed from Connectionism, "a software structure developed based on concepts inspired by biological functions of brain; it aims at creating machines able to learn like human".
The network metaphor allows a notion of "know-where" (the understanding of where to find the knowledge when it is needed) to supplement to the ones of "know-how" and "know-what" that make the cornerstones of many theories of learning.
As Downes states: "at its heart, connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks".
Principles
Principles of connectivism include:
Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
Learning is more critical than knowing.
Maintaining and nurturing connections is needed to facilitate continuous learning. When the interaction time between the actors of a learning environment is not enough, the learning networks cannot be consolidated.
Perceiving connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill.
Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of learning activities.
Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
Teaching methods
Summarizing connectivist teaching and learning, Downes states: "to teach is to model and demonstrate, to learn is to practice and reflect."
In 2008, Siemens and Downes delivered an online course called "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge". It covered connectivism as content while attempting to implement some of their ideas. The course was free to anyone who wished to participate, and over 2000 people worldwide enrolled. The phrase "Massive Open Online Course" (MOOC) describes this model. All course content was available through RSS feeds, and learners could participate with their choice of tools: threaded discussions in Moodle, blog posts, Second Life and synchronous online meetings. The course was repeated in 2009 and in 2011.
At its core, connectivism is a form of experiential learning which prioritizes the set of formed by actions and experience over the idea that knowledge is propositional.
Criticisms
The idea that connectivism is a new theory of learning is not widely accepted. Verhagen argued that connectivism is rather a "pedagogical view."
The lack of comparative literature reviews in Connectivism papers complicate evaluating how Connectivism relates to prior theories, such as socially distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995), which explored how connectionist ideas could be applied to social systems. Classical theories of cognition such as activity theory (Vygotsky, Leont'ev, Luria, and others starting in the 1920s) proposed that people are embedded actors, with learning considered via three features – a subject (the learner), an object (the task or activity) and tool or mediating artifacts. Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1962) claimed that people learn by watching others. Social learning theory (Miller and Dollard) elaborated this notion. Situated cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Greeno & Moore, 1993) alleged that knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts; knowledge and learning that requires thinking on the fly rather than the storage and retrieval of conceptual knowledge. Community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) asserted that the process of sharing information and experiences with the group enables members to learn from each other. Collective intelligence (Lévy, 1994) described a shared or group intelligence that emerges from collaboration and competition.
Kerr claims that although technology affects learning environments, existing learning theories are sufficient. Kop and Hill conclude that while it does not seem that connectivism is a separate learning theory, it "continues to play an important role in the development and emergence of new pedagogies, where control is shifting from the tutor to an increasingly more autonomous learner."
AlDahdouh examined the relation between connectivism and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and the results, unexpectedly, revealed that ANN researchers use constructivism principles to teach ANN with labeled training data. However, he argued that connectivism principles are used to teach ANN only when the knowledge is unknown.
Ally recognizes that the world has changed and become more networked, so learning theories developed prior to these global changes are less relevant. However, he argues that, "What is needed is not a new stand-alone theory for the digital age, but a model that integrates the different theories to guide the design of online learning materials.".
Chatti notes that Connectivism misses some concepts, which are crucial for learning, such as reflection, learning from failures, error detection and correction, and inquiry. He introduces the Learning as a Network (LaaN) theory which builds upon connectivism, complexity theory, and double-loop learning. LaaN starts from the learner and views learning as the continuous creation of a personal knowledge network (PKN).
Schwebel of Torrens University notes that Connectivism provides limited account for how learning occurs online. Conceding that learning occurs across networks, he introduces a paradox of change. If Connectivism accounts for this changing in networks, and these networks change so drastically, as technology has in the past, then theses like this must account for that change too, making it no longer the same theory. Furthermore, citing Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Schwebel notes that the nodes can impede on the types of learning that can occur, leading to issues with democratised education, as content presented within the network will both be limited to how the network can handle information, and what content is likely to be presented within the network through behaviourist style principles of reinforcement, as providers are likely to recirculate, reproduce and reiterate information that is rewarded through things such as likes.
See also
References
External links
Web Presentation (Oral/Slide show) on Connectivism
Connectivism: Learning Theory or Pastime for the Self-Amused?
Learning theory (education)
Philosophy of education
Technology integration models | 0.768152 | 0.983021 | 0.755109 |
Dominant culture | A dominant culture is a cultural practice that is dominant within a particular political, social or economic entity, in which multiple cultures co-exist. It may refer to a language, religion or ritual practices, social value and/or social custom. These features are often a norm for an entire society. An individual achieves dominance by being perceived as belonging to that majority culture which has a significant presence in institutions relating to communication, education, artistic expression, law, government and business. The concept of "dominant culture" is generally used in academic discourse in fields such as communication, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.
In a society, culture is established and directed by the individuals with most power (hegemony). In a culture, a group of people that have the ability to hold power over social institutions and influence the rest of the society's beliefs and actions is considered dominant. A dominant culture, is established in a society by a group of individuals that direct the ruling ideas, values, and beliefs that become the dominant worldview of a society. Individuals from the dominant culture spread their dominant ideologies through institutions such as education, religion, and politics. A dominant culture makes use of media and laws to spread their ideologies as well. Furthermore, a dominant culture can be promoted deliberately and by the suppression of minority cultures or subcultures.
The culture that is dominant within a particular geopolitical entity can change over time in response to internal or external factors, but one is usually very resilient. Antonio Gramsci has written that the masses are in the grip of a monolithic ruling class. However, the overall picture that Gramsci provides is not a static, closed system of ruling-class domination. Rather, he states that a society is in constant process, where the creation of counter-hegemonies remains a live option.
The concept of a dominant culture, or the concept of hegemony, originated in Ancient Greece. Although Vladimir Lenin, a politician and a political theorist, defined the concept as “Domination,” Gramsci redefined it as “An intellectual and moral leadership directed by contradictory political and, cultural agents and organizations.” He called these organizations “organic and traditional intellectuals” which represented the interest of the working class.
Examples of dominant cultures
United States
In the United States, for example, a distinction is often made between the indigenous culture of Native Americans, and a dominant culture that may be described as "WASP", "Anglo", "white", "middle class", and so on. Some Native Americans are seen as being part of the culture of their own tribe, community, or family, while simultaneously participating in the dominant culture of America as a whole. Also, ethnic groups are said to exist in the United States in relation to a dominant culture, generally seen as English-speaking, of European ancestry, and Protestant Christian faith. Asian Americans, Jews, African Americans, Latinos, and Deaf people, among others, are seen as facing a choice to oppose, be opposed by, assimilate into, acculturate (i.e. exist alongside), or otherwise react to the dominant culture.
Interactions between dominant culture and co-culture
Co-culture consists of minority groups, or groups whose beliefs and values differ from the dominant culture. Minority groups such as LGBTQ+, women, and black people or African American members, for example, can experience negative effects resulting from their interaction with the dominant culture. Minority groups can be victims of stress produced by the dominant culture. Minority stress can be described as the product that results from the differences between the minority and dominant values. Furthermore, minority stress is the outcome of the conflict that minority group members experience with their social environment.
LGBTQ+ Community
Members from the LGBTQ+ community, that live in a heterosexist society, are susceptible and inclined to suffer from chronic stress due to their stigmatization. Minority stressors include internalized homophobia, stigma and experiences of violence and discrimination. Internalized homophobia can be described as an LGBTQ+ member's disposition to societal negative attitudes towards the self while stigma refers to an LGBTQ+ member's expectation of discrimination and rejection.
Women
Women, as many other co-culture groups, are greatly affected by the dominant culture that surround them. The dominant culture tend to perceive women as less worthy of economic and educational opportunities. Also, In many cultures, women are expected to behave in a certain way and be responsible for tasks that men are not as they are also subject to double standards. These interactions can lead to unfavorable and negative effects on women. For example, women can feel restricted from expressing freely, fighting for their aspirations, and trying new activities.
Black and African American community
Globally, black or African American communities have been affected by the dominant cultures. In different countries, in order for black people to incorporate into the cultural hegemony, they were frequently isolated from their own cultural group, or an attempt was made to eradicate their culture completely. Many examples of cultural alienation and annihilation can be found across black and African American communities.
See also
References
Cultural concepts
Anthropology
Cultural studies | 0.769567 | 0.981174 | 0.755079 |
Colonial mentality | A colonial mentality is an internalized ethnic, linguistic, or cultural inferiority complex imposed on peoples as a result of colonization, i.e. being invaded and conquered by another nation state and gaslit, often through the educational system, into linguistic imperialism and cultural assimilation through an instilled belief that the language and culture of the colonizer are superior to their own heritage languages and cultures. The term has been used by postcolonial scholars to discuss the transgenerational effects of colonialism present in former colonies following decolonization. It is commonly used as an operational concept for framing ideological domination in historical colonial experiences. In psychology, colonial mentality has been used to explain instances of collective depression, anxiety, and other widespread mental health issues in populations that have experienced colonization.
Notable Marxist influences on the postcolonial concept of colonial mentality include Frantz Fanon's works on the fracturing of the colonial psyche through Western cultural domination, as well as the concept of cultural hegemony developed by Italian Communist Party Founder Antonio Gramsci.
Criticism of the colonial mentality, however, is not solely a Marxist concept. Anti-Marxist nationalist intellectuals, such as Douglas Hyde, Saunders Lewis, Patrick Pearse, Máirtín Ó Direáin, and John Lorne Campbell, who have also favored political, cultural, literary, and linguistic decolonisation, have also denounced the colonial mentality as a serious problem among their own people. As a solution, they recommended heritage language learning and cultural nationalism; meaning a combination of reviving the best elements of the pre-colonial past and turning away from only emulating the colonizer in favor of looking at the culture and literature of the whole world, especially by those engaged in literature and the arts.
Influences from Marxism
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon's Marxist writings on imperialism, racism, and decolonizing struggles have influenced post-colonial discussions about the internalization of colonial prejudice. Fanon first tackled the problem of, what he called, the "colonial alienation of the person" as a mental health issue through psychiatric analysis.
In The Wretched of the Earth (French: Les Damnés de la Terre), published in 1961, Fanon used psychiatry to analyze how French colonization and the carnage of the Algerian War had mentally affected Algerians' self-identity and mental health. The book argues that during the period of colonization there was a subtle and constant mental pathology that developed within the colonial psyche. Fanon argued that the colonial psyche is fractured by the lack of mental and material homogeneity as a result of the colonial power's Western culture being pressured onto the colonized population despite the existing material differences between them.
Here Fanon expands traditional Marxist understandings of historical materialism to explore how the dissonance between material existence and culture functions to transform the colonized people through the mold of the Western bourgeoisie. This meant that the native Algerian came to view their own traditional culture and identity through the lens of colonial prejudice. Fanon observed that average Algerians internalized and then openly repeated remarks that were in line with the institutionalized racist culture of the French colonizers; dismissing their own culture as backward due to the internalization of Western colonial ideologies.
According to Fanon this results in a destabilizing existential conflict within the colonized culture:"In the West, the family circle, the effects of education, and the relatively high standard of living of the working class provide a more or less efficient protection against the harmful action of these pastimes. But in an African country, where mental development is uneven, where the violent collision of two worlds has considerably shaken old traditions and thrown the universe of the perceptions out of focus, the impressionability and sensibility of the Young African are at the mercy of the various assaults made upon them by the very Nature of Western Culture."
British Empire
Wales
A person who suffers from excessive Anglophilia, enthusiasm for the British Empire, and embarrassment about Welsh identity is traditionally known in Welsh culture as a Dic Siôn Dafydd.
Anti-Marxist and Welsh nationalist Saunders Lewis fought a decades-long battle against the Far Left leadership of Plaid Cymru, the political party he co-founded, because of his belief that cultural nationalism was a preferable cause than Socialism. Unlike the Plaid Cymru leadership, Lewis believed that linguistic and cultural decolonisation needed to precede Welsh devolution or political independence. Lewis called, most of all, for the revival of the Welsh people's increasingly threatened heritage language and moving Welsh-language literature and theatre towards the whole Western canon and away from only emulating English literature. Otherwise, Lewis predicted as early as 1918, "the Welsh Parliament would [only] be an enlarged County Council."
Ireland
In British-ruled Ireland, Irish people who displayed snobbery, extreme Anglophilia, or mimicked the English nobility and felt a cultural cringe regarding Irish culture, Irish nationalism, Gaelic games, and the Gaelic revival, were termed Jackeens if they were Dubliners, West Brits if they were Anglo-Irish or Ulster Scots people, and, if they were Irish Catholics and Gaels, to be suffering from Shoneenism. The most widely accepted etymology of shoneen is (, def. "Little John"), referring to John Bull, the national personification of the British Empire in general and of England in particular.
According to Marcus Tanner, however, the Irish people, like many other invaded, conquered, and colonized peoples before and since, overwhelmingly chose to abandon their heritage language out of a misunderstanding of the benefits of being multilingual and a deep longing for their children to succeed and move up in the world. The commonly quoted proverb in many rural areas during the Victorian era language shift was, "Irish doesn't sell the cow." Ironically, the complete opposite was taking place during the same decades among speakers of minority languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
At the same time, the modern history of the Irish language revival is dated from Protestant Celticist Douglas Hyde's 1892 manifesto The necessity for de-anglicising the Irish nation.
Yet another of the most influential critics of Shoneenism was Easter Rising leader Patrick Pearse, whose ideas on the decolonisation of Ireland's educational system are contained within his essay The Murder Machine.
Also according to Louis de Paor, Pearse's reading of the radically experimental poetry of Walt Whitman and of the French Symbolists led him to introduce Modernist poetry into the Irish language. As a literary critic, Pearse also left behind a very detailed blueprint for the decolonization of Irish literature, particularly in the Irish language.
Louis de Paor writes that Patrick Pearse was "the most perceptive critic and most accomplished poet," of the early Gaelic revival providing "a sophisticated model for a new literature in Irish that would reestablish a living connection with the pre-colonial Gaelic past while resuming its relationship with contemporary Europe, bypassing the monolithic influence of English." For this reason, de Paor has termed the youthful Pearse's execution by a British Army firing squad a catastrophe for Irish language literature.
Following the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War, Ernest Augustus Boyd's 1924 collection Portraits: real and imaginary included "A West Briton", which gave a table of West-Briton responses to certain words:
{|
|-
! Word !! Response
|-
| Sinn Féin || Pro-German
|-
| Irish || Vulgar
|-
| England || Mother-country
|-
| Green || Red
|-
| Nationality || Disloyalty
|-
| Patriotism || O.B.E.
|-
| Self-determination || Czecho-Slovakia
|}
According to Boyd, "The West Briton is the near Englishman ... an unfriendly caricature, the reductio ad absurdum of the least attractive English characteristics. ... The best that can be said ... is that the species is slowly becoming extinct. ... nationalism has become respectable". The opposite of the "West Briton" Boyd called the "synthetic Gael" and is called, more recently, a Plastic Paddy.
Even long after the 1940s Pearse-inspired revival of Modern literature in Irish, however, a colonial mentality in Ireland has repeatedly been accused of continuing to exist and is still being criticized.
For example, Máirtín Ó Direáin's poetry in Connaught Irish, which was written both during and after the Emergency in Dublin, repeatedly displays the horror he felt as he witnessed the escalating collapse of Christian morality, the growing number of, "emasculated men" and the similar loss of feminity in women. Ó Direáin considered all three trends to be rooted in the, or "Uprootedness", of Irish culture and the Irish people, most particularly in long English-speaking parts of the country.
In contrast, Far Left nationalist Máirtín Ó Cadhain's politics were Irish republicanism mixed with Marxism and radical politics, and then tempered with a rhetorical anti-clericalism. In his writings, however, concerning the revival of the Irish language, ÓCadhain was very practical about the Catholic Church in Ireland but demanded greater commitment to the language revival from Roman Catholic priests. It was his view that, as the Church was there anyway, it would be better if the clergy were more willing to address their faithful in the Irish language. He further promoted what he termed the ("Re-Conquest of Ireland"), (meaning both decolonization and re-Gaelicisation) and in response to what he saw as the Irish Government's bureaucratic foot-dragging on both Irish language broadcasting and Irish-medium education, Ó Cadhain was a key figure in the 1969 civil rights movement, . This group has used civil disobedience tactics influenced by Saunders Lewis, the Welsh language activist and co-founder of Plaid Cymru.
More recently, in 2017 Irish Court of Appeals judge Gerard Hogan denounced the growing preference among Irish lawyers to allege that the European Convention of Human Rights has completely superseded the Constitution of Ireland, as a "sort of legal shoneenism".
Scotland
Under to the 1872 Education Act, school attendance was compulsory and only English was taught or tolerated in the schools of both the Lowlands and the Highlands and Islands. As a result, any student who spoke Scots or Scottish Gaelic in the school or on its grounds could expect what Ronald Black calls the, "familiar Scottish experience of being thrashed for speaking [their] native language."
In 1891, An Comunn Gàidhealach was founded in Oban to help preserve the Scottish Gaelic language and its literature and to establish the Royal National Mòd (Am Mòd Nàiseanta Rìoghail), as a festival of Gaelic music, literature, arts, and culture deliberately modelled upon the National Eisteddfod of Wales.
Before serving in the Seaforth Highlanders in British India and during the Fall of France in 1940, however, Gaelic language war poet Aonghas Caimbeul attended the 300-pupil Cross School on the Isle of Lewis after the 1872 Education Act. He later recalled, "A Lowlander, who had not a word of Gaelic, was the schoolmaster. I never had a Gaelic lesson in school, and the impression you got was that your language, people, and tradition had come from unruly, wild, and ignorant tribes and that if you wanted to make your way in the world you would be best to forget them completely. Short of the stories of the German Baron Münchhausen, I have never come across anything as dishonest, untruthful, and inaccurate as the history of Scotland as taught in those days."
Even so, large numbers of the Scottish people, both Highlander and Lowlander, continued to enlist in the British armed forces and the Scottish regiments, through the role in spreading British Colonial rule to other countries, became renowned worldwide as shock troops.
For this reason, literary critic Wilson MacLeod has written that, in post-Culloden Scottish Gaelic literature, anti-colonialist poets such as Duncan Livingstone "must be considered isolated voices. The great majority of Gaelic verse, from the eighteenth century onwards, was steadfastly Pro-British and Pro-Empire, with several poets, including Aonghas Moireasdan and Dòmhnall MacAoidh, enthusiastically asserting the conventual justificatory rationale for imperial expansion, that it was a civilising mission rather than a process of conquest and expropriation. Conversely, there is no evidence that Gaelic poets saw a connection between their own difficult history and the experience of colonised people in other parts of the world."
For this reason, during the final phase of the Second Boer War, Afrikaner residents of Winburg in the former Orange Free State, routinely taunted the Scottish Regiments in the local British Army garrison with a parody of the Jacobite rebel song Bonnie Dundee, which was typically sung in English. The parody celebrated the guerrilla warfare of Boer commando leader Christiaan De Wet.
De Wet he is mounted, he rides up the street
The English skedaddle an A1 retreat!
And the commander swore: They've got through the net
That's been spread with such care for Christiaan De Wet.
There are hills beyond Winburg and Boers on each hill
Sufficient to thwart ten generals' skill
There are stout-hearted burghers 10,000 men set
On following the Mausers of Christian De Wet.
Then away to the hills, to the veld, to the rocks
Ere we own a usurper we'll crouch with the fox
And tremble false Jingoes amidst all your glee
Ye have not seen the last of my Mausers and me!
Colonial India
During the period of European colonial rule in India, Europeans in India typically regarded many aspects Indian culture with disdain and supported colonial rule as a beneficial "civilizing mission". Colonial rule in India was framed as an act which was beneficial to the people of India, rather than a process of political and economic dominance by a small minority of foreigners.
Under colonial rule, many practices were outlawed, such as the practice of forcing widows to immolate themselves (known as sati) with acts being deemed idolatrous being discouraged by Evangelical missionaries, the latter of which has been claimed by some scholars to have played a large role in the developments of the modern definition of Hinduism. These claims base their assumptions on the lack of a unified Hindu identity prior to the period of colonial rule, and modern Hinduism's unprecedented outward focus on a monotheistic Vedanta worldview. These developments have been read as the result of colonial views which discouraged aspects of Indian religions which differed significantly from Christianity. It has been noted that the prominence of the Bhagavad Gita as a primary religious text in Hindu discourse was a historical response to European criticisms of Indian culture. Europeans found that the Gita had more in common with their own Christian Bible, leading to the denouncement of Hindu practices more distantly related to monotheistic world views; with some historians claiming that Indians began to characterize their faith as the equivalent of Christianity in belief (especially in terms of monotheism) and structure (in terms of providing an equivalent primary sacred text).
Hindu nationalism developed in the 19th century as an opposition to European ideological prominence; however, local Indian elites often aimed to make themselves and Indian society modern by "emulating the West". This led to the emergence of what some have termed 'neo-Hinduism': consisting of reformist rhetoric transforming Hindu tradition from above, disguised as a revivalist call to return to the traditional practises of the faith. Reflecting the same arguments made by Christian missionaries, who argued that the more superstitious elements of Hindu practice were responsible for corrupting the potential rational philosophy of the faith (i.e. the more Christian-like sentiments). Moving the definitions of Hindu practice away from more overt idol worshiping, reemphasizing the concept of Brahman as a monotheistic divinity, and focusing more on the figure of Krishna in Vaishnavism due to his role as a messianic type figure (more inline with European beliefs) which makes him a suitable alternative to the Christian figure of Jesus Christ.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India's current ruling party, follows this tradition of nationalistic Hinduism (Hindutva), and promotes an Indian national identity infused with neo-Vedantic which has been claimed by some to have been influenced by a "colonial mentality".
Legacy
Some critics have claimed that writer Rudyard Kipling's portrayals of Indian characters in his works supported the view that colonized people were incapable of living without being ruled by White British people, describing these portrayals as racist. In his famous poem "The White Man's Burden", Kipling directly argues for this point by romanticizing the "civilising mission" in non-Western countries. Jaway Syed has claimed that Kipling's poems idolizes Western culture as entirely rational and civilized, while treating non-white cultures as 'childlike' and 'demonic'. Similar sentiments have been interpreted in Kipling's other works, such as his characterization of the Second Boer War, despite rampant British war crimes and post-war colonialism aimed at using the educational system to destroy the Afrikaans language, as a "white man's war"; along with his presentation of 'whiteness' as a morally and culturally superior trait of the West. His portrayal of both Indians and monkeys in his Jungle Book stories have also been criticized by Jane Hotchkiss as examples of the chauvinistic infantilization of all colonized peoples in Victorian era British culture. Some historians claim that Kipling's works have contributed towards the development of a colonial mentality in the ways that the colonized people in these fictional narratives are made submissive to and dependent on their white rulers.
Spanish Empire
Latin America
In the overseas territories administered by the Spanish Empire, racial mixing between Spanish settlers and the indigenous peoples resulted in a prosperous union later called Mestizo. There were limitations in the racial classes only to people from African descent, this mainly for being descendants of slaves under a current state of slavery. Unlike Mestizos, castizos or indigenous people who were protected by the Leyes de las Indias "to be treated like equals, as citizens of the Spanish Empire". It was completely forbidden to enslave the indígenas under the death penalty charge.
Mestizos and other mixed raced combinations were categorized into different castas by viceroyalty administrators. This system was applied to Spanish territories in the Americas and the Philippines, where large populations of mixed raced individuals made up the increasing majority of the viceroyalty population (until the present day).
These racial categories punished those with Black African or Afro-Latin heritage; those of European descent were given privilege over these other mixtures. As a result of this system, people of African descent struggled to downplay their indigenous heritage and cultural trappings, in order to appear superficially more Spanish or natives. With these internalized prejudices individuals' choices of clothes, occupations, and forms of religious expression. Those of mixed racial identities who wanted to receive the institutional benefits of being Spanish (such as higher educational institutions and career opportunities), could do so by suppressing their own cultures and acting with "Spanishness". This mentality lead to commonplace racial forgery in Latin America, often accompanied by legitimizing oral accounts of a Spanish ancestor and a Spanish surname. Most mixed-white and white people in Latin America have Spanish surnames inherited from Spanish ancestors, while most other Latin Americans who have Spanish names and surnames acquired them through the Christianization and Hispanicization of the indigenous and African slave populations by Spanish friars.
However, most initial attempts at this were only partially successful, as Amerindian groups simply blended Catholicism with their traditional beliefs. Syncretism between native beliefs and Christianity is still largely prevalent in Indian and Mestizo communities in Latin America.
Philippines
Prior to the arrival by the Spaniards (1565–1898), the Sulu Archipelago (located in southern Philippines) was a colony of the Majapahit Empire (1293–1527) based in Indonesia. The Americans were the last country to colonize the Philippines (1898–1946) and nationalists claim that it continues to act as a neo-colony of the US despite its formal independence in 1946. In the Philippines colonial mentality is most evident in the preference for Filipino mestizos (primarily those of mixed native Filipino and white ancestry, but also mixed indigenous Filipinos and Chinese, and other ethnic groups) in the entertainment industry and mass media, in which they have received extensive exposure despite constituting a small fraction of the population.
The Cádiz Constitution of 1812 automatically gave Spanish citizenship to all Filipinos regardless of race. The census of 1870 stated that at least one-third of the population of Luzon had partial Hispanic ancestry (from varying points of origin and ranging from Latin America to Spain).
The combined number of all types of white mestizos or Eurasians is 3.6%, according to a genetic study by Stanford University. This is contradicted by another genetic study done by California University which stated that Filipinos possess moderate amounts of European admixture.
A cultural preference for relatively light skinned people exists within the Philippines. According to Kevin Nadal and David Okazaki, light skin preference may have pre-colonial origins. However, they also suggest that this preference was strengthened by colonialism. In an undated Philippine epic, the hero covers his face with a shield so that the sun would not "lessen his handsome looks". Some regard this as proof that desire for light-colored skin predates overseas influences. Regardless of the origin of the preference, the use of skin bleaching remains prevalent among Filipino men and women, however there is also a growing embrace of darker skinned female aesthetic within the Philippines.
See also
References
Works cited
Ethnocentrism
Mentality
Cultural anthropology
Colonies in antiquity
Cultural studies
Linguistic rights
White supremacy
Cultural genocide
Race and society | 0.761478 | 0.991522 | 0.755022 |
Sociocultural evolution | Sociocultural evolution, sociocultural evolutionism or social evolution are theories of sociobiology and cultural evolution that describe how societies and culture change over time. Whereas sociocultural development traces processes that tend to increase the complexity of a society or culture, sociocultural evolution also considers process that can lead to decreases in complexity (degeneration) or that can produce variation or proliferation without any seemingly significant changes in complexity (cladogenesis). Sociocultural evolution is "the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure that is qualitatively different from the ancestral form".
Most of the 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches to socioculture aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a whole, arguing that different societies have reached different stages of social development. The most comprehensive attempt to develop a general theory of social evolution centering on the development of sociocultural systems, the work of Talcott Parsons (1902–1979), operated on a scale which included a theory of world history. Another attempt, on a less systematic scale, originated from the 1970s with the world-systems approach of Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019) and his followers.
More recent approaches focus on changes specific to individual societies and reject the idea that cultures differ primarily according to how far each one has moved along some presumed linear scale of social progress. Most modern archaeologists and cultural anthropologists work within the frameworks of neoevolutionism, sociobiology, and modernization theory.
Introduction
Anthropologists and sociologists often assume that human beings have natural social tendencies but that particular human social behaviours have non-genetic causes and dynamics (i.e. people learn them in a social environment and through social interaction).
Societies exist in complex social environments (for example: with differing natural resources and constraints) and adapt themselves to these environments. It is thus inevitable that all societies change.
Specific theories of social or cultural evolution often attempt to explain differences between coeval societies by positing that different societies have reached different stages of development. Although such theories typically provide models for understanding the relationship between technologies, social structure or the values of a society, they vary as to the extent to which they describe specific mechanisms of variation and change.
While the history of evolutionary thinking with regard to humans can be traced back at least to Aristotle and other Greek philosophers, early sociocultural-evolution theories the ideas of Auguste Comte (1798–1857), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881) developed simultaneously with, but independently of, the work of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and were popular from late in the 19th century to the end of World War I. The 19th-century unilineal evolution theories claimed that societies start out in a primitive state and gradually become more civilized over time; they equated the culture and technology of Western civilization with progress. Some forms of early sociocultural-evolution theories (mainly unilineal ones) have led to much-criticised theories like social Darwinism and scientific racism, sometimes used in the past by European imperial powers to justify existing policies of colonialism and slavery and to justify new policies such as eugenics.
Most 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a single entity. However, most 20th-century approaches, such as multilineal evolution, focused on changes specific to individual societies. Moreover, they rejected directional change (i.e. orthogenetic, teleological or progressive change). Most archaeologists work within the framework of multilineal evolution. Other contemporary approaches to social change include neoevolutionism, sociobiology, dual inheritance theory, modernisation theory and postindustrial theory.
In his seminal 1976 book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins wrote that "there are some examples of cultural evolution in birds and monkeys, but ... it is our own species that really shows what cultural evolution can do".
Stadial theory
Enlightenment and later thinkers often speculated that societies progressed through stages: in other words, they saw history as stadial. While expecting humankind to show increasing development, theorists looked for what determined the course of human history. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), for example, saw social development as an inevitable process. It was assumed that societies start out primitive, perhaps in a state of nature, and could progress toward something resembling industrial Europe.
While earlier authors such as Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) had discussed how societies change through time, the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century proved key in the development of the idea of sociocultural evolution. In relation to Scotland's union with England in 1707, several Scottish thinkers pondered the relationship between progress and the affluence brought about by increased trade with England. They understood the changes Scotland was undergoing as involving transition from an agricultural to a mercantile society. In "conjectural histories", authors such as Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), John Millar (1735–1801) and Adam Smith (1723–1790) argued that societies all pass through a series of four stages: hunting and gathering, pastoralism and nomadism, agriculture, and finally a stage of commerce.
Philosophical concepts of progress, such as that of Hegel, developed as well during this period. In France, authors such as Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771) and other philosophes were influenced by the Scottish tradition. Later thinkers such as Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) developed these ideas. Auguste Comte (1798–1857) in particular presented a coherent view of social progress and a new discipline to study it: sociology.
These developments took place in a context of wider processes. The first process was colonialism. Although imperial powers settled most differences of opinion with their colonial subjects through force, increased awareness of non-Western peoples raised new questions for European scholars about the nature of society and of culture. Similarly, effective colonial administration required some degree of understanding of other cultures. Emerging theories of sociocultural evolution allowed Europeans to organise their new knowledge in a way that reflected and justified their increasing political and economic domination of others: such systems saw colonised people as less evolved, and colonising people as more evolved. Modern civilization (understood as the Western civilization), appeared the result of steady progress from a state of barbarism, and such a notion was common to many thinkers of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire (1694–1778).
The second process was the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism, which together allowed and promoted continual revolutions in the means of production. Emerging theories of sociocultural evolution reflected a belief that the changes in Europe brought by the Industrial Revolution and capitalism were improvements. Industrialisation, combined with the intense political change brought about by the French Revolution of 1789 and the U.S. Constitution, which paved the way for the dominance of democracy, forced European thinkers to reconsider some of their assumptions about how society was organised.
Eventually, in the 19th century three major classical theories of social and historical change emerged:
sociocultural evolutionism
the social cycle theory
the Marxist theory of historical materialism.
These theories had a common factor: they all agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path, most likely that of social progress. Thus, each past event is not only chronologically, but causally tied to present and future events. The theories postulated that by recreating the sequence of those events, sociology could discover the "laws" of history.
Sociocultural evolutionism and the idea of progress
While sociocultural evolutionists agree that an evolution-like process leads to social progress, classical social evolutionists have developed many different theories, known as theories of unilineal evolution. Sociocultural evolutionism became the prevailing theory of early sociocultural anthropology and social commentary, and is associated with scholars like Auguste Comte, Edward Burnett Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, Benjamin Kidd, L. T. Hobhouse and Herbert Spencer. Such stage models and ideas of linear models of progress had a great influence not only on future evolutionary approaches in the social sciences and humanities, but also shaped public, scholarly, and scientific discourse surrounding the rising individualism and population thinking. Sociocultural evolutionism attempted to formalise social thinking along scientific lines, with the added influence from the biological theory of evolution. If organisms could develop over time according to discernible, deterministic laws, then it seemed reasonable that societies could as well. Human society was compared to a biological organism, and social science equivalents of concepts like variation, natural selection, and inheritance were introduced as factors resulting in the progress of societies. The idea of progress led to that of a fixed "stages" through which human societies progress, usually numbering threesavagery, barbarism, and civilizationbut sometimes many more. At that time, anthropology was rising as a new scientific discipline, separating from the traditional views of "primitive" cultures that was usually based on religious views.
Already in the 18th century, some authors began to theorize on the evolution of humans. Montesquieu (1689–1755) wrote about the relationship laws have with climate in particular and the environment in general, specifically how different climatic conditions cause certain characteristics to be common among different people. He likens the development of laws, the presence or absence of civil liberty, differences in morality, and the whole development of different cultures to the climate of the respective people, concluding that the environment determines whether and how a people farms the land, which determines the way their society is built and their culture is constituted, or, in Montesquieu's words, the "general spirit of a nation". Also Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) presents a conjectural stage-model of human sociocultural evolution: first, humans lived solitarily and only grouped when mating or raising children. Later, men and women lived together and shared childcare, thus building families, followed by tribes as the result of inter-family interactions, which lived in "the happiest and the most lasting epoch" of human history, before the corruption of civil society degenerated the species again in a developmental stage-process. In the late 18th century, the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794) listed ten stages, or "epochs", each advancing the rights of man and perfecting the human race.
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Charles Darwin's grandfather, was an enormously influential natural philosopher, physiologist and poet whose remarkably insightful ideas included a statement of transformism and the interconnectedness of all forms of life. His works, which are enormously wide-ranging, also advance a theory of cultural transformation: his famous The Temple of Nature is subtitled 'the Origin of Society'. This work, rather than proposing in detail a strict transformation of humanity between different stages, instead dwells on Erasmus Darwin's evolutionary mechanism: Erasmus Darwin does not explain each stage one-by-one, trusting his theory of universal organic development, as articulated in the Zoonomia, to illustrate cultural development as well. Erasmus Darwin therefore flits with abandon through his chronology: Priestman notes that it jumps from the emergence of life onto land, the development of opposable thumbs, and the origin of sexual reproduction directly to modern historical events.
Another more complex theorist was Richard Payne Knight (1751-1824), an influential amateur archeologist and universal theologian. Knight's The Progress of Civil Society: A Didactic Poem in Six Books (1796) fits precisely into the tradition of triumphant historical stages, beginning with Lucretius and reaching Adam Smith––but just for the first four books. In his final books, Knight then grapples with the French revolution and wealthy decadence. Confronted with these twin issues, Knight's theory ascribes progress to conflict: 'partial discord lends its aid, to tie the complex knots of general harmony'. Competition in Knight's mechanism spurs development from any one stage to the next: the dialectic of class, land and gender creates growth. Thus, Knight conceptualised a theory of history founded in inevitable racial conflict, with Greece representing 'freedom' and Egypt 'cold inactive stupor'. Buffon, Linnaeus, Camper and Monboddo variously forward diverse arguments about racial hierarchy, grounded in early theories of species change––though many thought that environmental changes could create dramatic changes in form without permanently altering the species or causing species transformation. However, their arguments still bear on race: Rousseau, Buffon and Monboddo cite orangutans as evidence of an earlier prelinguistic human type, and Monboddo even insisted Orangutans and certain African and South Asian races were identical.
Other than Erasmus Darwin, the other pre-eminent scientific text with a theory of cultural transformation was advanced by Robert Chambers (1802-1871). Chambers was a Scottish evolutionary thinker and philosopher who, though he was then and now perceived as scientifically inadequate and criticized by prominent contemporaries, is important because he was so widely read. There are records of everyone from Queen Victoria to individual dockworkers enjoying his Robert Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), including future generations of scientists. That The Vestiges did not establish itself as the scientific cutting edge is precisely the point, since the Vestiges'''s influence means it was both the concept of evolution the Victorian public was most likely to experience, and the scientific presupposition laid earliest in the minds of bright young scholars.
Chambers propounded a 'principle of development' whereby everything evolved by the same mechanism and towards higher order structure or meaning. In his theory, life advanced through different 'classes', and within each class animals began at the lowest form and then advanced to more complex forms in the same class. In short, the progress of animals was like the development of a foetus. More than just an indistinct analogy, this parallel between embryology and species development had the status of a genuine causal mechanism in Chambers' theory: more advanced species developed longer as embryos into all their complexity. Motivated by this comparison, Chambers ascribed development to the 'laws of creation', though he also supposed that the whole development of species was in some way preordained: it was just that the preordination of the creator acted through establishing those laws. This, as discussed above, is similar to Spencer's later concept of development. Thus Chambers believed in a sophisticated theory of progress driven by a developmental analogy.
In the mid-19th century, a "revolution in ideas about the antiquity of the human species" took place "which paralleled, but was to some extent independent of, the Darwinian revolution in biology." Especially in geology, archaeology, and anthropology, scholars began to compare "primitive" cultures to past societies and "saw their level of technology as parallel with that of Stone Age cultures, and thus used these peoples as models for the early stages of human evolution." A developmental model of the evolution of the mind, culture, and society was the result, paralleling the evolution of the human species: "Modern savages [sic] became, in effect, living fossils left behind by the march of progress, relics of the Paleolithic still lingering on into the present." Classical social evolutionism is most closely associated with the 19th-century writings of Auguste Comte and of Herbert Spencer (coiner of the phrase "survival of the fittest"). In many ways, Spencer's theory of "cosmic evolution" has much more in common with the works of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Auguste Comte than with contemporary works of Charles Darwin. Spencer also developed and published his theories several years earlier than Darwin. In regard to social institutions, however, there is a good case that Spencer's writings might be classified as social evolutionism. Although he wrote that societies over time progressedand that progress was accomplished through competitionhe stressed that the individual rather than the collectivity is the unit of analysis that evolves; that, in other words, evolution takes place through natural selection and that it affects social as well as biological phenomenon. Nonetheless, the publication of Darwin's works proved a boon to the proponents of sociocultural evolution, who saw the ideas of biological evolution as an attractive explanation for many questions about the development of society.
Both Spencer and Comte view society as a kind of organism subject to the process of growth—from simplicity to complexity, from chaos to order, from generalisation to specialisation, from flexibility to organisation. They agree that the process of societal growth can be divided into certain stages, have their beginning and eventual end, and that this growth is in fact social progress: each newer, more-evolved society is "better". Thus progressivism became one of the basic ideas underlying the theory of sociocultural evolutionism.
However, Spencer's theories were more complex than just a romp up the great chain of being. Spencer based his arguments on an analogy between the evolution of societies and the ontogeny of an animal. Accordingly, he searched for "general principles of development and structure" or "fundamental principles of organization", rather than being content simply ascribing progress between social stages to the direct intervention of some beneficent deity. Moreover, he accepted that these conditions are "far less specific, far more modifiable, far more dependent on conditions that are variable": in short, that they are a messy biological process.
Though Spencer's theories transcended the label of 'stagism' and appreciate biological complexity, they still accepted a strongly fixed direction and morality to natural development. For Spencer, interference with the natural process of evolution was dangerous and had to be avoided at all costs. Such views were naturally coupled to the pressing political and economic questions of the time. Spencer clearly thought society's evolution brought about a racial hierarchy with Caucasians at the top and Africans at the bottom. This notion is deeply linked to the colonial projects European powers were pursuing at the time, and the idea of European superiority used paternalistically to justify those projects. The influential German zoologist Ernst Haeckel even wrote that 'natural men are closer to the higher vertebrates than highly civilized Europeans', including not just a racial hierarchy but a civilizational one. Likewise, Spencer's evolutionary argument advanced a theory of statehood: "until spontaneously fulfilled a public want should not be fulfilled at all" sums up Spencer's notion about limited government and the free operation of market forces.
This is not to suggest that stagism was useless or entirely motivated by colonialism and racism. Stagist theories were first proposed in contexts where competing epistemologies were largely static views of the world. Hence "progress" had in some sense to be invented, conceptually: the idea that human society would move through stages was a triumphant invention. Moreover, stages were not always static entities. In Buffon's theories, for example, it was possible to regress between stages, and physiological changes were species' reversibly adapting to their environment rather than irreversibly transforming.
In addition to progressivism, economic analyses influenced classical social evolutionism. Adam Smith (1723–1790), who held a deeply evolutionary view of human society, identified the growth of freedom as the driving force in a process of stadial societal development. According to him, all societies pass successively through four stages: the earliest humans lived as hunter-gatherers, followed by pastoralists and nomads, after which society evolved to agriculturalists and ultimately reached the stage of commerce. With the strong emphasis on specialisation and the increased profits stemming from a division of labour, Smith's thinking also exerted some direct influence on Darwin himself. Both in Darwin's theory of the evolution of species and in Smith's accounts of political economy, competition between selfishly functioning units plays an important and even dominating rôle. Similarly occupied with economic concerns as Smith, Thomas R. Malthus (1766–1834) warned that given the strength of the sex drive inherent in all animals, Malthus argued, populations tend to grow geometrically, and population growth is only checked by the limitations of economic growth, which, if there would be growth at all, would quickly be outstripped by population growth, causing hunger, poverty, and misery. Far from being the consequences of economic structures or social orders, this "struggle for existence" is an inevitable natural law, so Malthus.
Auguste Comte, known as "the father of sociology", formulated the law of three stages: human development progresses from the theological stage, in which nature was mythically conceived and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from supernatural beings; through a metaphysical stage in which nature was conceived of as a result of obscure forces and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from them; until the final positive stage in which all abstract and obscure forces are discarded, and natural phenomena are explained by their constant relationship. This progress is forced through the development of human mind, and through increasing application of thought, reasoning and logic to the understanding of the world. Comte saw the science-valuing society as the highest, most developed type of human organization.
Herbert Spencer, who argued against government intervention as he believed that society should evolve toward more individual freedom, followed Lamarck in his evolutionary thinking, in that he believed that humans do over time adapt to their surroundings. He differentiated between two phases of development as regards societies' internal regulation: the "military" and "industrial" societies. The earlier (and more primitive) military society has the goal of conquest and defense, is centralised, economically self-sufficient, collectivistic, puts the good of a group over the good of an individual, uses compulsion, force and repression, and rewards loyalty, obedience and discipline. The industrial society, in contrast, has a goal of production and trade, is decentralised, interconnected with other societies via economic relations, works through voluntary cooperation and individual self-restraint, treats the good of individual as of the highest value, regulates the social life via voluntary relations; and values initiative, independence and innovation."Herbert Spencer ". Sociological Theorists Page. The transition process from the military to industrial society is the outcome of steady evolutionary processes within the society. Spencer "imagined a kind of feedback loop between mental and social evolution: the higher the mental powers the greater the complexity of the society that the individuals could create; the more complex the society, the greater the stimulus it provided for further mental development. Everything cohered to make progress inevitable or to weed out those who did not keep up."
Regardless of how scholars of Spencer interpret his relation to Darwin, Spencer became an incredibly popular figure in the 1870s, particularly in the United States. Authors such as Edward L. Youmans, William Graham Sumner, John Fiske, John W. Burgess, Lester Frank Ward, Lewis H. Morgan (1818–1881) and other thinkers of the gilded age all developed theories of social evolutionism as a result of their exposure to Spencer as well as to Darwin.
In his 1877 classic Ancient Societies, Lewis H. Morgan, an anthropologist whose ideas have had much impact on sociology, differentiated between three eras: savagery, barbarism and civilization, which are divided by technological inventions, like fire, bow, pottery in the savage era, domestication of animals, agriculture, metalworking in the barbarian era and alphabet and writing in the civilization era. Thus Morgan drew a link between social progress and technological progress. Morgan viewed technological progress as a force behind social progress, and held that any social change—in social institutions, organizations or ideologies—has its beginnings in technological change.Morgan, Lewis H. (1877) "Chapter III: Ratio of Human Progress". Ancient Society. Morgan's theories were popularized by Friedrich Engels, who based his famous work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State on them. For Engels and other Marxists this theory was important, as it supported their conviction that materialistic factors—economic and technological—are decisive in shaping the fate of humanity.
Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917), a pioneer of anthropology, focused on the evolution of culture worldwide, noting that culture is an important part of every society and that it is also subject to a process of evolution. He believed that societies were at different stages of cultural development and that the purpose of anthropology was to reconstruct the evolution of culture, from primitive beginnings to the modern state.
Anthropologists Sir E.B. Tylor in England and Lewis Henry Morgan in the United States worked with data from indigenous people, who (they claimed) represented earlier stages of cultural evolution that gave insight into the process and progression of evolution of culture. Morgan had a significant influence on Karl Marx and on Friedrich Engels, who developed a theory of sociocultural evolution in which the internal contradictions in society generated a series of escalating stages that ended in a socialist society (see Marxism). Tylor and Morgan elaborated the theory of unilinear evolution, specifying criteria for categorising cultures according to their standing within a fixed system of growth of humanity as a whole and examining the modes and mechanisms of this growth. Theirs was often a concern with culture in general, not with individual cultures.
Their analysis of cross-cultural data was based on three assumptions:
contemporary societies may be classified and ranked as more "primitive" or more "civilized"
there are a determinate number of stages between "primitive" and "civilized" (e.g. band, tribe, chiefdom, and state)
all societies progress through these stages in the same sequence, but at different rates
Theorists usually measured progression (that is, the difference between one stage and the next) in terms of increasing social complexity (including class differentiation and a complex division of labour), or an increase in intellectual, theological, and aesthetic sophistication. These 19th-century ethnologists used these principles primarily to explain differences in religious beliefs and kinship terminologies among various societies.
Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913), sometimes referred to as the "father" of American sociology, rejected many of Spencer's theories regarding the evolution of societies. Ward, who was also a botanist and a paleontologist, believed that the law of evolution functioned much differently in human societies than it did in the plant and animal kingdoms, and theorized that the "law of nature" had been superseded by the "law of the mind". He stressed that humans, driven by emotions, create goals for themselves and strive to realize them (most effectively with the modern scientific method) whereas there is no such intelligence and awareness guiding the non-human world. Plants and animals adapt to nature; man shapes nature. While Spencer believed that competition and "survival of the fittest" benefited human society and sociocultural evolution, Ward regarded competition as a destructive force, pointing out that all human institutions, traditions and laws were tools invented by the mind of man and that that mind designed them, like all tools, to "meet and checkmate" the unrestrained competition of natural forces. Ward agreed with Spencer that authoritarian governments repress the talents of the individual, but he believed that modern democratic societies, which minimized the role of religion and maximized that of science, could effectively support the individual in his or her attempt to fully utilize their talents and achieve happiness. He believed that the evolutionary processes have four stages:
First comes cosmogenesis, creation and evolution of the world.
Then, when life arises, there is biogenesis.
Development of humanity leads to anthropogenesis, which is influenced by the human mind.
Finally there arrives sociogenesis, which is the science of shaping the evolutionary process itself to optimize progress, human happiness and individual self-actualization.
Ward regarded modern societies as superior to "primitive" societies (one need only look to the impact of medical science on health and lifespan) and shared theories of white supremacy. Though he supported the Out-of-Africa theory of human evolution, he did not believe that all races and social classes were equal in talent. When a Negro rapes a white woman, Ward declared, he is impelled not only by lust but also by the instinctive drive to improve his own race.Ibid. p 166, https://archive.org/details/racehistoryofide0000goss_r1r7/page/166/mode/2up?q=lester&view=theater Ward did not think that evolutionary progress was inevitable and he feared the degeneration of societies and cultures, which he saw as very evident in the historical record. Ward also did not favor the radical reshaping of society as proposed by the supporters of the eugenics movement or by the followers of Karl Marx; like Comte, Ward believed that sociology was the most complex of the sciences and that true sociogenesis was impossible without considerable research and experimentation.
Émile Durkheim, another of the "fathers" of sociology, developed a dichotomal view of social progress. His key concept was social solidarity, as he defined social evolution in terms of progressing from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. In mechanical solidarity, people are self-sufficient, there is little integration and thus there is the need for the use of force and repression to keep society together. In organic solidarity, people are much more integrated and interdependent and specialisation and cooperation are extensive. Progress from mechanical to organic solidarity is based firstly on population growth and increasing population density, secondly on increasing "morality density" (development of more complex social interactions) and thirdly on increasing specialisation in the workplace. To Durkheim, the most important factor in social progress is the division of labour. This was later used in the mid-1900s by the economist Ester Boserup (1910–1999) to attempt to discount some aspects of Malthusian theory.
Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) describes evolution as the development from informal society, where people have many liberties and there are few laws and obligations, to modern, formal rational society, dominated by traditions and laws, where people are restricted from acting as they wish. He also notes that there is a tendency to standardisation and unification, when all smaller societies are absorbed into a single, large, modern society. Thus Tönnies can be said to describe part of the process known today as globalization. Tönnies was also one of the first sociologists to claim that the evolution of society is not necessarily going in the right direction, that social progress is not perfect, and it can even be called a regression as the newer, more evolved societies are obtained only after paying a high cost, resulting in decreasing satisfaction of the individuals making up that society. Tönnies' work became the foundation of neoevolutionism.
Although Max Weber is not usually counted as a sociocultural evolutionist, his theory of tripartite classification of authority can be viewed as an evolutionary theory as well. Weber distinguishes three ideal types of political leadership, domination and authority:
charismatic domination
traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonialism, feudalism)
legal (rational) domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy)
Weber also notes that legal domination is the most advanced, and that societies evolve from having mostly traditional and charismatic authorities to mostly rational and legal ones.
Critique and impact on modern theories
The early 20th-century inaugurated a period of systematic critical examination, and rejection of the sweeping generalisations of the unilineal theories of sociocultural evolution. Cultural anthropologists such as Franz Boas (1858–1942), along with his students, including Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, are regarded as the leaders of anthropology's rejection of classical social evolutionism.
However, the school of Boas ignore some of the complexity in evolutionary theories that emerged outside Herbert Spencer's influence. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species gave a mechanistic account of the origins and development of animals, quite apart from Spencer's theories that emphasized the inevitable human development through stages. Consequently, many scholars developed more sophisticated understandings of how cultures evolve, relying on deep cultural analogies, than the theories in Herbert Spencer's tradition. Walter Bagehot (1872) applied selection and inheritance to the development of human political institutions. Samuel Alexander (1892) discusses the natural selection of moral principles in society. William James (1880) considered the 'natural selection' of ideas in learning and scientific development. In fact, he identified a 'remarkable parallel […] between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zoological evolution as expounded by Mr Darwin on the other'. Charles Sanders Peirce (1898) even proposed that the current laws of nature we have exist because they have evolved over time. Darwin himself, in Chapter 5 of the Descent of Man, proposed that human moral sentiments were subject to group selection:
"A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection."
Through the mechanism of imitation, cultures as well as individuals could be subject to natural selection.
While these theories involved evolution applied to social questions, except for Darwin's group selection the theories reviewed above did not advance a precise understanding of how Darwin's mechanism extended and applied to cultures beyond a vague appeal to competition. Ritchie's Darwinism and Politics (1889) breaks this trend, holding that "language and social institutions make it possible to transmit experience
quite independently of the continuity of race." Hence Ritchie saw cultural evolution as a process that could operate independently of and on different scales to the evolution of species, and gave it precise underpinnings: he was 'extending its range', in his own words, to ideas, cultures and institutions.
Thorstein Veblen, around the same time, came to a similar insight: that humans evolve to their social environment, but their social environment in turn also evolves. Veblen's mechanism for human progress was the evolution of human intentionality: Veblen labelled men 'a creature of habit' and thought that habits were 'mentally digested' from those who influenced him. In short, as Hodgson and Knudsen point out, Veblen thinks:
"the changing institutions in their turn make for a further selection of individuals endowed with the fittest temperament, and a further adaptation of individual temperament and habits to the changing environment through the formation of new institutions."
Thus, Veblen represented an extension of Ritchie's theories, where evolution operates at multiple levels, to a sophisticated appreciation of how each level interacts with the other.
This complexity notwithstanding, Boas and Benedict used sophisticated ethnography and more rigorous empirical methods to argue that Spencer, Tylor, and Morgan's theories were speculative and systematically misrepresented ethnographic data. Theories regarding "stages" of evolution were especially criticised as illusions. Additionally, they rejected the distinction between "primitive" and "civilized" (or "modern"), pointing out that so-called primitive contemporary societies have just as much history, and were just as evolved, as so-called civilized societies. They therefore argued that any attempt to use this theory to reconstruct the histories of non-literate (i.e. leaving no historical documents) peoples is entirely speculative and unscientific.
They observed that the postulated progression, which typically ended with a stage of civilization identical to that of modern Europe, is ethnocentric. They also pointed out that the theory assumes that societies are clearly bounded and distinct, when in fact cultural traits and forms often cross social boundaries and diffuse among many different societies (and are thus an important mechanism of change). Boas in his culture-history approach focused on anthropological fieldwork in an attempt to identify factual processes instead of what he criticized as speculative stages of growth. His approach greatly influenced American anthropology in the first half of the 20th century, and marked a retreat from high-level generalization and from "systems building".
Later critics observed that the assumption of firmly bounded societies was proposed precisely at the time when European powers were colonising non-Western societies, and was thus self-serving. Many anthropologists and social theorists now consider unilineal cultural and social evolution a Western myth seldom based on solid empirical grounds. Critical theorists argue that notions of social evolution are simply justifications for power by the élites of society. Finally, the devastating World Wars that occurred between 1914 and 1945 crippled Europe's self-confidence. After millions of deaths, genocide, and the destruction of Europe's industrial infrastructure, the idea of progress seemed dubious at best.
Thus modern sociocultural evolutionism rejects most of classical social evolutionism due to various theoretical problems:
The theory was deeply ethnocentric—it makes heavy value judgments about different societies, with Western civilization seen as the most valuable.
It assumed all cultures follow the same path or progression and have the same goals.
It equated civilization with material culture (technology, cities, etc.)
Because social evolution was posited as a scientific theory, it was often used to support unjust and often racist social practices – particularly colonialism, slavery, and the unequal economic conditions present within industrialized Europe. Social Darwinism is especially criticised, as it purportedly led to some philosophies used by the Nazis.
Max Weber, disenchantment, and critical theory
Weber's major works in economic sociology and the sociology of religion dealt with the rationalization, secularisation, and so called "disenchantment" which he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. In sociology, rationalization is the process whereby an increasing number of social actions become based on considerations of teleological efficiency or calculation rather than on motivations derived from morality, emotion, custom, or tradition. Rather than referring to what is genuinely "rational" or "logical", rationalization refers to a relentless quest for goals that might actually function to the detriment of a society. Rationalization is an ambivalent aspect of modernity, manifested especially in Western society – as a behaviour of the capitalist market, of rational administration in the state and bureaucracy, of the extension of modern science, and of the expansion of modern technology.
Weber's thought regarding the rationalizing and secularizing tendencies of modern Western society (sometimes described as the "Weber Thesis") would blend with Marxism to facilitate critical theory, particularly in the work of thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas (born 1929). Critical theorists, as antipositivists, are critical of the idea of a hierarchy of sciences or societies, particularly with respect to the sociological positivism originally set forth by Comte. Jürgen Habermas has critiqued the concept of pure instrumental rationality as meaning that scientific-thinking becomes something akin to ideology itself. For theorists such as Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017), rationalization as a manifestation of modernity may be most closely and regrettably associated with the events of the Holocaust.
Modern theories
When the critique of classical social evolutionism became widely accepted, modern anthropological and sociological approaches changed respectively. Modern theories are careful to avoid unsourced, ethnocentric speculation, comparisons, or value judgments; more or less regarding individual societies as existing within their own historical contexts. These conditions provided the context for new theories such as cultural relativism and multilineal evolution.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Gordon Childe revolutionized the study of cultural evolutionism. He conducted a comprehensive pre-history account that provided scholars with evidence for African and Asian cultural transmission into Europe. He combated scientific racism by finding the tools and artifacts of the indigenous people from Africa and Asia and showed how they influenced the technology of European culture. Evidence from his excavations countered the idea of Aryan supremacy and superiority. Adopting "Kosinna's basic concept of the archaeological culture and his identification of such cultures as the remains of prehistoric peoples" and combining it with the detailed chronologies of European prehistory developed by Gustaf Oscar Montelius, Childe argued that each society needed to be delineated individually on the basis of constituent artefacts which were indicative of their practical and social function. Childe explained cultural evolution by his theory of divergence with modifications of convergence. He postulated that different cultures form separate methods that meet different needs, but when two cultures were in contact they developed similar adaptations, solving similar problems. Rejecting Spencer's theory of parallel cultural evolution, Childe found that interactions between cultures contributed to the convergence of similar aspects most often attributed to one culture. Childe placed emphasis on human culture as a social construct rather than products of environmental or technological contexts. Childe coined the terms "Neolithic Revolution", and "Urban Revolution" which are still used today in the branch of pre-historic anthropology.
In 1941 anthropologist Robert Redfield wrote about a shift from 'folk society' to 'urban society'. By the 1940s cultural anthropologists such as Leslie White and Julian Steward sought to revive an evolutionary model on a more scientific basis, and succeeded in establishing an approach known as neoevolutionism. White rejected the opposition between "primitive" and "modern" societies but did argue that societies could be distinguished based on the amount of energy they harnessed, and that increased energy allowed for greater social differentiation (White's law). Steward on the other hand rejected the 19th-century notion of progress, and instead called attention to the Darwinian notion of "adaptation", arguing that all societies had to adapt to their environment in some way.
The anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service prepared an edited volume, Evolution and Culture, in which they attempted to synthesise White's and Steward's approaches. Other anthropologists, building on or responding to work by White and Steward, developed theories of cultural ecology and ecological anthropology. The most prominent examples are Peter Vayda and Roy Rappaport. By the late 1950s, students of Steward such as Eric Wolf and Sidney Mintz turned away from cultural ecology to Marxism, World Systems Theory, Dependency theory and Marvin Harris's Cultural materialism.
Today most anthropologists reject 19th-century notions of progress and the three assumptions of unilineal evolution. Following Steward, they take seriously the relationship between a culture and its environment to explain different aspects of a culture. But most modern cultural anthropologists have adopted a general systems approach, examining cultures as emergent systems and arguing that one must consider the whole social environment, which includes political and economic relations among cultures. As a result of simplistic notions of "progressive evolution", more modern, complex cultural evolution theories (such as Dual Inheritance Theory, discussed below) receive little attention in the social sciences, having given way in some cases to a series of more humanist approaches. Some reject the entirety of evolutionary thinking and look instead at historical contingencies, contacts with other cultures, and the operation of cultural symbol systems. In the area of development studies, authors such as Amartya Sen have developed an understanding of 'development' and 'human flourishing' that also question more simplistic notions of progress, while retaining much of their original inspiration.
Neoevolutionism
Neoevolutionism was the first in a series of modern multilineal evolution theories. It emerged in the 1930s and extensively developed in the period following the Second World War and was incorporated into both anthropology and sociology in the 1960s. It bases its theories on empirical evidence from areas of archaeology, palaeontology, and historiography and tries to eliminate any references to systems of values, be it moral or cultural, instead trying to remain objective and simply descriptive.
While 19th-century evolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process, it was dismissed by the Historical Particularists as unscientific in the early 20th century. It was the neo-evolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology.
Neo-evolutionism discards many ideas of classical social evolutionism, namely that of social progress, so dominant in previous sociology evolution-related theories. Then neo-evolutionism discards the determinism argument and introduces probability, arguing that accidents and free will greatly affect the process of social evolution. It also supports counterfactual history—asking "what if" and considering different possible paths that social evolution may take or might have taken, and thus allows for the fact that various cultures may develop in different ways, some skipping entire stages others have passed through. Neo-evolutionism stresses the importance of empirical evidence. While 19th-century evolutionism used value judgments and assumptions for interpreting data, neo-evolutionism relies on measurable information for analysing the process of sociocultural evolution.
Leslie White, author of The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome (1959), attempted to create a theory explaining the entire history of humanity. The most important factor in his theory is technology. Social systems are determined by technological systems, wrote White in his book, echoing the earlier theory of Lewis Henry Morgan. He proposes a society's energy consumption as a measure of its advancement. He differentiates between five stages of human development. In the first, people use the energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use the energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the energy of plants (so White refers to agricultural revolution here). In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness nuclear energy. White introduced a formula, P=E·T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilising the energy. This theory is similar to Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev's later theory of the Kardashev scale.
Julian Steward, author of Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution (1955, reprinted 1979), created the theory of "multilinear" evolution which examined the way in which societies adapted to their environment. This approach was more nuanced than White's theory of "unilinear evolution." Steward rejected the 19th-century notion of progress, and instead called attention to the Darwinian notion of "adaptation", arguing that all societies had to adapt to their environment in some way. He argued that different adaptations could be studied through the examination of the specific resources a society exploited, the technology the society relied on to exploit these resources, and the organization of human labour. He further argued that different environments and technologies would require different kinds of adaptations, and that as the resource base or technology changed, so too would a culture. In other words, cultures do not change according to some inner logic, but rather in terms of a changing relationship with a changing environment. Cultures therefore would not pass through the same stages in the same order as they changed—rather, they would change in varying ways and directions. He called his theory "multilineal evolution". He questioned the possibility of creating a social theory encompassing the entire evolution of humanity; however, he argued that anthropologists are not limited to describing specific existing cultures. He believed that it is possible to create theories analysing typical common culture, representative of specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors determining the development of given culture he pointed to technology and economics, but noted that there are secondary factors, like political system, ideologies and religion. All those factors push the evolution of a given society in several directions at the same time; hence the application of the term "multilinear" to his theory of evolution.
Marshall Sahlins, co-editor with Elman Service of Evolution and Culture (1960), divided the evolution of societies into 'general' and 'specific'. General evolution is the tendency of cultural and social systems to increase in complexity, organization and adaptiveness to environment. However, as the various cultures are not isolated, there is interaction and a diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This leads cultures to develop in different ways (specific evolution), as various elements are introduced to them in different combinations and at different stages of evolution.
In his Power and Prestige (1966) and Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology (1974), Gerhard Lenski expands on the works of Leslie White and Lewis Henry Morgan, developing the ecological-evolutionary theory. He views technological progress as the most basic factor in the evolution of societies and cultures. Unlike White, who defined technology as the ability to create and utilise energy, Lenski focuses on information—its amount and uses. The more information and knowledge (especially allowing the shaping of natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. He distinguishes four stages of human development, based on advances in the history of communication. In the first stage, information is passed by genes. In the second, when humans gain sentience, they can learn and pass information through by experience. In the third, humans start using signs and develop logic. In the fourth, they can create symbols and develop language and writing. Advancements in the technology of communication translate into advancements in the economic system and political system, distribution of goods, social inequality and other spheres of social life. He also differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication and economy: (1) hunters and gatherers, (2) agricultural, (3) industrial, and (4) special (like fishing societies).
Talcott Parsons, author of Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (1966) and The System of Modern Societies (1971) divided evolution into four subprocesses: (1) division, which creates functional subsystems from the main system; (2) adaptation, where those systems evolve into more efficient versions; (3) inclusion of elements previously excluded from the given systems; and (4) generalization of values, increasing the legitimization of the ever more complex system. He shows those processes on 4 stages of evolution: (I) primitive or foraging, (II) archaic agricultural, (III) classical or "historic" in his terminology, using formalized and universalizing theories about reality and (IV) modern empirical cultures. However, these divisions in Parsons' theory are the more formal ways in which the evolutionary process is conceptualized, and should not be mistaken for Parsons' actual theory. Parsons develops a theory where he tries to reveal the complexity of the processes which take form between two points of necessity, the first being the cultural "necessity," which is given through the values-system of each evolving community; the other is the environmental necessities, which most directly is reflected in the material realities of the basic production system and in the relative capacity of each industrial-economical level at each window of time. Generally, Parsons highlights that the dynamics and directions of these processes is shaped by the cultural imperative embodied in the cultural heritage, and more secondarily, an outcome of sheer "economic" conditions.
Michel Foucault's recent, and very much misunderstood, concepts such as Biopower, Biopolitics and Power-knowledge has been cited as breaking free from the traditional conception of man as cultural animal. Foucault regards both the terms "cultural animal" and "human nature"as misleading abstractions, leading to a non-critical exemption of man and anything can be justified when regarding social processes or natural phenomena (social phenomena). Foucault argues these complex processes are interrelated, and difficult to study for a reason so those 'truths' cannot be topled or disrupted. For Foucault, the many modern concepts and practices that attempt to uncover "the truth" about human beings (either psychologically, sexually, religion or spiritually) actually create the very types of people they purport to discover. Requiring trained "specialists" and knowledge codes and know how, rigorous pursuit is "put off" or delayed which makes any kind of study not only a 'taboo' subject but deliberately ignored. He cites the concept of 'truth' within many human cultures and the ever flowing dynamics between truth, power, and knowledge as a resultant complex dynamics (Foucault uses the term regimes of truth) and how they flow with ease like water which make the concept of 'truth' impervious to any further rational investigation. Some of the West's most powerful social institutions are powerful for a reason, not because they exhibit powerful structures which inhibit investigation or it is illegal to investigate there historical foundation. It is the very notion of "legitimacy" Foucault cites as examples of "truth" which function as a "Foundationalism" claims to historical accuracy. Foucault argues, systems such as Medicine, Prisons,CRS Report For Congress Federal Prison Industries 2007 and Religion, as well as groundbreaking works on more abstract theoretical issues of power are suspended or buried into oblivion. He cites as further examples the 'Scientific study' of Population biology and Population genetics as both examples of this kind of "Biopower" over the vast majority of the human population giving the new founded political population their 'politics' or polity. With the advent of biology and genetics teamed together as new scientific innovations notions of study of knowledge regarding truth belong to the realm of experts who will never divulge their secrets openly, while the bulk of the population do not know their own biology or genetics this is done for them by the experts.
This functions as a truth ignorance mechanism: "where the "subjugated knowledge's", as those that have been both written out of history and submerged in it in a masked form produces what we now know as truth. He calls them "Knowledge's from below" and a "historical knowledge of struggles".Genealogy, Foucault suggests, is a way of getting at these knowledge's and struggles; "they are about the insurrection of knowledge's." Foucault tries to show with the added dimension of "Milieu"(derived from Newtonian mechanics) how this Milieu from the 17th century with the development of the Biological and Physical sciences managed to be interwoven into the political, social and biological relationship of men with the arrival of the concept Work placed upon the industrial population. Foucault uses the term Umwelt, borrowed from Jakob von Uexküll, meaning environment within. Technology, production, cartography the production of Nation states and Government making the efficiency of the Body politic, Law, Heredity and Consanguine not only sound genuine and beyond historical origin and foundation it can be turned into 'exact truth' where the individual and the societal body are not only subjugated and nullified but dependent upon it. Foucault is not denying that genetic or biological study is inaccurate or is simply not telling the truth what he means is that notions of this newly discovered sciences were extended to include the vast majority (or whole populations) of populations as an exercise in "regimes change".
Foucault argues that the conceptual meaning from the Middle Ages and Canon law period, the Geocentric model, later superseded by the Heliocentrism model placing the position of the law of right in the Middle ages (Exclusive right or its correct legal term Sui generis) was the Divine right of kings and Absolute monarchy where the previous incarnation of truth and rule of political sovereignty was considered absolute and unquestioned by political philosophy (monarchs, popes and emperors). However, Foucault noticed that this Pharaonic version of political power was transversed and it was with 18th-century emergence of capitalism and liberal democracy that these terms began to be "democratized". The modern Pharaonic version represented by the president, the monarch, the pope and the prime minister all became propagandized versions or examples of symbol agents all aimed at towards a newly discovered phenomenon, the population. As symbolic symbol agents of power making the mass population having to sacrifice itself all in the name of the newly formed voting franchise we now call Democracy. However, this was all turned on its head (when the Medieval rulers were thrown out and replaced by a more exact apparatus now called the state) when the human sciences suddenly discovered: "The set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became an object of a political strategy and took on board the fundamental facts that humans were now a biological species."
Sociobiology
Sociobiology departs perhaps the furthest from classical social evolutionism. It was introduced by Edward Wilson in his 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis and followed his adaptation of evolutionary theory to the field of social sciences. Wilson pioneered the attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviours such as altruism, aggression, and nurturance. In doing so, Wilson sparked one of the greatest scientific controversies of the 20th century by introducing and rejuvenating neo-Darwinian modes of thinking in many social sciences and the humanities, leading to reactions ranging from fundamental opposition, not only from social scientists and humanists but also from Darwinists who see it as "excessively simplistic in its approach", to calls for a radical restructuring of the respective disciplines on an evolutionary basis.
The current theory of evolution, the modern evolutionary synthesis (or neo-darwinism), explains that evolution of species occurs through a combination of Darwin's mechanism of natural selection and Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics as the basis for biological inheritance and mathematical population genetics. Essentially, the modern synthesis introduced the connection between two important discoveries; the units of evolution (genes) with the main mechanism of evolution (selection).
Due to its close reliance on biology, sociobiology is often considered a branch of the biology, although it uses techniques from a plethora of sciences, including ethology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics, and many others. Within the study of human societies, sociobiology is closely related to the fields of human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology.
Sociobiology has remained highly controversial as it contends genes explain specific human behaviours, although sociobiologists describe this role as a very complex and often unpredictable interaction between nature and nurture. The most notable critics of the view that genes play a direct role in human behaviour have been biologists Richard Lewontin Steven Rose and Stephen Jay Gould. Given the convergence of much of sociobiology's claims with right-wing politics, this approach has seen severe opposition both with regard to its research results as well as its basic tenets; this has led even Wilson himself to revisit his claims and state his opposition to some elements of modern sociobiology.
Since the rise of evolutionary psychology, another school of thought, Dual Inheritance Theory, has emerged in the past 25 years that applies the mathematical standards of Population genetics to modeling the adaptive and selective principles of culture. This school of thought was pioneered by Robert Boyd at UCLA and Peter Richerson at UC Davis and expanded by William Wimsatt, among others. Boyd and Richerson's book, Culture and the Evolutionary Process (1985), was a highly mathematical description of cultural change, later published in a more accessible form in Not by Genes Alone (2004). In Boyd and Richerson's view, cultural evolution, operating on socially learned information, exists on a separate but co-evolutionary track from genetic evolution, and while the two are related, cultural evolution is more dynamic, rapid, and influential on human society than genetic evolution. Dual Inheritance Theory has the benefit of providing unifying territory for a "nature and nurture" paradigm and accounts for more accurate phenomenon in evolutionary theory applied to culture, such as randomness effects (drift), concentration dependency, "fidelity" of evolving information systems, and lateral transmission through communication. Nicholas Christakis also advances similar ideas about "evolutionary sociology" in his 2019 book, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, emphasizing the relevance of underlying evolutionary forces that have helped to shape all societies, whatever their cultural differences.
Theory of modernization
Theories of modernization are closely related to the dependency theory and development theory. While they have been developed and popularized in the 1950s and 1960s, their ideological and epistemic ancestors can be traced back until at least the early 20th century when progressivist historians and social scientists, building upon Darwinian ideas that the roots of economic success in the US had to be found in its population structure, which, as an immigrant society, was composed of the strongest and fittest individuals of their respective countries of origin, had started to supply the national myth of US-American manifest destiny with evolutionary reasoning. Explicitly and implicitly, the US became the yardstick of modernisation, and other societies could be measured in the extent of their modernity by how closely they adhered to the US-American example. Modernization Theories combine the previous theories of sociocultural evolution with practical experiences and empirical research, especially those from the era of decolonization. The theory states that:
Western countries are the most developed, and the rest of the world (mostly former colonies) is in the earlier stages of development, and will eventually reach the same level as the Western world.
Development stages go from the traditional societies to developed ones.
Third World countries have fallen behind with their social progress and need to be directed on their way to becoming more advanced.
Developing from classical social evolutionism theories, the theory of modernization stresses the modernization factor: many societies are simply trying (or need) to emulate the most successful societies and cultures. It also states that it is possible to do so, thus supporting the concepts of social engineering and that the developed countries can and should help those less developed, directly or indirectly.
Among the scientists who contributed much to this theory are Walt Rostow, who in his The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960) concentrates on the economic system side of the modernization, trying to show factors needed for a country to reach the path to modernization in his Rostovian take-off model. David Apter concentrated on the political system and history of democracy, researching the connection between democracy, good governance and efficiency and modernization. David McClelland (The Achieving Society, 1967) approached this subject from the psychological perspective, with his motivations theory, arguing that modernization cannot happen until given society values innovation, success and free enterprise. Alex Inkeles (Becoming Modern, 1974) similarly creates a model of modern personality, which needs to be independent, active, interested in public policies and cultural matters, open to new experiences, rational and able to create long-term plans for the future. Some works of Jürgen Habermas are also connected with this subfield.
The theory of modernization has been subject to some criticism similar to that levied against classical social evolutionism, especially for being too ethnocentric, one-sided and focused on the Western world and its culture.
Contemporary perspectives
Political perspectives
The Cold War period was marked by rivalry between two superpowers, both of which considered themselves to be the most highly evolved cultures on the planet. The USSR painted itself as a socialist society which emerged from class struggle, destined to reach the state of communism, while sociologists in the United States (such as Talcott Parsons) argued that the freedom and prosperity of the United States were a proof of a higher level of sociocultural evolution of its culture and society. At the same time, decolonization created newly independent countries who sought to become more developed—a model of progress and industrialization which was itself a form of sociocultural evolution.
Technological perspectives
Many argue that the next stage of sociocultural evolution consists of a merger with technology, especially information processing technology. Several cumulative major transitions of evolution have transformed life through key innovations in information storage and replication, including RNA, DNA, multicellularity, and also language and culture as inter-human information processing systems. in this sense it can be argued that the carbon-based biosphere has generated a system (human society) capable of creating technology that will result in a comparable evolutionary
transition. "Digital information has reached a similar magnitude to information in the biosphere. It increases exponentially, exhibits high-fidelity replication, evolves through differential fitness, is expressed through artificial intelligence (AI), and has facility for virtually limitless recombination. Like previous evolutionary transitions, the potential symbiosis between biological and digital information will reach a critical point where these codes could compete via natural
selection. Alternatively, this fusion could create a higher-level superorganism employing a low-conflict division of labor in performing informational tasks...humans already embrace fusions of biology and technology. We spend most of our waking time communicating through digitally mediated channels, ...most transactions on the stock market are executed by automated trading algorithms, and our electric grids are in the hands of artificial intelligence. With one in three marriages in America beginning online, digital algorithms are also taking a role in human pair bonding and reproduction".
Anthropological perspectives
Current political theories of the new tribalists consciously mimic ecology and the life-ways of indigenous peoples, augmenting them with modern sciences. Ecoregional Democracy attempts to confine the "shifting groups", or tribes, within "more or less clear boundaries" that a society inherits from the surrounding ecology, to the borders of a naturally occurring ecoregion. Progress can proceed by competition between but not within tribes, and it is limited by ecological borders or by Natural Capitalism incentives which attempt to mimic the pressure of natural selection on a human society by forcing it to adapt consciously to scarce energy or materials. Gaians argue that societies evolve deterministically to play a role in the ecology of their biosphere, or else die off as failures due to competition from more efficient societies exploiting nature's leverage.
Thus, some have appealed to theories of sociocultural evolution to assert that optimizing the ecology and the social harmony of closely knit groups is more desirable or necessary than the progression to "civilization." A 2002 poll of experts on Neoarctic and Neotropic indigenous peoples (reported in Harper's magazine) revealed that all of them would have preferred to be a typical New World person in the year 1491, prior to any European contact, rather than a typical European of that time. This approach has been criticised by pointing out that there are a number of historical examples of indigenous peoples doing severe environmental damage (such as the deforestation of Easter Island and the extinction of mammoths in North America) and that proponents of the goal have been trapped by the European stereotype of the noble savage.
The role of war in the development of states and societies
Particularly since the end of the Cold War, there has been a growing number of scholars in the social sciences and humanities who came to complement the more presentist neo-evolutionary research with studies into the more distant past and its human inhabitants. A key element in many of these analyses and theories is warfare, which Robert L. Carneiro called the "prime mover in the origin of the state". He theorizes that given the limited availability of natural resources, societies will compete against each other, with the losing group either moving out of the area now dominated by the victorious one, or, if the area is circumscribed by an ocean or a mountain range and re-settlement is thus impossible, will be either subjugated or killed. Thus, societies become larger and larger, but, facing the constant threat of extinction or assimilation, they were also forced to become more complex in their internal organisation both in order to remain competitive as well as to administer a growing territory and a larger population.
Carneiro's ideas have inspired great number of subsequent research into the role of war in the process of political, social, or cultural evolution. An example of this is Ian Morris who argues that given the right geographic conditions, war not only drove much of human culture by integrating societies and increasing material well-being, but paradoxically also made the world much less violent. Large-scale states, says Morris, evolved because only they provided enough stability both internally and externally to survive the constant conflicts which characterise the early history of smaller states, and the possibility of war will continue to force humans to invent and evolve. War drove human societies to adapt in a step-wise process, and each development in military technology either requires or leads to comparable developments in politics and society.
Many of the underlying assumptions of Morris's thinking can be traced back in some form or another not only to Carneiro but also to Jared Diamond, and particularly his 1997 book Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond, who explicitly opposes racist evolutionary tales, argues that the ultimate explanation of why different human development on different continents is the presence or absence of domesticable plants and animals as well as the fact that the east-west orientation of Eurasia made migration within similar climates much easier than the south-north orientation of Africa and the Americas. Nevertheless, he also stresses the importance of conflict and warfare as a proximate explanation for how Europeans managed to conquer much of the world, given how societies who fail to innovate will "tend to be eliminated by competing societies".
Similarly, Charles Tilly argues that what drove the political, social, and technological change which, after centuries of great variation with regard to states, lead to the European states ultimately all converging on the national state was coercion and warfare: "War wove the European network of national states, and preparation for war created the internal structures of states within it." He describes how war became more expensive and complex due to the introduction of gunpowder and large armies and thus required significantly large states in order to provide the capital and manpower to sustain these, which at the same time were forced to develop new means of extraction and administration.
However, Norman Yoffee has criticised such theorists who, based on general evolutionary frameworks, came to formulate theories of the origins of states and their evolution. He claimed that in no small part due to the prominence of neoevolutionary explanations which group different societies into groups in order to compare them and their progress both to themselves and to modern ethnographic examples, while focusing mostly on political systems and a despotic élite who held together a territorial state by force, "much of what has been said of the earliest states, both in the professional literature as well as in popular writings, is not only factually wrong but also is implausible in the logic of social evolutionary theory".
See also
Accelerating change
Biocultural evolution
Clash of Civilizations
Critical juncture theory
Cultural diversity
Cultural evolution
Cultural materialism
Cultural neuroscience
Cultural selection theory
Diffusion of innovations
Dual inheritance theory
Economic determinism
Edward Burnett Tylor
Evolutionary anthropology
Environmental racism
Extended order
Franz Boas
Futures studies
Historicism
Institutional memory
Julian Steward
Leslie White
Lewis Henry Morgan
Memetics
Moral progress
Neoevolutionism
Neuroculture
Origin of language
Origin of speech
Origins of society
Population dynamics
Punctuated equilibrium
Rationalization (sociology)
Raciolinguistics
Reformism
Social Darwinism
Social cycle theory
Social dynamics
Social implications of the theory of evolution
Societal collapse
Sociocultural system
Social progress
Symbolic culture
Technological evolution
References
Cited sources
Sztompka, Piotr (2002). Socjologia. Znak. .
Bibliography
The Philosophy of Positivism
Robert Carneiro, Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology: A Critical History. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 2003.
Jared Diamond, The World until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?, Penguin Books, 2012.
Evans-Pritchard, Sir Edward, A History of Anthropological Thought, 1981, Basic Books, Inc., New York.
Graber, Robert B., A Scientific Model of Social and Cultural Evolution, 1995, Thomas Jefferson University Press, Kirksville, MO.
Harris, Marvin, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture, 1968, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York.
Hatch, Elvin, Theories of Man and Culture, 1973, Columbia University Press, New York.
Hays, H. R., From Ape to Angel: An Informal History of Social Anthropology, 1965, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
Johnson, Allen W. and Earle, Timothy, The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State, 1987, Stanford University Press.
Kaplan, David and Manners, Robert, Culture Theory, 1972, Waveland Press, Inc., Prospect Heights, Illinois.
Kuklick, Henrika, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885–1945, 1991, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009, Yale University Press, US and London.
Mesoudi, A. (2007). Using the methods of experimental social psychology to study cultural evolution. Journal of Social, Evolutionary & Cultural Psychology, 1(2), 35–58. Full text
Mesoudi, A. Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences, 2011, University of Chicago Press,
Morgan, John Henry, In the Beginning: The Paleolithic Origins of Religious Consciousness 2007 Cloverdale Books, South Bend.
Raoul Naroll and William T. Divale. 1976. Natural Selection in Cultural Evolution: Warfare versus Peaceful Diffusion. American Ethnologist 3: 97–128.
Segal, Daniel (2000) Western Civ" and the Staging of History in American Higher Education The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 3 (Jun., 2000), pp. 770–805
Seymour-Smith, Charlotte, Macmillan Dictionary of Anthropology, 1986, Macmillan, New York.
Stocking Jr., George W., Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology, 1968, The Free Press, New York.
Stocking Jr., George W., After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888–1951, 1995, The University of Wisconsin Press.
Stocking, George, Victorian Anthropology, Free Press, 1991,
Sztompka, Piotr, The Sociology of Social Change, Blackwell Publishers, 1994,
Trigger, Bruce, Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency (New Perspectives on the Past), Blackwell Publishers, 1998,
Winthrop, Robert H., Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology'', 1991, Greenwood Press, New York.
Readings from an evolutionary anthropological perspective
Two special issues on the evolution of culture:
Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews Volume 12, Issue 2, Pages 57–108 (April 2003)
The evolution of culture: New perspectives and evidence (p 57–60) Charles H. Janson, Eric A. Smith
Making space for traditions (p 61–70) Dorothy Fragaszy
Traditions in monkeys (p 71–81) Susan Perry, Joseph H. Manson
Is culture a golden barrier between human and chimpanzee? (p 82–91) Christophe Boesch
Cultural panthropology (p 92–105) Andrew Whiten, Victoria Horner, Sarah Marshall-Pescini
The fossil record – Human and nonhuman (p 106–108) Eric Delson
Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews Volume 12, Issue 3, Pages 109–159 (2003)
On stony ground: Lithic technology, human evolution, and the emergence of culture (p 109–122) Robert Foley, Marta Mirazón Lahr
The evolution of cultural evolution (p 123–135) Joseph Henrich, Richard McElreath
The adaptive nature of culture (p 136–149) Michael S. Alvard
Do animals have culture? (p 150–159) Kevin N. Laland, William Hoppitt
External links
Sociocultural evolution on Principia Cybernetica Web
Classical Sociological Theory: Comte and Spencer
Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends
Cultural concepts
Memetics
Anthropology
Sociological theories | 0.760247 | 0.993081 | 0.754987 |
Sociology of culture | The sociology of culture, and the related cultural sociology, concerns the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a member of a society, as it is manifested in the society. For Georg Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history". Culture in the sociological field is analyzed as the ways of thinking and describing, acting, and the material objects that together shape a group of people's way of life.
Contemporary sociologists' approach to culture is often divided between a "sociology of culture" and "cultural sociology"—the terms are similar, though not interchangeable. The sociology of culture is an older concept, and considers some topics and objects as more or less "cultural" than others. By way of contrast, Jeffrey C. Alexander introduced the term cultural sociology, an approach that sees all, or most, social phenomena as inherently cultural at some level. For instance, a leading proponent of the "strong program" in cultural sociology, Alexander argues: "To believe in the possibility of cultural sociology is to subscribe to the idea that every action, no matter how instrumental, reflexive, or coerced [compared to] its external environment, is embedded to some extent in a horizon of affect and meaning." In terms of analysis, sociology of culture often attempts to explain some discretely cultural phenomena as a product of social processes, while cultural sociology sees culture as a component of explanations of social phenomena. As opposed to the field of cultural studies, cultural sociology does not reduce all human matters to a problem of cultural encoding and decoding. For instance, Pierre Bourdieu's cultural sociology has a "clear recognition of the social and the economic as categories which are interlinked with, but not reducible to, the cultural."
Development
Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar, Germany, where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie (cultural sociology). Cultural sociology was then "reinvented" in the English-speaking world as a product of the "cultural turn" of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may loosely be regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory. In the beginning of the cultural turn, sociologists tended to use qualitative methods and hermeneutic approaches to research, focusing on meanings, words, artifacts and symbols. "Culture" has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including historically quantitative and model-based subfields, such as social stratification and social network analysis.
Early researchers
The sociology of culture grew from the intersection between sociology, as shaped by early theorists like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, and anthropology where researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world.
Part of the legacy of the early development of the field is still felt in the methods (much of cultural sociological research is qualitative) in the theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities) and substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture, political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field.
Karl Marx
As a major contributor to conflict theory, Marx argued that culture served to justify inequality. The ruling class, or the bourgeoisie, produce a culture that promotes their interests, while repressing the interests of the proletariat.
His most famous line to this effect is that "Religion is the opium of the people".
Marx believed that the "engine of history" was the struggle between groups of people with diverging economic interests and thus the economy determined the cultural superstructure of values and ideologies. For this reason, Marx is a considered a materialist as he believes that the economic (material) produces the cultural (ideal), which "stands Hegel on his head," who argued the ideal produced the material.
Émile Durkheim
Durkheim held the belief that culture has many relationships to society which include:
Logical – Power over individuals belongs to certain cultural categories, and beliefs such as in God.
Functional – Certain rites and myths create and build up social order by having more people create strong beliefs. The greater the number of people who believe strongly in these myths more will the social order be strengthened.
Historical – Culture had its origins in society, and from those experiences came evolution into things such as classification systems.
Max Weber
Weber innovated the idea of a status group as a certain type of subculture. Status groups are based on things such as: race, ethnicity, religion, region, occupation, gender, sexual preference, etc. These groups live a certain lifestyle based on different values and norms. They are a culture within a culture, hence the label subculture. Weber also purported the idea that people were motivated by their material and ideal interests, which include things such as preventing one from going to hell. Weber also explains that people use symbols to express their spirituality, that symbols are used to express the spiritual side of real events, and that ideal interests are derived from symbols.
Georg Simmel
For Simmel, culture refers to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." Simmel presented his analyses within a context of "form" and "content". Sociological concept and analysis can be viewed.
The elements of a culture
As no two cultures are exactly alike they do all have common characteristics.
A culture contains:
1. Social Organization: Structured by organizing its members into smaller numbers to meet the culture's specific requirements. Social classes ranked in order of importance (status) based on the culture's core values. For example: money, job, education, family, etc.
2. Customs and Traditions: Rules of behavior enforced by the cultures ideas of right and wrong such as customs, traditions, rules, or written laws.
3. Symbols: Anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share the same culture.
4. Norms: Rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members. The two types of norms are mores and folkways. Mores are norms that are widely observed and have a great moral significance. Folkways are norms for routine, casual interaction.
5. Religion: The answers to their basic meanings of life and values.
6. Language: A system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another.
7. Arts and Literature: Products of human imagination expressed through art, music, literature, stories, and dance.
8. Forms of Government: How the culture distributes power. Who keeps order within the society, who protects them from danger, and who provides for their needs. Can fall into categories such as Democracy, Republic, or Dictatorship.
9. Economic Systems: What to produce, how to produce it, and for whom. How people use their limited resources to satisfy their wants and needs. Can fall into the categories such as Traditional Economy, Market Economy, Command Economy, Mixed Economy.
10. Artifacts: Distinct material objects, such as architecture, technologies, and artistic creations.
11. Social institutions: Patterns of organization and relationships regarding governance, production, socializing, education, knowledge creation, arts, and relating to other cultures.
Anthropology
In an anthropological sense, culture is society based on the values and ideas without influence of the material world.
Culture is like the shell of a lobster. Human nature is the organism living inside of that shell. The shell, culture, identifies the organism, or human nature. Culture is what sets human nature apart, and helps direct the life of human nature.
Anthropologists lay claim to the establishment of modern uses of the culture concept as defined by Edward Burnett Tylor in the mid-19th century.
Bronisław Malinowski
Malinowski collected data from the Trobriand Islands. Descent groups across the island claim parts of the land, and to back up those claims, they tell myths of how an ancestress started a clan and how the clan descends from that ancestress. Malinowski's observations followed the research of that found by Durkheim.
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown
Radcliffe-Brown put himself in the culture of the Andaman Islanders. His research showed that group solidification among the islanders is based on music and kinship, and the rituals that involve the use of those activities. In the words of Radcliffe-Brown, "Ritual fortifies Society".
Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss made many comparative studies on religion, magic, law and morality of occidental and non-occidental societies, and developed the concept of total social fact, and argued that the reciprocity is the universal logic of the cultural interaction.
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Lévi-Strauss, based, at the same time, on the sociological and anthropological positivism of Durkheim, Mauss, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, on the economic and sociological Marxism, on Freudian and Gestalt psychology and on structural linguistics of Saussure and Jakobson, realized great studies on areas myth, kinship, religion, ritual, symbolism, magic, ideology, knowledge, art and aesthetics, applying the methodological structuralism on his investigations. He searched the universal principals of human thought as a form of explaining social behaviors and structures.
Major areas of research
Theoretical constructs in Bourdieu's sociology of culture
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's influential model of society and social relations has its roots in Marxist theories of class and conflict. Bourdieu characterizes social relations in the context of what he calls the field, defined as a competitive system of social relations functioning according to its own specific logic or rules. The field is the site of struggle for power between the dominant and subordinate classes. It is within the field that legitimacy—a key aspect defining the dominant class—is conferred or withdrawn.
Bourdieu's theory of practice is practical rather than discursive, embodied as well as cognitive and durable though adaptive. A valid concern that sets the agenda in Bourdieu's theory of practice is how action follows regular statistical patterns without the product of accordance to rules, norms and/or conscious intention. To explain this concern, Bourdieu explains habitus and field. Habitus explains the mutually penetrating realities of individual subjectivity and societal objectivity after the function of social construction. It is employed to transcend the subjective and objective dichotomy.
Cultural change
The belief that culture is symbolically coded and can thus be taught from one person to another means that cultures, although bounded, can change. Cultures are both predisposed to change and resistant to it. Resistance can come from habit, religion, and the integration and interdependence of cultural traits.
Cultural change can have many causes, including: the environment, inventions, and contact with other cultures.
Several understandings of how cultures change come from anthropology. For instance, in diffusion theory, the form of something moves from one culture to another, but not its meaning. For example, the ankh symbol originated in Egyptian culture but has diffused to numerous cultures. Its original meaning may have been lost, but it is now used by many practitioners of New Age religion as an arcane symbol of power or life forces. A variant of the diffusion theory, stimulus diffusion, refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention in another.
Contact between cultures can also result in acculturation. Acculturation has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of the traits of one culture with those of another, such as what happened with many Native American Indians. Related processes on an individual level are assimilation and transculturation, both of which refer to adoption of a different culture by an individual.
Wendy Griswold outlined another sociological approach to cultural change. Griswold points out that it may seem as though culture comes from individuals—which, for certain elements of cultural change, is true—but there is also the larger, collective, and long-lasting culture that cannot have been the creation of single individuals as it predates and post-dates individual humans and contributors to culture. The author presents a sociological perspective to address this conflict.
Sociology suggests an alternative to both the view that it has always been an unsatisfying way at one extreme and the sociological individual genius view at the other. This alternative posits that culture and cultural works are collective, not individual, creations. We can best understand specific cultural objects... by seeing them not as unique to their creators but as the fruits of collective production, fundamentally social in their genesis. (p. 53)
In short, Griswold argues that culture changes through the contextually dependent and socially situated actions of individuals; macro-level culture influences the individual who, in turn, can influence that same culture. The logic is a bit circular, but illustrates how culture can change over time yet remain somewhat constant.
It is, of course, important to recognize here that Griswold is talking about cultural change and not the actual origins of culture (as in, "there was no culture and then, suddenly, there was"). Because Griswold does not explicitly distinguish between the origins of cultural change and the origins of culture, it may appear as though Griswold is arguing here for the origins of culture and situating these origins in society. This is neither accurate nor a clear representation of sociological thought on this issue. Culture, just like society, has existed since the beginning of humanity (humans being social and cultural). Society and culture co-exist because humans have social relations and meanings tied to those relations (e.g. brother, lover, friend). Culture as a super-phenomenon has no real beginning except in the sense that humans (homo sapiens) have a beginning. This, then, makes the question of the origins of culture moot—it has existed as long as we have, and will likely exist as long as we do. Cultural change, on the other hand, is a matter that can be questioned and researched, as Griswold does.
Culture theory
Culture theory, developed in the 1980s and 1990s, sees audiences as playing an active rather than passive role in relation to mass media. One strand of research focuses on the audiences and how they interact with media; the other strand of research focuses on those who produce the media, particularly the news.
Frankfurt School
Walter Benjamin
Theodor W. Adorno
Herbert Marcuse
Erich Fromm
Current research
Computer-mediated communication as culture
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is the process of sending messages—primarily, but not limited to text messages—through the direct use by participants of computers and communication networks. By restricting the definition to the direct use of computers in the communication process, you have to get rid of the communication technologies that rely upon computers for switching technology (such as telephony or compressed video), but do not require the users to interact directly with the computer system via a keyboard or similar computer interface. To be mediated by computers in the sense of this project, the communication must be done by participants fully aware of their interaction with the computer technology in the process of creating and delivering messages. Given the current state of computer communications and networks, this limits CMC to primarily text-based messaging, while leaving the possibility of incorporating sound, graphics, and video images as the technology becomes more sophisticated.
Cultural institutions
Cultural activities are institutionalised; the focus on institutional settings leads to the investigation "of activities in the cultural sector, conceived as historically evolved societal forms of organising the conception, production, distribution, propagation, interpretation, reception, conservation and maintenance of specific cultural goods". Cultural Institutions Studies is therefore a specific approach within the sociology of culture.
Key figures
Key figures in today's cultural sociology include: Julia Adams, Jeffrey Alexander, John Carroll, Diane Crane, Paul DiMaggio, Henning Eichberg, Ron Eyerman, Sarah Gatson, Andreas Glaeser, Wendy Griswold, Eva Illouz, Karin Knorr-Cetina, Michele Lamont, Annette Lareau, Stjepan Mestrovic, Philip Smith, Margaret Somers, Yasemin Soysal, Dan Sperber, Lynette Spillman, Ann Swidler, Diane Vaughan, and Viviana Zelizer.
See also
Communication studies
Cultural anthropology
Cultural Sociology (journal)
Cultural studies
Culture
Sociology
Sociology of literature
Sociomusicology
Taste (sociology)
References
Citations
Sources
Groh, Arnold. 2019. Theories of Culture. London, England: Routledge. .
Stark, Rodney. 2007. Sociology: Tenth Edition. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc. .
Walker, Gavin. 2001. Society and culture in sociological and anthropological tradition . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Lawley, Elizabeth. 1994. The Sociology of Culture in Computer-Mediated Communication: An Initial Exploration .
Swartz, David. 1997. Culture & Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Griswold, Wendy. 2004. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
La logica dei processi culturali. Jürgen Habermas tra filosofia e sociologia. Genova: Edizioni ECIG. .
"Culture and Public Action: Further Reading." Welcome to Culture and Public Action. Web. 23 Feb. 2012. <http://www.cultureandpublicaction.org/conference/s_o_d_sociologyanddevelopment.htm >.
External links | 0.76692 | 0.984436 | 0.754984 |
Culture of North Korea | The contemporary culture of North Korea is based on traditional Korean culture, but has developed since the division of Korea in 1945. Juche, officially the Juche idea, is the state ideology of North Korea; It is considered a variation of Marxist-Leninism. Juche displays Korea's cultural distinctiveness as North Korea is the creator and sole adopter of the ideology.
Art in North Korea is primarily didactic, where cultural expression serves as an instrument for inculcating Juche ideology and the need to continue the struggle for revolution and reunification of the Korean Peninsula. Foreign governments and citizens, especially Americans, are depicted negatively as imperialists; while revolutionary heroes and heroines are seen as saintly figures who act from the purest of motives. The three most consistent themes are martyrdom during the revolutionary struggle (depicted in literature such as The Sea of Blood), the happiness of the present society, and the genius of the leader.
Kim Il Sung has been described as a writer of "classical masterpieces" during the anti-Japanese struggle. Novels created under his direction include The Flower Girl, The Sea of Blood, The Fate of a Self-Defense Corps Man, and The Song of Korea; these are considered "prototypes and models of Juche literature and art." A 1992 newspaper report describes Kim in semi-retirement as writing his memoirs—"a heroic epic dedicated to the freedom and happiness of the people."
Due to North Korean Isolationism, the general population has little or no exposure to foreign cultural influences apart from performances by song-and-dance groups and other entertainers brought in periodically for limited audiences. These performances, such as the Spring Friendship Art Festival held annually in April, are designed to show that the peoples of the world, like the North Koreans themselves, love and respect the country's leader. During the 1980s and the early 1990s, the North Korean media credits Kim Jong Il for making the country a "kingdom of art." The North Korean Media claims Kim Jong Il is supposedly responsible for cultural policy.
Pyongyang and other large cities offer the broadest selection of cultural expression. "Art Propaganda squads" travel to production sites in the provinces to perform poetry readings, one-act plays, and songs in order to "congratulate workers on their successes" and "inspire them to greater successes through their artistic agitation." Such squads are prominent in the countryside during the harvest season and whenever "speed battles" to increase productivity are held.
North Korean society and culture through the lens of theater, film, and everyday performance make up an ideology-shaping matrix that not only entertains but also organizes and mobilizes society. The culture has a tremendous influence on the daily lives of people in North Korea.
Guidance and control
The state and the Korean Workers' Party control the production of literature and art. In the early 1990s, there was no evidence of any underground anti-regime literary or cultural movements such as the samizdat in the Soviet Union or those that exist in the People's Republic of China. The party exercises control over culture through its Propaganda and Agitation Department and the Culture and Arts Department of the KWP's Central Committee. The KWP's General Federation of Korean Literature and Arts Unions, the parent body for all literary and artistic organizations, also directs cultural activity. Due to widespread media control, some analysts have characterized North Koreans as censorees.
These media of paintings, songs, movies, and mass games tell the story of Kim Il Sung as the father of the nation and provides guidance on how to behave as "model citizens" of North Korea.
Cultural expression
The general theme of cultural expression is to take the best aspects from the past while discarding capitalistic elements. Popular vernacular styles and themes in literature, art, music, and dance are esteemed as they are seen as expressing the unique spirit of the Korean nation. Ethnographers restore and reintroduce cultural forms that have a proletarian or folk spirit and that encourages the development of a collective consciousness. Lively, optimistic musical and choreographic expressions are emphasized. Group folk dances and choral singing are traditionally practiced in some but not all parts of Korea and were being promoted throughout North Korea in the early 1990s among school and university students. Farmers' musical bands have also been revived.
Literature, music, and film
Literature is dominated by political themes. A series of historical novels—Pulmyouui yoksa (Immortal History)— depict the heroism and tragedy of the pre-liberation era. The Korean War is the key theme of Korea Fights and The Burning Island. Since the late 1970s, five “great revolutionary plays” have been promoted as models of the party's literature: The Shrine for a Tutelary Deity, a theatrical rendition of The Flower Girl, Three Men, One Party, A Letter from a Daughter, and Hyolbun mangukhoe (Resentment at the World Conference).
Korean revolutionary opera, derived from traditional Korean operas, known as ch'angguk, are often variations on Korean folk songs. Old fairy tales have also been changed to include revolutionary themes. As part of the party's policy of preserving the best from Korea's past, premodern vernacular works such as the Sasong kibong (Encounter of Four Persons) and the Ssangch'on kibong (Encounter at the Two Rivers) have been reprinted with edits to suit that purpose as well.
Musical compositions include the "Song of General Kim Il Sung", "Long Life and Good Health to the Leader", and "We Sing of His Benevolent Love"—hymns that praise the nation's leader. According to a North Korean writer, "Our musicians have pursued the party's policy of composing orchestral music based on famous songs and folk songs popular among our people and produced numerous instrumental pieces of a new type." This music includes a symphony based on the theme of The Sea of Blood, which has also been made into a revolutionary opera.
In February 2008, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra became the first U.S. orchestra to perform in North Korea, albeit for a handpicked "invited audience". The concert was broadcast on national television. The Christian rock band Casting Crowns played at the annual Spring Friendship Arts Festival in April 2007, held in Pyongyang.
Motion pictures are recognized as "the most powerful medium for educating the masses" and play a central role in social education. According to a North Korean source, "films for children contribute to the formation of the rising generation, with a view to creating a new kind of man, harmoniously evolved and equipped with well-founded knowledge and a sound mind in a sound body." One of the most influential films, An Jung-geun Shoots Ito Hirobumi, tells of the assassin who killed the Japanese resident-general in Korea in 1909. The protagonist is portrayed as a courageous patriot, but one whose efforts to liberate Korea were frustrated because the masses had not been united under "an outstanding leader who enunciates a correct guiding thought and scientific strategy and tactics." Folk tales such as "The Tale of Chun Hyang", about a nobleman who marries a servant girl, and "The Tale of On Dal" have also been made into films.
Kim Jong Il showed interest in or perhaps even obsession with cinema. The North Korean leader reportedly had a huge library of Western and Asian movies. In the 1980s, he even ordered the kidnapping of two South Korean movie-makers and forced them to make films for the North Korean state.
Australian filmmaker Anna Broinowski gained access to North Korea's film industry through British filmmaker Nick Bonner, who facilitated meetings between Broinowski and prominent North Korean filmmakers to assist Broinowski with the production of Aim High in Creation!, a film project based on Kim Jong-il's manifesto. Broinowski explained in July 2013, prior to the screening of the film at the Melbourne International Film Festival:
A friend gave me Kim Jong Il's manifesto on how to make the 'perfect socialist film', The Cinema and Directing (1987). I was immediately fascinated by his often counter-intuitive (for a Westerner at least) filmmaking rules. And I began to ponder: what would a film by Westerners, strictly adhering to Kim Jong Il's rules, be like? Could it have the same power over western audiences that North Korean films have over Kim Jong Il's 23 million citizens? ... I wanted to humanise the North Koreans in the minds of viewers constantly bombarded by the mainstream Western media's depiction of North Koreans as victimised, brainwashed automatons.
A version of Broinowski's work was screened in Pyongyang, but the director believes that the documentary version of the film will not be allowed into the country.
A study commissioned by the U. S. State Department shows that, despite extremely strict regulations and draconian penalties, North Koreans, particularly elite elements, have increased access to news and other media outside the state-controlled media authorized by the government. While access to the Internet is tightly controlled, listening to the radio and viewing DVDs is increasing, and receiving television broadcasts from neighboring states is also possible in border areas.
A South Korean professor claimed that the spread of cheap, Chinese-made "portable TVs" (EVD players) in North Korea is making it harder for authorities to crack down on citizens watching South Korean-made videos.
Uriminzokkiri is a Korean news website that frequently posts propaganda including the United States attack video published in 2013.
Visual arts
Historically, graphic design in North Korea was influenced by the Soviet bloc and by Korean tradition. It has tended to use a "Korean palette" of bright colours. In around 2005, digital design replaced hand-drawn graphics, and the Western influence became stronger.
Architecture and city planning
The most distinct and impressive form of contemporary cultural expression in North Korea is architecture and city planning. Pyongyang, almost completely destroyed by the United States during the Korean War, has been rebuilt on a grand scale. Many new buildings have been constructed during the 1980s and 1990s in order to enhance Pyongyang's status as a capital.
Major structures are divided architecturally into three categories: monuments, buildings that combine traditional Korean architectural motifs and modern construction, and high-rise buildings of a modern design. Examples of the first include the Ch'ollima Statue; a twenty-meter high bronze statue of Kim Il Sung in front of the Museum of the Korean Revolution (itself, at 240,000 square meters, one of the largest structures in the world); the Arch of Triumph (similar to its Parisian counterpart, although a full ten meters higher); and Juche Tower, 170 meters high, built on the occasion of Kim's seventieth birthday in 1982.
The second architectural category makes special use of traditional tiled roof designs and includes the People's Palace of Culture and the Grand People's Study House, both in Pyongyang, and the International Friendship Exhibition Hall at Myohyang-san. The latter building displays gifts given to Kim Il Sung by foreign dignitaries. In light of North Korea's current close relationship to China, and during the Choson Dynasty, it is significant that the section of the hall devoted to gifts from China is the largest.
The third architectural category includes high-rise apartment complexes and hotels in the capital. The most striking of these buildings is the Ryugyong Hotel, unfinished as of now (with construction halted from 1992 - April 2008). Described as one of the world's tallest hotels at 105 stories, its triangular shape looms over north-central Pyongyang. The Koryo Hotel is an ultramodern, twin-towered structure forty-five stories high.
Much construction occurred before celebrations of Kim Il Sung's eightieth birthday, including the building of grand apartment complexes and the Reunification Highway, a four-lane road connecting the capital and the Demilitarized Zone. According to a journalist writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review, the highway is "an impressive piece of engineering" that "cuts a straight path through mountainous terrain with 21 tunnels and 23 bridges on the 168 kilometers route to P'anmunjm." As in many other construction projects, the military provided the labor. North Korea has stated its hope that upon eventual reunification the highway will carry back-and-forth traffic.
Mass games
North Korea is famous for its "mass games". Mass games are the culminating annual celebrations of the state leader's birthdays and the rituals commemorating the foundation of the state: On the birthdays of Kim Il Sung (April 15, 1912), the founding father of North Korea, and Kim Jong Il (born February 16, 1942), the former leader of the state. These are exhibitions where thousands of North Koreans perform highly choreographed dances, especially traditional dances, and gymnastics, often engaging in simultaneous rhythms of movement. The performers sing and chant their loyalties to Kim il-sung, the KWP, and to the principle of Juche.
See also
List of museums in North Korea
List of theatres in North Korea
List of North Korean operas
List of North Korean television series
Culture of Korea - covers the traditional culture of both North Korea and South Korea.
Korean tea ceremony
Contemporary culture of South Korea
Korean shamanism
Korean Confucianism
Korean Buddhism
Korean cuisine
Mansudae Art Troupe
Propaganda in North Korea
The Flower Girl - the most well-known North Korean theatrical opera and film
Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il badges
References
Further reading
External links
Macintyre, Donald & Yooseung, Kim (June 21, 2004). "A Literary Thaw in Korea". Time
Young-min, Kwon "In North Korean Literature Kim Il-sung is Everything"
Professional photo series of the 2009 "Arirang" Massgames in North Korea
bn:উত্তর কোরিয়া#সংস্কৃতি | 0.765354 | 0.986446 | 0.754981 |
Steps to an Ecology of Mind | Steps to an Ecology of Mind is a collection of Gregory Bateson's short works over his long and varied career. Subject matter includes essays on anthropology, cybernetics, psychiatry, and epistemology. It was originally published by Ballantine Books in 1972 (republished 2000 with foreword by Mary Catherine Bateson).
Part I: Metalogues
The book begins with a series of metalogues, which take the form of conversations with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson. The metalogues are mostly thought exercises with titles such as "What is an Instinct" and "How Much Do You Know." In the metalogues, the playful dialectic structure itself is closely related to the subject matter of the piece.
DEFINITION: A metalogue is a conversation about some problematic subject. This conversation should be such that not only do the participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject. Only some of the conversations here presented achieve this double format.
Notably, the history of evolutionary theory is inevitably a metalogue between man and nature, in which the creation and interaction of ideas must necessarily exemplify evolutionary process.
Why Do Things Get in a Muddle? (01948, previously unpublished)
Why Do Frenchmen? (01951, Impulse ; 01953, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. X)
About Games and Being Serious (01953, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. X)
How Much Do You Know? (01953, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. X)
Why Do Things Have Outlines? (01953, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. XI)
Why a Swan? (01954, Impulse)
What Is an Instinct? (01969, Sebeok, Approaches to Animal Communication)
Part II: Form and Pattern in Anthropology
Part II is a collection of anthropological writings, many of which were written while he was married to Margaret Mead.
Culture Contact and Schismogenesis (01935, Man, Article 199, Vol. XXXV)
Experiments in Thinking About Observed Ethnological Material (01940, Seventh Conference on Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences ; 01941, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 8, No. 1)
Morale and National Character (01942, Civilian Morale, Watson)
Bali: The Value System of a Steady State (01949, Social Structure: Studies Presented to A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes)
Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art (01967, A Study of Primitive Art, Forge)
Part III: Form and Pathology in Relationship
Part III is devoted to the theme of "Form and Pathology in Relationships." His essay on alcoholism examines the alcoholic state of mind, and the methodology of Alcoholics Anonymous within the framework of the then-nascent field of cybernetics.
Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero-Learning was a "comment on Margaret Mead's article "The Comparative Study of Culture and the Purposive Cultivation of Democratic Values," 01942, Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium)
A Theory of Play and Fantasy (01954, A.P.A. Regional Research Conference in Mexico City, March 11 ; 01955, A.P.A. Psychiatric Research Reports)
Epidemiology of a Schizophrenia (edited version of a talk, "How the Deviant Sees His Society," from 01955, at a conference on "The Epidemiology of Mental Health," Brighton, Utah)
Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia (01956, Behavioral Science, Vol. I, No. 4)
The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia (01960)
Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia (01959)
Double Bind, 1969 (01969)
The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication (01968)
The Cybernetics of "Self": A Theory of Alcoholism (01971)
Part IV: Biology and Evolution
On Empty-Headedness Among Biologists and State Boards of Education (in BioScience, Vol. 20, 1970)
The Role of Somatic Change in Evolution (in the journal of Evolution, Vol 17, 1963)
Problems in Cetacean and Other Mammalian Communication (appeared as Chapter 25, pp. 569–799, in Whales, Dolphins and Purpoises, edited by Kenneth S. Norris, University of California Press, 1966)
A Re-examination of "Bateson's Rule" (accepted for publication in the Journal of Genetics)
Part V: Epistemology and Ecology.
Cybernetic Explanation (from the American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 10, No. 8, April 1967, pp. 29–32)
Redundancy and Coding (appeared as Chapter 22 in Animal Communication: Techniques of Study and Results of Research, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok, 1968, Indiana University Press)
Conscious Purpose Versus Nature (this lecture was given in August, 1968, to the London Conference on the Dialectics of Liberation, appearing in a book of the same name, Penguin Books)
Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation (prepared as the Bateson's position paper for Wenner-Gren Foundation Conference on "Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation". Bateson chaired the conference held in Burg Wartenstein, Austria, July 17–24, 1968)
Form, Substance, and Difference (the Nineteenth Annual Korzbski Memorial Lecture, January 9, 1970, under the auspices of the Institute of General Semantics; appeared in the General Semantics'' Bulletin, No. 37, 1970)
Part VI: Crisis in the Ecology of Mind
From Versailles to Cybernetics (previously unpublished. This lecture was given 21 April 1966, to the "Two Worlds Symposium" at (CSU) Sacramento State College)
Pathologies of Epistemology (given at the Second Conference on Mental Health in Asia and the Pacific, 1969, at the East–West Center, Hawaii, appearing in the report of that conference)
The Roots of Ecological Crisis (testimony on behalf of the University of Hawaii Committee on Ecology and Man, presented in March 1970)
Ecology and Flexibility in Urban Civilization (written for a conference convened by Bateson in October 1970 on "Restructuring the Ecology of a Great City" and subsequently edited)
See also
Double bind
Information ecology
Philosophy of mind
Social sustainability
Systems philosophy
Systems theory
Notes and references
1972 books
Anthropology books
Cognitive science literature
Systems theory books
University of Chicago Press books | 0.773523 | 0.976018 | 0.754972 |
Verstehen | Verstehen (, ), in the context of German philosophy and social sciences in general, has been used since the late 19th century – in English as in German – with the particular sense of the "interpretive or participatory" examination of social phenomena. The term is closely associated with the work of the German sociologist Max Weber, whose antipositivism established an alternative to prior sociological positivism and economic determinism, rooted in the analysis of social action. In anthropology, Verstehen has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture attempts to relate to it and understand others.
Verstehen is now seen as a concept and a method central to a rejection of positivist social science (although Weber appeared to think that the two could be united). Verstehen refers to understanding the meaning of action from the actor's point of view. It is entering into the shoes of the other, and adopting this research stance requires treating the actor as a subject, rather than an object of your observations. It also implies that unlike objects in the natural world human actors are not simply the product of the pulls and pushes of external forces. Individuals are seen to create the world by organizing their own understanding of it and giving it meaning. To do research on actors without taking into account the meanings they attribute to their actions or environment is to treat them like objects.
Meaning
Interpretive sociology is the study of society that concentrates on the meanings people associate to their social world. Interpretive sociology strives to show that reality is constructed by people themselves in their daily lives.
Verstehen roughly translates to "meaningful understanding" or "putting yourself in the shoes of others to see things from their perspective." Interpretive sociology differs from positivist sociology in three ways:
It deals with the meaning attached to action, unlike positivist sociology which focuses on behavior;
It sees reality as being constructed by people, unlike positivist sociology which sees an objective reality "out there;" and
It relies on qualitative data, unlike positivist sociology which tends to make use of quantitative data.
Dilthey and hermeneutics
Verstehen was introduced into philosophy and the human sciences by the German historist philosopher Johann Gustav Droysen. Droysen first made a distinction between nature and history in terms of the categories of space and time. The method of the natural sciences is explanation, while that of history is understanding.
The concept of Verstehen was later used by the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey to describe the first-person participatory perspective that agents have on their individual experience as well as their culture, history, and society. In this sense, it is developed in the context of the theory and practice of interpretation (as understood in the context of hermeneutics) and contrasted with the external objectivating third-person perspective of explanation in which human agency, subjectivity, and its products are analyzed as effects of impersonal natural forces in the natural sciences and social structures in sociology.
Twentieth-century philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer were critical of what they considered to be the romantic and subjective character of Verstehen in Dilthey, although both Dilthey and the early Heidegger were interested in the "facticity" and "life-context" of understanding, and sought to universalize it as the way humans exist through language on the basis of ontology. Verstehen also played a role in Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz's analysis of the "lifeworld." Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel further transformed the concept of Verstehen, reformulating it on the basis of a transcendental-pragmatic philosophy of language and the theory of communicative action.
Weber and the social sciences
Max Weber and Georg Simmel introduced interpretive understanding into sociology, where it has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture (such as an anthropologist or sociologist) relates to an indigenous people or sub-cultural group on their own terms and from their own point of view, rather than interpreting them in terms of the observer's own culture. Verstehen can mean either a kind of empathic or participatory understanding of social phenomena. In anthropological terms this is sometimes described as cultural relativism, especially by those that have a tendency to argue toward universal ideals. In sociology it is an aspect of the comparative-historical approach, where the context of a society like twelfth century "France" can be potentially better understood by the sociologist than it could have been by people living in a village in Burgundy. It relates to how people in life give meaning to the social world around them and how the social scientist accesses and evaluates this "first-person perspective." This concept has been both expanded and criticized by later social scientists. Proponents laud this concept as the only means by which researchers from one culture can examine and explain behaviors in another. While the exercise of Verstehen has been more popular among social scientists in Europe, such as Habermas, Verstehen was introduced into the practice of sociology in the United States by Talcott Parsons, an American sociologist influenced by Max Weber. Parsons used his structural functionalism to incorporate this concept into his 1937 work, The Structure of Social Action.
Weber had more specific beliefs than Marx where he put value to understanding and meaning of key elements—not just with intuition or sympathy with the individual but also the product of "systematic and rigorous research". The goal is to identify human actions and interpreting them as observable events leading us to believe that it not only provides for a good explanation for individual actions but also for group interactions. The meaning attached needs to include constraints and limitations and analyze the motivation for action. Weber believed that this gives the sociologist an advantage over a natural scientist because "We can accomplish something which is never attainable in the natural sciences, namely the subjective understanding of the action of the component individuals."
Criticism
Critics of the social scientific concept of Verstehen such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Dean MacCannell counter that it is simply impossible for a person born of one culture to ever completely understand another culture, and that it is arrogant and conceited to attempt to interpret the significance of one culture's symbols through the terms of another (supposedly superior) culture. Just as in physical science all knowledge is asymptotic to the full explanation, a high degree of cross-cultural understanding is very valuable. The opposite of Verstehen would seem to be ignorance of all but that which is immediately observable, meaning that we would not be able to understand any time and place but our own. A certain level of interpretive understanding is necessary for our own cultural setting, however, and it can easily be argued that even the full participant in a culture does not fully understand it in every regard.
Critics also believe that it is the sociologist's job to not just observe people and what people do but also share in their world of meaning and come to appreciate why they act as they do. Subjective thoughts and feelings regarded as bias in the sciences is an important aspect to be controlled for while doing sociological research.
See also
Antinaturalism (sociology)
Emic and etic
Humanistic sociology
Humanistic coefficient
Nomothetic and idiographic
Reflexivity (social theory)
References
External links
Philosophy of social science
Phenomenology
Hermeneutics
German philosophy
Critical theory
German words and phrases
Max Weber
Social concepts
1850s neologisms
Wilhelm Dilthey | 0.764228 | 0.987864 | 0.754954 |
Historical region | Historical regions (or historical areas) are geographical regions which, at some point in history, had a cultural, ethnic, linguistic or political basis, regardless of latter-day borders. There are some historical regions that can be considered as "active", for example: Moravia, which is held by the Czech Republic, is both a recognized part of the country as well as a historical region. They are used as delimitations for studying and analysing social development of period-specific cultures without any reference to contemporary political, economic or social organisations.
The fundamental principle underlying this view is that older political and mental structures exist which exercise greater influence on the spatial-social identity of individuals than is understood by the contemporary world, bound to and often blinded by its own worldview - e.g. the focus on the nation-state.
Definitions of regions vary, and regions can include macroregions such as Europe, territories of traditional sovereign states or smaller microregional areas. Geographic proximity is generally the required precondition for the emergence of a regional identity. In Europe, regional identities are often derived from the Migration Period but for the contemporary era are also often related to the territorial transformations that followed World War I and those that followed the Cold War.
Some regions are entirely invented, such as the Middle East, which was popularised in 1902 by a military strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, to refer to the area of the Persian Gulf.
Lists
Anatolia
Armenia
Central Europe
Dalmatia
Denmark (Lands / Districts)
Finland (Historical / Former)
France
Greece (Ancient / Traditional / Geographic)
Iraq (Mesopotamia)
Latvia
Caucasus
Lithuania
Poland
Portugal
Serbia
Sweden (Lands / Provinces)
Ukraine
United Kingdom
England
Hen Ogledd
Scotland (Provinces / Shires)
Wales
United States
See also
References
Citations
Works cited
Sven Tägil (ed.), Regions in Central Europe: The Legacy of History, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999
Marko Lehti, David James Smith, Post-Cold War Identity Politics: Northern and Baltic Experiences, Routledge, 2003
Compiled by V. M. Kotlyakov, A. I. Komarova, Elsevier's dictionary of geography: in English, Russian, French, Spanish, German, Elsevier, 2006
Martin W. Lewis, Kären Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, University of California Press, 1997
Further reading
Susan Smith-Peter, Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia, Brill, 2017 | 0.760515 | 0.992671 | 0.754941 |
Committed relationship | A committed relationship is an interpersonal relationship based upon agreed-upon commitment to one another involving love, trust, honesty, openness, or some other behavior. Forms of committed relationships include close friendship, long-term relationships, engagement, marriage, and civil unions.
Non-romantic and/or non-sexual committed relationships
Family: a group of people related by consanguinity or affinity
Friendship: certain kinds of friendships are committed, such as best friends forever, bromance, blood brother, and womance
Committed romantic and/or sexual relationships
Marriage: a legal, religious, and social binding between people.
Monogamy: having a single long-term romantic and sexual partner
Ménage à trois: having a domestic arrangement with three people sharing romantic or sexual relations; typically a traditional marriage along with another committed individual, usually a woman
Polyamory: encompasses a wide range of relationships; polyamorous relationships may include both committed and casual relationships.
Group marriage: marital arrangement where three or more adults enter into marriage
Sexual fidelity: not having other sexual partners other than one's committed partner, even temporarily
See also
Hookup culture: a culture encouraging numerous and sometimes anonymous sexual partners
Sexual infidelity: having a sexual relationship without a commitment to have no other sexual partners
Serial monogamy: having a series of monogamous relationships, one after the other
Open relationship: having a partner without excluding other romantic or sexual involvement
Open marriage: marital arrangement where partners agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual or romantic relationships
Polygamy: having multiple married partners
Polyandry: having multiple married male partners
Polygyny: having multiple married female partners
Promiscuity: having casual sexual partners at will (compare with chastity)
Relationship anarchy: having relationships that develop as an agreement between those involved, rather than according to predetermined rules or norms.
Shipping: followers of either real-life people or fictional characters to be in a romantic or sexual relationship
Love–hate relationship: intense simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate, a committed frenemy or sibling rivalry
References
Interpersonal relationships
Monogamy | 0.764599 | 0.987363 | 0.754937 |
Contextual architecture | Contextual architecture, also known as Contextualism is a philosophical approach in architectural theory that refers to the designing of a structure in response to the literal and abstract characteristics of the environment in which it is built. Contextual architecture contrasts modernist architecture, which value the imposition of their own characteristics and values upon the built environment.
Contextual architecture is usually divided into three categories: vernacular architecture, regional architecture, and critical regionalism all of which also inform the complementary architecture movement.
Etymology
The term contextualism is derived from the Latin , meaning to weave together or to join. The term was first applied to the arts and architecture by the aesthetician and philosopher Stephen C. Pepper in the 1960s, who originally coined the word as applied to philosophy.
History
The essential ideas of Contextualism in architecture long preceded the term's coinage. The Roman notion of genius loci, Renaissance decorum, and Beaux Arts tirer parti mirror modern definitions of contextualism.
The 1920s development of Gestalt psychology, which investigated the ways in which independent parts could be combined to make a cohesive result, provided the intellectual foundation for the philosophy. Contextualism as applied to architecture was first championed in the 1960s by architect Colin Rowe as a reaction to modernist architecture, which valued universality and the projection of utopian ideals onto sites. Pushing back against the perceived failure of modernist buildings to adapt cohesively with their environments – in particular with cities' historic buildings, Rowe advocated for architecture that was designed with a focus on existing in continuity with the surrounding features of the built and natural environments. Rowe notably advocated for the use of figure-ground diagrams as a method of understanding the existing features surrounding a site's surrounding environment.
Contextualist philosophy experienced a revival later in the 20th century with the advent of the New Urbanism movement, which stressed "context-appropriate architecture" in urban design, particularly in the context of environmentalism.
Criticism
Contextualism, particularly in the decades following the 1980s, has faced criticism for its association with postmodernism and perceived conformism. Architectural pragmatist Rem Koolhaas' assertion "fuck context" served as an infamous rallying cry against contextualism.
In 1988, while curating an exhibition on Deconstructivism at MoMA, architects Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley denounced the philosophy, stating "contextualism has been used as an excuse for mediocrity, for a dumb servility to the familiar."
Notable examples
Olympic Archery Range, Barcelona, Carme Pinós and Enric Miralles (1992)
Water (Honpuku) Temple, Awaji, (Japanese: **E1-. *ME), Tadao Ando (1991)
City Gate (Valletta), Malta, Renzo Piano (2015)
Kingo Houses, Helsingør, Jørn Utzon (1958)
Phantom Ranch, Grand Canyon, Mary Colter (1922)
Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright (1935)
References
Architectural theory | 0.780183 | 0.967564 | 0.754877 |
Computer graphics (computer science) | Computer graphics is a sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Although the term often refers to the study of three-dimensional computer graphics, it also encompasses two-dimensional graphics and image processing.
Overview
Computer graphics studies manipulation of visual and geometric information using computational techniques. It focuses on the mathematical and computational foundations of image generation and processing rather than purely aesthetic issues. Computer graphics is often differentiated from the field of visualization, although the two fields have many similarities.
Connected studies include:
Applied mathematics
Computational geometry
Computational topology
Computer vision
Image processing
Information visualization
Scientific visualization
Applications of computer graphics include:
Print design
Digital art
Special effects
Video games
Visual effects
History
There are several international conferences and journals where the most significant results in computer graphics are published. Among them are the SIGGRAPH and Eurographics conferences and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Transactions on Graphics journal. The joint Eurographics and ACM SIGGRAPH symposium series features the major venues for the more specialized sub-fields: Symposium on Geometry Processing, Symposium on Rendering, Symposium on Computer Animation, and High Performance Graphics.
As in the rest of computer science, conference publications in computer graphics are generally more significant than journal publications (and subsequently have lower acceptance rates).
Subfields
A broad classification of major subfields in computer graphics might be:
Geometry: ways to represent and process surfaces
Animation: ways to represent and manipulate motion
Rendering: algorithms to reproduce light transport
Imaging: image acquisition or image editing
Geometry
The subfield of geometry studies the representation of three-dimensional objects in a discrete digital setting. Because the appearance of an object depends largely on its exterior, boundary representations are most commonly used. Two dimensional surfaces are a good representation for most objects, though they may be non-manifold. Since surfaces are not finite, discrete digital approximations are used. Polygonal meshes (and to a lesser extent subdivision surfaces) are by far the most common representation, although point-based representations have become more popular recently (see for instance the Symposium on Point-Based Graphics). These representations are Lagrangian, meaning the spatial locations of the samples are independent. Recently, Eulerian surface descriptions (i.e., where spatial samples are fixed) such as level sets have been developed into a useful representation for deforming surfaces which undergo many topological changes (with fluids being the most notable example).
Geometry subfields include:
Implicit surface modeling – an older subfield which examines the use of algebraic surfaces, constructive solid geometry, etc., for surface representation.
Digital geometry processing – surface reconstruction, simplification, fairing, mesh repair, parameterization, remeshing, mesh generation, surface compression, and surface editing all fall under this heading.
Discrete differential geometry – a nascent field which defines geometric quantities for the discrete surfaces used in computer graphics.
Point-based graphics – a recent field which focuses on points as the fundamental representation of surfaces.
Subdivision surfaces
Out-of-core mesh processing – another recent field which focuses on mesh datasets that do not fit in main memory.
Animation
The subfield of animation studies descriptions for surfaces (and other phenomena) that move or deform over time. Historically, most work in this field has focused on parametric and data-driven models, but recently physical simulation has become more popular as computers have become more powerful computationally.
Animation subfields include:
Performance capture
Character animation
Physical simulation (e.g. cloth modeling, animation of fluid dynamics, etc.)
Rendering
Rendering generates images from a model. Rendering may simulate light transport to create realistic images or it may create images that have a particular artistic style in non-photorealistic rendering. The two basic operations in realistic rendering are transport (how much light passes from one place to another) and scattering (how surfaces interact with light). See Rendering (computer graphics) for more information.
Rendering subfields include:
Transport describes how illumination in a scene gets from one place to another. Visibility is a major component of light transport.
Scattering: Models of scattering (how light interacts with the surface at a given point) and shading (how material properties vary across the surface) are used to describe the appearance of a surface. In graphics these problems are often studied within the context of rendering since they can substantially affect the design of rendering algorithms. Descriptions of scattering are usually given in terms of a bidirectional scattering distribution function (BSDF). The latter issue addresses how different types of scattering are distributed across the surface (i.e., which scattering function applies where). Descriptions of this kind are typically expressed with a program called a shader. (There is some confusion since the word "shader" is sometimes used for programs that describe local geometric variation.)
Non-photorealistic rendering
Physically based rendering – concerned with generating images according to the laws of geometric optics
Real-time rendering – focuses on rendering for interactive applications, typically using specialized hardware like GPUs
Relighting – recent area concerned with quickly re-rendering scenes
Notable researchers
Arthur Appel
James Arvo
Brian A. Barsky
Jim Blinn
Jack E. Bresenham
Loren Carpenter
Edwin Catmull
James H. Clark
Robert L. Cook
Franklin C. Crow
Paul Debevec
David C. Evans
Ron Fedkiw
Steven K. Feiner
James D. Foley
David Forsyth
Henry Fuchs
Andrew Glassner
Henri Gouraud (computer scientist)
Donald P. Greenberg
Eric Haines
R. A. Hall
Pat Hanrahan
John Hughes
Jim Kajiya
Takeo Kanade
Kenneth Knowlton
Marc Levoy
Martin Newell (computer scientist)
James O'Brien
Ken Perlin
Matt Pharr
Bui Tuong Phong
Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz
William Reeves
David F. Rogers
Holly Rushmeier
Peter Shirley
James Sethian
Ivan Sutherland
Demetri Terzopoulos
Kenneth Torrance
Greg Turk
Andries van Dam
Henrik Wann Jensen
Gregory Ward
John Warnock
J. Turner Whitted
Lance Williams
Applications for their use
Bitmap Design / Image Editing
Adobe Photoshop
Corel Photo-Paint
GIMP
Krita
Vector drawing
Adobe Illustrator
CorelDRAW
Inkscape
Affinity Designer
Sketch
Architecture
VariCAD
FreeCAD
AutoCAD
QCAD
LibreCAD
DataCAD
Corel Designer
Video editing
Adobe Premiere Pro
Sony Vegas
Final Cut
DaVinci Resolve
Cinelerra
VirtualDub
Sculpting, Animation, and 3D Modeling
Blender 3D
Wings 3D
ZBrush
Sculptris
SolidWorks
Rhino3D
SketchUp
3ds Max
Cinema 4D
Maya
Houdini
Digital composition
Nuke
Blackmagic Fusion
Adobe After Effects
Natron
Rendering
V-Ray
RedShift
RenderMan
Octane Render
Mantra
Lumion (Architectural visualization)
Other applications examples
ACIS - geometric core
Autodesk Softimage
POV-Ray
Scribus
Silo
Hexagon
Lightwave
See also
Computer facial animation
Computer science
Computer science and engineering
Computer graphics
Digital geometry
Digital image editing
Geometry processing
IBM PCPG, (1980s)
Painter's algorithm
Stanford Bunny
Utah Teapot
References
Further reading
Foley et al. Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice.
Shirley. Fundamentals of Computer Graphics.
Watt. 3D Computer Graphics.
External links
A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation
History of Computer Graphics series of articles
Industry
Industrial labs doing "blue sky" graphics research include:
Adobe Advanced Technology Labs
MERL
Microsoft Research – Graphics
Nvidia Research
Major film studios notable for graphics research include:
ILM
PDI/Dreamworks Animation
Pixar
+ | 0.76257 | 0.989898 | 0.754866 |
Alterity | Alterity is a philosophical and anthropological term meaning "otherness", that is, the "other of two" (Latin alter). It is also increasingly being used in media to express something other than "sameness", or something outside of tradition or convention.
Philosophy
Within the phenomenological tradition, alterity is usually understood as the entity in contrast to which an identity is constructed, and it implies the ability to distinguish between self and not-self, and consequently to assume the existence of an alternative viewpoint. The concept was further developed by Emmanuel Levinas in a series of essays, collected in Altérité et transcendance (Alterity and Transcendence) (1995).
Castoriadis
For Cornelius Castoriadis (L'institution imaginaire de la société, 1975; The Imaginary Institution of Society, 1997) radical alterity/otherness denotes the element of creativity in history: "For what is given in and through history is not the determined sequence of the determined but the emergence of radical otherness, immanent creation, non-trivial novelty."
Baudrillard
For Jean Baudrillard (Figures de l'alterité, 1994; Radical Alterity, 2008), alterity is a precious and transcendent element and its loss would seriously impoverish a world culture of increasing sameness and "arrogant, insular cultural narcissism."
Spivak
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's theory of alterity was introduced in a 2014 symposium titled Remaking History, the intention of which was to challenge the masculine orthodoxy of history writing.
According to Spivak, it is imperative for one to uncover the histories and inherent historical behaviors in order to exercise an individual right to authentic experience, identity and reality. Within the concept of socially constructed histories one "must take into account the dangerous fragility and tenacity of these concept-metaphors."
Spivak recalls her personal history: "As a postcolonial, I am concerned with the appropriation of 'alternative history' or 'histories'. I am not a historian by training. I cannot claim disciplinary expertise in remaking history in the sense of rewriting it. But I can be used as an example of how historical narratives are negotiated. The parents of my parents' grandparents' grandparents were made over, not always without their consent, by the political, fiscal and educational intervention of British imperialism, and now I am independent. Thus I am, in the strictest sense, a postcolonial."
Spivak uses four "master words" to identify the modes of being that create alterity: "Nationalism, Internationalism, Secularism and Culturalism." Furthermore, tools for developing alternative histories include: "gender, race, ethnicity, class".
Other thinkers
Jeffery Nealon, in Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity, argues that "ethics is constituted as an inexorable affirmative response to different identities, not through an inability to understand or totalize the other."
There is included a long article on alterity in the University of Chicago's Theories of Media: Keywords Glossary by Joshua Wexler. Wexler writes: "Given the various theorists formulations presented here, the mediation of alterity or otherness in the world provides a space for thinking about the complexities of self and other and the formation of identity."
The concept of alterity is also being used in theology and in spiritual books meant for general readers. This is not out of place because, for believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the ultimate 'Other'. Alterity has also been used to describe the goal of many Christians, to become themselves deeply "other" than the usual norms of behavior and patterns of thought of the secular culture at large. Enzo Bianchi in Echoes of the Word expresses this well, "Meditation always seeks to open us to alterity, love and communion by guiding us toward the goal of having in ourselves the same attitude and will that were in Christ Jesus."
Jadranka Skorin-Kapov in The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation, relates alterity or otherness to newness and surprise, "The signification of the encounter with otherness is not in its novelty (or banal newness); on the contrary, newness has signification because it reveals otherness, because it allows the experience of otherness. Newness is related to surprise, it is a consequence of the encounter... Metaphysical desire is the acceptivity of irreducible otherness. Surprise is the consequence of the encounter. Between desire and surprise there is a pause, a void, a rupture, an immediacy that cannot be captured and presented."
Anthropology
In anthropology, alterity has been used by scholars such as Nicholas Dirks, Johannes Fabian, Michael Taussig and Pauline Turner Strong to refer to the construction of "cultural others".
Musicology
The term has gained further use in seemingly somewhat remote disciplines, e.g., historical musicology where it is employed by John Michael Cooper in a study of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Felix Mendelssohn.
See also
Abjection
Decolonization
Heterogeneity
Heterophenomenology
Imperialism
Indeterminacy in philosophy
Internationalism
Nationalism
Other
Pedagogy
Postcolonialism
Secularism
Self-consciousness
Subjectivity
Uncanny
References
Further reading
Martin Buber (1937), I and Thou.
Chan-Fai Cheung, Tze-Wan Kwan and Kwok-ying Lau (eds.), Identity and Alterity. Phenomenology and Cultural Traditions. Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009 (Orbis Phaenomenologicum, Perspektiven, Neue Folge Band 14)
Cooper, John Michael (2007) Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night. University of Rochester Press.
Fabian, Johannes (1983) Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. Columbia University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1999[1970]) Alterity and Transcendence. (Trans. Michael B. Smith) Columbia University Press.
Maranhao, Tullio (ed.), Anthropology and the Question of the Other. Paideuma 44 (1998).
Nealon, Jeffrey (1998) Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity. Duke University Press.
Půtová, B.: Freak Shows. Otherness of the Human Body as a Form of Public Presentation. Anthropologie: International Journal of Human Diversity and Evolution 56(2), 2018, s. 91–102
Strong, Pauline Turner (1999) Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity *Narratives. Westview Press/Perseus Books.
Taussig, Michael (1993) Mimesis and Alterity. Routledge.
Otherness - Dictionary of war
External links
Phenomenology
Existentialist concepts
Postcolonialism | 0.764874 | 0.986863 | 0.754826 |
Marketplace of ideas | The marketplace of ideas is a rationale for freedom of expression based on an analogy to the economic concept of a free market. The marketplace of ideas holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse and concludes that ideas and ideologies will be culled according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread acceptance among the population. The concept is often applied to discussions of patent law as well as freedom of the press and the responsibilities of the media in a liberal democracy.
History
Support for competing ideas and robust debate can be found in the philosophy of John Milton in his work Areopagitica in 1644 and also John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty in 1859. The general idea that free speech should be tolerated because it will lead toward the truth has a long history. English poet John Milton suggested that restricting speech was not necessary because "in a free and open encounter" truth would prevail. President Thomas Jefferson argued that it is safe to tolerate "error of opinion ... where reason is left free to combat it". Fredrick Siebert echoed the idea that free expression is self-correcting in Four Theories of the Press: "Let all with something to say be free to express themselves. The true and sound will survive. The false and unsound will be vanquished. Government should keep out of the battle and not weigh the odds in favor of one side or the other". These writers did not rely on the economic analogy to a market.
Economic historian Joel Mokyr argues in his 2017 book A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy that political fragmentation in Europe (the presence of a large number of European states) made it possible for heterodox ideas to thrive, as entrepreneurs, innovators, ideologues, and heretics could easily flee to a neighboring state in the event that the one state would try to suppress their ideas and activities. This is what set Europe apart from the technologically advanced, large unitary empires such as China and India. China had both a printing press and movable type, and India had similar levels scientific and technological achievement as Europe in 1700, yet the Industrial Revolution would occur in Europe, not China or India. In Europe, political fragmentation was coupled with an "integrated market for ideas" where Europe's intellectuals used the lingua franca of Latin, had a shared intellectual basis in Europe's classical heritage and the pan-European institution of the Republic of Letters.
However, the more precise metaphor of a marketplace of ideas comes from the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States. The first reference to the "free trade in ideas" within "the competition of the market" appears in 1919 within US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s dissent in Abrams v. United States. The actual phrase "marketplace of ideas" first appears in a concurring opinion by Justice William O. Douglas in the Supreme Court decision United States v. Rumely:<ref>United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41, 56 (1953)</ref> "Like the publishers of newspapers, magazines, or books, this publisher bids for the minds of men in the market place of ideas." The Supreme Court's 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio enshrined the marketplace of ideas as the dominant public policy in American free speech law (that is, against which narrow exceptions to freedom of speech must be justified by specific countervailing public policies). While the previous cases dealt with natural persons, the 1976 decision Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council expanded it to corporations by creating a curtailed corporate commercial speech right, striking down a government regulation of advertising in the process. It has not been seriously questioned since in United States jurisprudence, but the legacy of those decisions have led to subsequent decisions like Citizens United v. FEC'' that curtailed the government's ability to regulate corporate speech and much more expansive advertising campaigns, commercial and political than Americans had experienced previously.
If beliefs such as religions are regarded as ideas, the marketplace-of-ideas concept favors a marketplace of religions - with competition in the religious sphere to win hearts and minds - rather than (for example) forcing a state religion, favoring an established church, or forbidding "incompatible" beliefs. In this sense, the marketplace of ideas provides a rationale for freedom of religion.
Reliability
In recent years, questions have arisen regarding the existence of markets in ideas. Several scholars have noted differences between the way ideas are produced and consumed and the way more traditional goods are produced and consumed. It has also been argued that the idea of the marketplace of ideas as applied to religion "incorrectly assumes a level playing field" among religions. Additionally, the idea of a marketplace of ideas has been applied to the study of scientific research as a social institution. Some scholars have also questioned whether free speech advocates have relied upon the idea of the "marketplace of ideas," offering other reasons for the importance of free speech.
See also
Sedition Act of 1918
Argument to moderation
Notes
1950s neologisms
Classical liberalism
English-language idioms
English phrases
Freedom of expression
Freedom of religion
Freedom of speech
Freedom of the press
John Milton
John Stuart Mill
Libertarian theory
Philosophical phrases
Thomas Jefferson | 0.765714 | 0.985742 | 0.754796 |
Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology | The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) is a technology acceptance model formulated by Venkatesh and others in "User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view". The UTAUT aims to explain user intentions to use an information system and subsequent usage behavior. The theory holds that there are four key constructs:
1) performance expectancy,
2) effort expectancy,
3) social influence, and
4) facilitating conditions.
The first three are direct determinants of usage intention and behavior, and the fourth is a direct determinant of user behavior. Gender, age, experience, and voluntariness of use are posited to moderate the impact of the four key constructs on usage intention and behavior. The theory was developed through a review and consolidation of the constructs of eight models that earlier research had employed to explain information systems usage behaviour (theory of reasoned action, technology acceptance model, motivational model, theory of planned behavior, a combined theory of planned behavior/technology acceptance model, model of personal computer use, diffusion of innovations theory, and social cognitive theory). Subsequent validation by Venkatesh et al. (2003) of UTAUT in a longitudinal study found it to account for 70% of the variance in Behavioural Intention to Use (BI) and about 50% in actual use.
Application
Koivumäki et al. applied UTAUT to study the perceptions of 243 individuals in northern Finland toward mobile services and technology and found that time spent using the devices did not affect consumer perceptions, but familiarity with the devices and user skills did have an impact.
Eckhardt et al. applied UTAUT to study social influence of workplace referent groups (superiors, colleagues) on intention to adopt technology in 152 German companies and found significant impact of social influence from workplace referents on information technology adoption.
Curtis et al. applied UTAUT to the adoption of social media by 409 United States nonprofit organizations. UTAUT had not been previously applied to the use of social media in public relations. They found that organizations with defined public relations departments are more likely to adopt social media technologies and use them to achieve their organizational goals. Women considered social media to be beneficial, and men exhibited more confidence in actively utilizing social media.
Verhoeven et al. applied UTAUT to study computer use frequency in 714 university freshmen in Belgium and found that UTAUT was also useful in explaining varying frequencies of computer use and differences in information and communication technology skills in secondary school and in the university.
Welch et al. applied UTAUT to study factors contributing to Mobile learning adoption among 118 museum staff in England. UTAUT had not been previously applied to the use of just-in-time knowledge interventions to development technological knowledge within the museum sector. They found that UTAUT was useful in explaining the determinants of mobile learning adoption.
Extension of the theory
Lin and Anol postulated an extended model of UTAUT, including the influence of online social support on network information technology usage. They surveyed 317 undergraduate students in Taiwan regarding their online social support in using instant messaging and found that social influence plays an important role in affecting online social support.
Sykes et al. proposed a model of acceptance with peer support (MAPS), integrating prior research on individual adoption with research on social networks in organizations. They conducted a 3-month-long study of 87 employees in one organization and found that studying social network constructs can aid in understanding new information system use.
Wang, Wu, and Wang added two constructs (perceived playfulness and self-management of learning) to the UTAUT in their study of determinants of acceptance of mobile learning in 370 individuals in Taiwan and found that they were significant determinants of behavioral intention to use mobile learning in all respondents.
Hewitt et al. extended the UTAUT to study the acceptance of autonomous vehicles. Two separate surveys of 57 and 187 individuals in the USA showed that users were less accepting of high autonomy levels and displayed significantly lower intention to use highly autonomous vehicles.
Wang and Wang extended the UTAUT in their study of 343 individuals in Taiwan to determine gender differences in mobile Internet acceptance. They added three constructs – perceived playfulness, perceived value, and palm-sized computer self-efficacy to UTAUT and chose behavioral intention as a dependent variable. They omitted use behavior, facilitating conditions, and experience. .l. Also, since the devices were used in a voluntary context, and they found that most adopters were ages 20–35, they omitted voluntariness and age. Perceived value had a significant influence on adoption intention, and palm-sized computer self-efficacy played a critical role in predicting mobile Internet acceptance. Perceived playfulness, however, did not have a strong influence on behavioral intention, but this may have been due to service or network communication quality issues during the study.
Cheng-Min Chao developed and empirically tested a model to predict the factors affecting students' behavioral intentions toward using mobile learning (m-learning). The study applied the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model with the addition of perceived enjoyment, mobile self-efficacy, satisfaction, trust, and perceived risk moderators. The study collected data from 1562 respondents to conduct a cross-sectional study and employed a research model based on multiple technology acceptance theories.
Cimperman et al. developed an extended UTAUT model to analyze the acceptance rate of home telehealth services among older adults. The extended UTAUT model has six predictors and were empirically tested to be effective when predicting how a certain behaviour influences acceptance rate.
Criticism
Bagozzi critiqued the model and its subsequent extensions, stating "UTAUT is a well-meaning and thoughtful presentation," but that it presents a model with 41 independent variables for predicting intentions and at least 8 independent variables for predicting behavior," and that it contributed to the study of technology adoption "reaching a stage of chaos." He proposed instead a unified theory that coheres the "many splinters of knowledge" to explain decision making.
Van Raaij and Schepers criticized the UTAUT as being less parsimonious than the previous Technology Acceptance Model and TAM2 because its high R2 is only achieved when moderating key relationships with up to four variables. They also called the grouping and labeling of items and constructs problematic because a variety of disparate items were combined to reflect a single psychometric construct.
Li suggested that using moderators to artificially achieve high R2 in UTAUT is unnecessary and also impractical for understanding organizational technology adoption, and demonstrated that good predictive power can be achieved even with simple models when proper initial screening procedures are applied. The results provide insights for organizational research design under practical business settings.
See also
Lazy user model
References
Product management
Technological change
Management cybernetics | 0.761963 | 0.990545 | 0.754758 |
Anarchism in the United States | Anarchism in the United States began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency.
In the post-World War II era, anarchism regained influence through new developments such as anarcho-pacifism, the American New Left and the counterculture of the 1960s. Contemporary anarchism in the United States influenced and became influenced and renewed by developments both inside and outside the worldwide anarchist movement such as platformism, insurrectionary anarchism, the new social movements (anarcha-feminism, queer anarchism and green anarchism) and the alter-globalization movements. Within contemporary anarchism, the anti-capitalism of classical anarchism has remained prominent.
Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-globalization movements. Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the meetings of the WTO, G8 and the World Economic Forum. Some anarchist factions at these protests engaged in rioting, property destruction and violent confrontations with the police. These actions were precipitated by ad hoc, leaderless and anonymous cadres known as black blocs, although other peaceful organizational tactics pioneered in this time include affinity groups, security culture and the use of decentralized technologies such as the Internet. A significant event of this period was the 1999 Seattle WTO protests.
History
Early anarchism
For anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, American individualist anarchism "stresses the isolation of the individual—his right to his own tools, his mind, his body, and to the products of his labor. To the artist who embraces this philosophy it is 'aesthetic' anarchism, to the reformer, ethical anarchism, to the independent mechanic, economic anarchism. The former is concerned with philosophy, the latter with practical demonstration. The economic anarchist is concerned with constructing a society on the basis of anarchism. Economically he sees no harm whatever in the private possession of what the individual produces by his own labor, but only so much and no more. The aesthetic and ethical type found expression in the transcendentalism, humanitarianism, and romanticism of the first part of the nineteenth century, the economic type in the pioneer life of the West during the same period, but more favorably after the Civil War". It is for this reason that it has been suggested that in order to understand American individualist anarchism one must take into account "the social context of their ideas, namely the transformation of America from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist society, [...] the non-capitalist nature of the early U.S. can be seen from the early dominance of self-employment (artisan and peasant production). At the beginning of the 19th century, around 80% of the working (non-slave) male population were self-employed. The great majority of Americans during this time were farmers working their own land, primarily for their own needs" and so "individualist anarchism is clearly a form of artisanal socialism [...] while communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are forms of industrial (or proletarian) socialism".
Historian Wendy McElroy reports that American individualist anarchism received an important influence of three European thinkers. According to McElroy, "[o]ne of the most important of these influences was the French political philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose words "Liberty is not the Daughter But the Mother of Order" appeared as a motto on Liberty masthead", an influential individualist anarchist publication of Benjamin Tucker. McElroy further stated that "[a]nother major foreign influence was the German philosopher Max Stirner. The third foreign thinker with great impact was the British philosopher Herbert Spencer". Other influences to consider include William Godwin's anarchism which "exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but more so the socialism of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren, considered to be the first individualist anarchist. The Peaceful Revolutionist, the four-page weekly paper Warren edited during 1833, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type and made his own printing plates. After New Harmony failed, Warren shifted his ideological loyalties from socialism to anarchism which anarchist Peter Sabatini described as "no great leap, given that Owen's socialism had been predicated on Godwin's anarchism".
The emergence and growth of anarchism in the United States in the 1820s and 1830s has a close parallel in the simultaneous emergence and growth of abolitionism as no one needed anarchy more than a slave. Warren termed the phrase "cost the limit of price", with "cost" here referring not to monetary price paid but the labor one exerted to produce an item. Therefore, "[h]e proposed a system to pay people with certificates indicating how many hours of work they did. They could exchange the notes at local time stores for goods that took the same amount of time to produce". He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store, where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism. These included Utopia and Modern Times. Warren said that Stephen Pearl Andrews' The Science of Society, published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories. Catalan historian Xavier Diez report that the intentional communal experiments pioneered by Warren were influential in European individualist anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as Émile Armand and the intentional communities started by them.
Henry David Thoreau was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher and leading transcendentalist. Civil Disobedience is an essay by Thoreau that was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War. It would influence Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Buber and Leo Tolstoy through its advocacy of nonviolent resistance. It is also the main precedent for anarcho-pacifism. Anarchism started to have an ecological view mainly in the writings of American individualist anarchist and transcendentalist Thoreau. In his book Walden, he advocates simple living and self-sufficiency among natural surroundings in resistance to the advancement of industrial civilization: "Many have seen in Thoreau one of the precursors of ecologism and anarcho-primitivism represented today in John Zerzan. For George Woodcock, this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid-19th century". Zerzan himself included the text "Excursions" (1863) by Thoreau in his edited compilation of anti-civilization writings called Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections from 1999. Walden made Thoreau influential in the European individualist anarchist green current of anarcho-naturism.
For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, "[i]t is apparent [...] that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews. [...] William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form". William Batchelder Greene was a 19th-century mutualist, individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier and promoter of free banking in the United States. Greene is best known for the works Mutual Banking (1850) which proposed an interest-free banking system and Transcendentalism, a critique of the New England philosophical school.
After 1850, Greene became active in labor reform and was "elected vice president of the New England Labor Reform League, the majority of the members holding to Proudhon's scheme of mutual banking, and in 1869 president of the Massachusetts Labor Union". He then published Socialistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments (1875). He saw mutualism as the synthesis of "liberty and order". His "associationism [...] is checked by individualism. [...] 'Mind your own business,' 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' Over matters which are purely personal, as for example, moral conduct, the individual is sovereign, as well as over that which he himself produces. For this reason he demands 'mutuality' in marriage—the equal right of a woman to her own personal freedom and property".
Stephen Pearl Andrews was an individualist anarchist and close associate of Josiah Warren. Andrews was formerly associated with the Fourierist movement, but converted to radical individualism after becoming acquainted with the work of Warren. Like Warren, he held the principle of "individual sovereignty" as being of paramount importance. Contemporary American anarchist Hakim Bey reports that "Steven Pearl Andrews [...] was not a fourierist, but he lived through the brief craze for phalansteries in America and adopted a lot of fourierist principles and practices [...], a maker of worlds out of words. He syncretized abolitionism, Free Love, spiritual universalism, Warren, and Fourier into a grand utopian scheme he called the Universal Pantarchy. [...] He was instrumental in founding several 'intentional communities,' including the 'Brownstone Utopia' on 14th Street in New York and 'Modern Times' in Brentwood, Long Island. The latter became as famous as the best-known fourierist communes (Brook Farm in Massachusetts and the North American Phalanx in New Jersey)—in fact, Modern Times became downright notorious for "Free Love" and finally foundered under a wave of scandalous publicity. Andrews (and Victoria Woodhull) were members of the infamous Section 12 of the 1st International, expelled by Marx for its anarchist, feminist, and spiritualist tendencies".
19th-century individualist anarchism
An important current within American individualist anarchism was free love. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren and to experimental communities, and viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights since most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures. The most important American free love journal was Lucifer the Lightbearer (1883–1907) edited by Moses Harman and Lois Waisbrooker but also there existed Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood's The Word (1872–1890, 1892–1893). M. E. Lazarus was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love.
Hutchins Hapgood was an American journalist, author, individualist anarchist and philosophical anarchist who was well known within the Bohemian environment of around the start of 20th-century New York City. He advocated free love and committed adultery frequently. Hapgood was a follower of the German philosophers Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche.
The mission of Lucifer the Lightbearer was, according to Harman, "to help woman to break the chains that for ages have bound her to the rack of man-made law, spiritual, economic, industrial, social and especially sexual, believing that until woman is roused to a sense of her own responsibility on all lines of human endeavor, and especially on lines of her special field, that of reproduction of the race, there will be little if any real advancement toward a higher and truer civilization." The name was chosen because "Lucifer, the ancient name of the Morning Star, now called Venus, seems to us unsurpassed as a cognomen for a journal whose mission is to bring light to the dwellers in darkness." In February 1887, the editors and publishers of Lucifer were arrested after the journal ran afoul of the Comstock Act for the publication of three letters, one in particular condemning forced sex within marriage, which the author identified as rape. In the letter, the author described the plight of a woman who had been raped by her husband, tearing stitches from a recent operation after a difficult childbirth and causing severe hemorrhaging. The letter lamented the woman's lack of legal recourse. The Comstock Act specifically prohibited the public, printed discussion of any topics that were considered "obscene, lewd, or lascivious," and discussing rape, although a criminal matter, was deemed obscene. A Topeka district attorney eventually handed down 216 indictments. Moses Harman spent two years in jail. Ezra Heywood, who had already been prosecuted under the Comstock Law for a pamphlet attacking marriage, reprinted the letter in solidarity with Harman and was also arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. In February 1890, Harman, now the sole producer of Lucifer, was again arrested on charges resulting from a similar article written by a New York physician. As a result of the original charges, Harman would spend large portions of the next six years in prison. In 1896, Lucifer was moved to Chicago; however, legal harassment continued. The United States Postal Service seized and destroyed numerous issues of the journal and, in May 1905, Harman was again arrested and convicted for the distribution of two articles, namely "The Fatherhood Question" and "More Thoughts on Sexology" by Sara Crist Campbell. Sentenced to a year of hard labor, the 75-year-old editor's health deteriorated greatly. After 24 years in production, Lucifer ceased publication in 1907 and became the more scholarly American Journal of Eugenics.
Heywood's philosophy was instrumental in furthering individualist anarchist ideas through his extensive pamphleteering and reprinting of works of Josiah Warren, author of True Civilization (1869), and William B. Greene. At a 1872 convention of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston, Heywood introduced Greene and Warren to eventual Liberty publisher Benjamin Tucker. Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to certain individuals and organizations. The Word was an individualist anarchist free love magazine edited by Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood, issued first from Princeton, Massachusetts; and then from Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Word was subtitled "A Monthly Journal of Reform", and it included contributions from Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and J.K. Ingalls. Initially, The Word presented free love as a minor theme which was expressed within a labor reform format. But the publication later evolved into an explicitly free love periodical. At some point Tucker became an important contributor but later became dissatisfied with the journal's focus on free love since he desired a concentration on economics. In contrast, Tucker's relationship with Heywood grew more distant. Yet, when Heywood was imprisoned for his pro-birth control stand from August to December 1878 under the Comstock laws, Tucker abandoned the Radical Review in order to assume editorship of Heywood's The Word. After Heywood's release from prison, The Word openly became a free love journal; it flouted the law by printing birth control material and openly discussing sexual matters. Tucker's disapproval of this policy stemmed from his conviction that "Liberty, to be effective, must find its first application in the realm of economics".
M. E. Lazarus was an American individualist anarchist from Guntersville, Alabama. He is the author of several essays and anarchist pamphlettes including Land Tenure: Anarchist View (1889). A famous quote from Lazarus is "Every vote for a governing office is an instrument for enslaving me." Lazarus was also an intellectual contributor to Fourierism and the Free Love movement of the 1850s, a social reform group that called for, in its extreme form, the abolition of institutionalized marriage.
Freethought as a philosophical position and as activism was important in North American individualist anarchism. In the United States "freethought was a basically anti-Christian, anti-clerical movement, whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide for himself on religious matters. A number of contributors to Liberty were prominent figures in both freethought and anarchism. The individualist anarchist George MacDonald was a co-editor of Freethought and, for a time, The Truth Seeker. E.C. Walker was co-editor of the free-thought/free love journal Lucifer, the Light-Bearer". "Many of the anarchists were ardent freethinkers; reprints from freethought papers such as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, Freethought and The Truth Seeker appeared in Liberty...The church was viewed as a common ally of the state and as a repressive force in and of itself".
Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist writer and feminist. She was a prolific writer and speaker, opposing the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality and women's lives. She began her activist career in the freethought movement. De Cleyre was initially drawn to individualist anarchism but evolved through mutualism to an "anarchism without adjectives." She believed that any system was acceptable as long as it did not involve force. However, according to anarchist author Iain McKay, she embraced the ideals of stateless communism. In her 1895 lecture entitled Sex Slavery, de Cleyre condemns ideals of beauty that encourage women to distort their bodies and child socialization practices that create unnatural gender roles. The title of the essay refers not to traffic in women for purposes of prostitution, although that is also mentioned, but rather to marriage laws that allow men to rape their wives without consequences. Such laws make "every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passions."
Individualist anarchism found in the United States an important space of discussion and development within what is known as the Boston anarchists. Even among the 19th-century American individualists, there was not a monolithic doctrine, as they disagreed amongst each other on various issues including intellectual property rights and possession versus property in land. A major schism occurred later in the 19th century when Tucker and some others abandoned their traditional support of natural rights as espoused by Lysander Spooner and converted to an egoism modeled upon Stirner's philosophy. Besides his individualist anarchist activism, Spooner was also an important anti-slavery activist and became a member of the First International. Some Boston anarchists, including Tucker, identified themselves as socialists which in the 19th century was often used in the sense of a commitment to improving conditions of the working class (i.e. "the labor problem"). The Boston anarchists such as Tucker and his followers are considered socialists to this day due to their opposition to usury.
Liberty was a 19th-century anarchist market socialist and libertarian socialist periodical published in the United States by Benjamin Tucker from August 1881 to April 1908. The periodical was instrumental in developing and formalizing the individualist anarchist philosophy through publishing essays and serving as a format for debate. Contributors included Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Auberon Herbert, Dyer Lum, Joshua K. Ingalls, John Henry Mackay, Victor Yarros, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, James L. Walker, J. William Lloyd, Florence Finch Kelly, Voltairine de Cleyre, Steven T. Byington, John Beverley Robinson, Jo Labadie, Lillian Harman, and Henry Appleton. Included in its masthead is a quote from Pierre Proudhon saying that liberty is "Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order."
Some of the American individualist anarchists later in this era such as Benjamin Tucker abandoned natural rights positions and converted to Max Stirner's egoist anarchism. Rejecting the idea of moral rights, Tucker said that there were only two rights, "the right of might" and "the right of contract." He also said, after converting to Egoist individualism, "In times past ... it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off ... Man's only right to land is his might over it." In adopting Stirnerite egoism (1886), Tucker rejected natural rights which had long been considered the foundation of libertarianism. This rejection galvanized the movement into fierce debates, with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself. So bitter was the conflict that a number of natural rights proponents withdrew from the pages of Liberty in protest even though they had hitherto been among its frequent contributors. Thereafter, Liberty championed egoism although its general content did not change significantly."
Several publications "were undoubtedly influenced by Liberty presentation of egoism. They included: I published by C.L. Swartz, edited by W.E. Gordak and J.William Lloyd (all associates of Liberty); The Ego and The Egoist, both of which were edited by Edward H. Fulton. Among the egoist papers that Tucker followed were the German Der Eigene, edited by Adolf Brand, and The Eagle and The Serpent, issued from London. The latter, the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology. Among those American anarchists who adhered to egoism include Benjamin Tucker, John Beverley Robinson, Steven T. Byington, Hutchins Hapgood, James L. Walker, Victor Yarros and Edward H. Fulton. Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen, Shaw and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual." Steven T. Byington was a one-time proponent of Georgism who later converted to egoist stirnerist positions after associating with Benjamin Tucker. He is known for translating two important anarchist works into English from German: Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own and Paul Eltzbacher's Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy (also published by Dover with the title The Great Anarchists: Ideas and Teachings of Seven Major Thinkers). James L. Walker (sometimes known by the pen name "Tak Kak") was one of the main contributors to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. He published his major philosophical work called Philosophy of Egoism in the May 1890 to September 1891 in issues of the publication Egoism.
Early anarcho-communism
By the 1880s anarcho-communism was already present in the United States as can be seen in the publication of the journal Freedom: A Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist Monthly by Lucy Parsons and Lizzy Holmes. Lucy Parsons debated in her time in the US with fellow anarcha-communist Emma Goldman over issues of free love and feminism. Included in their debates over questions of gender, patriarchy, and free love were questions of homosexuality. Part of Goldman’s specific brand of anarchism was a belief that the state should be removed from interpersonal and sexual relationships. Freedom from state sexual control included, in Goldman’s view, the freedom to choose a sexual or romantic partner regardless of their gender. It was free-love anarchists like Goldman who, during this period, introduced the beginnings of a homosexual rights movement to the United States. Anarchists on this issue, however, were not united and many disagreed with Goldman’s inclusion of homosexuality and free love in an anarchist belief system.
Described by the Chicago Police Department as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters" in the 1920s, Parsons and her husband had become highly effective anarchist organizers primarily involved in the labor movement in the late 19th century, but also participating in revolutionary activism on behalf of political prisoners, people of color, the homeless and women. She began writing for The Socialist and The Alarm, the journal of the International Working People's Association (IWPA) that she and Parsons, among others, founded in 1883. In 1886 her husband, who had been heavily involved in campaigning for the eight-hour day, was arrested, tried and executed on November 11, 1887, by the state of Illinois on charges that he had conspired in the Haymarket Riot, an event which was widely regarded as a political frame-up and which marked the beginning of May Day labor rallies in protest.
Another anarcho-communist journal called The Firebrand later appeared in the United States. Most anarchist publications in the United States were in Yiddish, German, or Russian, but Free Society was published in English, permitting the dissemination of anarchist communist thought to English-speaking populations in the United States. Around that time these American anarcho-communist sectors entered in debate with the individualist anarchist group around Benjamin Tucker. Encouraged by news of labor struggles and industrial disputes in the United States, the German anarchist Johann Most emigrated to the USA upon his release from prison in 1882. He promptly began agitating in his adopted land among other German émigrés. Among his associates was August Spies, one of the anarchists hanged for conspiracy in the Haymarket Square bombing, whose desk police found to contain an 1884 letter from Most promising a shipment of "medicine," his code word for dynamite. Most was famous for stating the concept of the propaganda of the deed, namely that "[t]he existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion." Most is best known for a pamphlet published in 1885: The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, a how-to manual on the subject of bomb-making which earned the author the moniker "Dynamost". He acquired his knowledge of explosives while working at an explosives plant in New Jersey. Most was described as "the most vilified social radical" of his time, a man whose profuse advocacy of social unrest and fascination with dramatic destruction eventually led Emma Goldman to denounce him as a recognized authoritarian.
A gifted orator, Most propagated these ideas throughout Marxist and anarchist circles in the United States and attracted many adherents, most notably Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. In February 1888 Berkman left for the United States from his native Russia. Soon after his arrival in New York City, Berkman became an anarchist through his involvement with groups that had formed to campaign to free the men convicted of the 1886 Haymarket bombing. He, as well as Goldman, soon came under the influence of Johann Most, the best-known anarchist in the United States, and an advocate of propaganda of the deed—attentat, or violence carried out to encourage the masses to revolt. Berkman became a typesetter for Most's newspaper Freiheit.
Inspired by Most's theories of Attentat, Goldman and Berkman, enraged by the deaths of workers during the Homestead strike, put words into action with Berkman's attempted assassination of Homestead factory manager Henry Clay Frick in 1892. Berkman and Goldman were soon disillusioned as Most became one of Berkman's most outspoken critics. In Freiheit, Most attacked both Goldman and Berkman, implying Berkman's act was designed to arouse sympathy for Frick. Goldman's biographer Alice Wexler suggests that Most's criticisms may have been inspired by jealousy of Berkman. Goldman was enraged and demanded that Most prove his insinuations. When he refused to respond, she confronted him at next lecture. After he refused to speak to her, she lashed him across the face with a horsewhip, broke the whip over her knee, then threw the pieces at him. She later regretted her assault, confiding to a friend, "At the age of twenty-three, one does not reason."
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the U.S. in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement in 1889. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Although Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth. In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, aged 70. During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers and denounced by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution.
Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.
Anarchism and the labor movement
The anti-authoritarian sections of the First International were the precursors of the anarcho-syndicalists, seeking to "replace the privilege and authority of the State" with the "free and spontaneous organization of labor."
After embracing anarchism Albert Parsons, husband of Lucy Parsons, turned his activity to the growing movement to establish the 8-hour day. In January 1880, the Eight-Hour League of Chicago sent Parsons to a national conference in Washington, D.C., a gathering which launched a national lobbying movement aimed at coordinating efforts of labor organizations to win and enforce the 8-hour workday. In the fall of 1884, Parsons launched a weekly anarchist newspaper in Chicago, The Alarm. The first issue was dated October 4, 1884, and was produced in a press run of 15,000 copies. The publication was a 4-page broadsheet with a cover price of 5 cents. The Alarm listed the IWPA as its publisher and touted itself as "A Socialistic Weekly" on its page 2 masthead.
On May 1, 1886, Parsons, with his wife Lucy and their two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, in what is regarded as the first-ever May Day Parade, in support of the eight-hour workday. Over the next few days 340,000 laborers joined the strike. Parsons, amidst the May Day Strike, found himself called to Cincinnati, where 300,000 workers had struck that Saturday afternoon. On that Sunday he addressed the rally in Cincinnati of the news from the "storm center" of the strike and participated in a second huge parade, led by 200 members of The Cincinnati Rifle Union, with certainty that victory was at hand. In 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada unanimously set 1 May 1886, as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become standard. In response, unions across the United States prepared a general strike in support of the event. On 3 May, in Chicago, a fight broke out when strikebreakers attempted to cross the picket line, and two workers died when police opened fire upon the crowd. The next day, 4 May, anarchists staged a rally at Chicago's Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by an unknown party near the conclusion of the rally, killing an officer. In the ensuing panic, police opened fire on the crowd and each other. Seven police officers and at least four workers were killed.
Eight anarchists directly and indirectly related to the organisers of the rally were arrested and charged with the murder of the deceased officer. The men became international political celebrities among the labor movement. Four of the men were executed and a fifth committed suicide prior to his own execution. The incident became known as the Haymarket affair and was a setback for the labor movement and the struggle for the eight-hour day. In 1890 a second attempt, this time international in scope, to organise for the eight-hour day was made. The event also had the secondary purpose of memorializing workers killed as a result of the Haymarket affair. Although it had initially been conceived as a once-off event, by the following year the celebration of International Workers' Day on May Day had become firmly established as an international worker's holiday. Albert Parsons is best remembered as one of four Chicago radical leaders convicted of conspiracy and hanged following a bomb attack on police remembered as the Haymarket affair. Emma Goldman, the activist and political theorist, was attracted to anarchism after reading about the incident and the executions, which she later described as "the events that had inspired my spiritual birth and growth." She considered the Haymarket martyrs to be "the most decisive influence in my existence". Her associate, Alexander Berkman also described the Haymarket anarchists as "a potent and vital inspiration." Others whose commitment to anarchism crystallized as a result of the Haymarket affair included Voltairine de Cleyre and "Big Bill" Haywood, a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World. Goldman wrote to historian, Max Nettlau, that the Haymarket affair had awakened the social consciousness of "hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people".
Two individualist anarchists who wrote in Benjamin Tucker's Liberty were also important labor organizers of the time. Jo Labadie was an American labor organizer, individualist anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet. Without the oppression of the state, Labadie believed, humans would choose to harmonize with "the great natural laws ... without robbing [their] fellows through interest, profit, rent and taxes." However, he supported community cooperation, as he supported community control of water utilities, streets, and railroads. Although he did not support the militant anarchism of the Haymarket anarchists, he fought for the clemency of the accused because he did not believe they were the perpetrators. In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, became its first president, and forged an alliance with Samuel Gompers.
Dyer Lum was a 19th-century American individualist anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre. Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of key anarchist texts, and contributed to publications including Mother Earth, Twentieth Century, Liberty (Benjamin Tucker's individualist anarchist journal), The Alarm (the journal of the IWPA) and The Open Court among others. He developed a "mutualist" theory of unions and as such was active within the Knights of Labor and later promoted anti-political strategies in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Frustration with abolitionism, spiritualism, and labor reform caused Lum to embrace anarchism and radicalize workers, as he came to believe that revolution would inevitably involve a violent struggle between the working class and the employing class. Convinced of the necessity of violence to enact social change he volunteered to fight in the American Civil War, hoping thereby to bring about the end of slavery. The Freie Arbeiter Stimme was the longest-running anarchist periodical in the Yiddish language, founded initially as an American counterpart to Rudolf Rocker's London-based Arbeter Fraynd (Workers' Friend). Publication began in 1890 and continued under the editorial of Saul Yanovsky until 1923. Contributors have included David Edelstadt, Emma Goldman, Abba Gordin, Rudolf Rocker, Moishe Shtarkman, and Saul Yanovsky. The paper was also known for publishing poetry by Di Yunge, Yiddish poets of the 1910s and 1920s.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in Chicago in June 1905 at a convention of two hundred socialists, anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all over the United States (mainly the Western Federation of Miners) who were opposed to the policies of the AFL.
Red Scare, propaganda by the deed and World Wars period
Italian anti-organizationalist individualist anarchism was brought to the United States by Italian born individualists such as Giuseppe Ciancabilla and others who advocated for violent propaganda by the deed there. Anarchist historian George Woodcock reports the incident in which the important Italian social anarchist Errico Malatesta became involved "in a dispute with the individualist anarchists of Paterson, who insisted that anarchism implied no organization at all, and that every man must act solely on his impulses. At last, in one noisy debate, the individual impulse of a certain Ciancabilla directed him to shoot Malatesta, who was badly wounded but obstinately refused to name his assailant." Some anarchists, such as Johann Most, were already advocated publicizing violent acts of retaliation against counterrevolutionaries because "we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda."
By the 1880s, people inside and outside the anarchist movement began to use the slogan, "propaganda of the deed" to refer to individual bombings and targeted killings of members of the ruling class, including regicides, and tyrannicides, at times when such actions might garner sympathy from the population, such as during periods of heightened government repression or labor conflicts where workers were killed. From 1905 onwards, the Russian counterparts of these anti-syndicalist anarchist-communists become partisans of economic terrorism and illegal 'expropriations'." Illegalism as a practice emerged and within it "The acts of the anarchist bombers and assassins ("propaganda by the deed") and the anarchist burglars ("individual reappropriation") expressed their desperation and their personal, violent rejection of an intolerable society. Moreover, they were clearly meant to be exemplary invitations to revolt.".
On September 6, 1901, the American anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated the President of the United States William McKinley. Emma Goldman was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the assassination but was released due to insufficient evidence. She later incurred a great deal of negative publicity when she published "The Tragedy at Buffalo". In the article, she compared Czolgosz to Marcus Junius Brutus, the killer of Julius Caesar, and called McKinley the "president of the money kings and trust magnates." Other anarchists and radicals were unwilling to support Goldman's effort to aid Czolgosz, believing that he had harmed the movement.
Luigi Galleani was an Italian anarchist active in the United States from 1901 to 1919, viewed by historians as an anarcho-communist and an insurrectionary anarchist. He is best known for his enthusiastic advocacy of "propaganda of the deed", i.e. the use of violence to eliminate "tyrants" and "oppressors" and to act as a catalyst to the overthrow of existing government institutions. From 1914 to 1932, Galleani's followers in the United States (known as Galleanists), carried out a series of bombings and assassination attempts against institutions and persons they viewed as class enemies. After Galleani was deported from the United States to Italy in June 1919, his followers are alleged to have executed the Wall Street bombing of 1920, which resulted in the deaths of 38 people. Galleani held forth at local anarchist meetings, assailed "timid" socialists, gave fire-breathing speeches, and continued to write essays and polemical treatises.The foremost proponent of "propaganda by the deed" in the United States, Galleani was the founder and editor of the anarchist newsletter Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), which he published and mailed from offices in Barre. Galleani published the anarchist newsletter for fifteen years until the United States government closed it down under the Sedition Act of 1918. Galleani attracted numerous radical friends and followers known as "Galleanists", including Frank Abarno, Gabriella Segata Antolini, Pietro Angelo, Luigi Bacchetti, Mario Buda also known as "Mike Boda", Carmine Carbone, Andrea Ciofalo, Ferrucio Coacci, Emilio Coda, Alfredo Conti, Nestor Dondoglioalso known as "Jean Crones", Roberto Elia, Luigi Falzini, Frank Mandese, Riccardo Orciani, Nicola Recchi, Giuseppe Sberna, Andrea Salsedo, Raffaele Schiavina, Carlo Valdinoci, and, most notably, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Sacco and Vanzetti were suspected anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during the 1920 armed robbery of a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts. After a controversial trial and a series of appeals, the two Italian immigrants were executed on August 23, 1927. Since their deaths, critical opinion has overwhelmingly felt that the two men were convicted largely on their anarchist political beliefs and unjustly executed. In 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names." Many famous socialists and intellectuals campaigned for a retrial without success. John Dos Passos came to Boston to cover the case as a journalist, stayed to author a pamphlet called Facing the Chair, and was arrested in a demonstration on August 10, 1927, along with Dorothy Parker.
After being arrested while picketing the State House, Edna St. Vincent Millay pleaded her case to the governor in person and then wrote an appeal: "I cry to you with a million voices: answer our doubt ... There is need in Massachusetts of a great man tonight." Others who wrote to Fuller or signed petitions included Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. The president of the American Federation of Labor cited "the long period of time intervening between the commission of the crime and the final decision of the Court" as well as "the mental and physical anguish which Sacco and Vanzetti must have undergone during the past seven years" in a telegram to the governor. In August 1927, the IWW called for a three-day nationwide walkout to protest the pending executions. The most notable response came in the Walsenburg coal district of Colorado, where 1,132 out of 1,167 miners participated, which led directly to the Colorado coal strike of 1927. Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni, one of the most vocal supporters of Sacco and Vanzetti in Argentina, bombed the American embassy in Buenos Aires a few hours after Sacco and Vanzetti were condemned to death. A few days after the executions, Sacco's widow thanked Di Giovanni by letter for his support and added that the director of the tobacco firm Combinados had offered to produce a cigarette brand named "Sacco & Vanzetti". On November 26, 1927, Di Giovanni and others bombed a Combinados tobacco shop.
The Modern Schools, also called Ferrer Schools, were American schools established in the early 20th century that were modeled after the Escuela Moderna of Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, the Catalan educator and anarchist. They were an important part of the anarchist, free schooling, socialist, and labor movements in the United States, intended to educate the working-classes from a secular, class-conscious perspective. The Modern Schools imparted day-time academic classes for children, and night-time continuing-education lectures for adults. The first and most notable of the Modern Schools was founded in New York City in 1911, two years after Guàrdia's execution for sedition in monarchist Spain on October 18, 1909. Commonly called the Ferrer Center, it was founded by notable anarchists, including Leonard Abbott, Alexander Berkman, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Emma Goldman, first meeting on St. Mark's Place, in Manhattan's Lower East Side, but twice moved elsewhere, first within lower Manhattan, then to Harlem. Besides Berkman and Goldman, the Ferrer Center faculty included the Ashcan School painters Robert Henri and George Bellows, and its guest lecturers included writers and political activists such as Margaret Sanger, Jack London, and Upton Sinclair.
Student Magda Schoenwetter recalled that the school used Montessori methods and equipment, and emphasized academic freedom rather than fixed subjects, such as spelling and arithmetic. The Modern School magazine originally began as a newsletter for parents, when the school was in New York City, printed with the manual printing press used in teaching printing as a profession. After moving to the Stelton Colony, New Jersey, the magazine's content expanded to poetry, prose, art, and libertarian education articles; the cover emblem and interior graphics were designed by Rockwell Kent. Acknowledging the urban danger to their school, the organizers bought 68 acres (275,000 m2) in Piscataway Township, New Jersey, and moved there in 1914, becoming the center of the Stelton Colony. Moreover, beyond New York City, the Ferrer Colony and Modern School was founded (–1915) as a Modern School-based community, that endured some forty years. In 1933, James and Nellie Dick, who earlier had been principals of the Stelton Modern School, founded the Modern School in Lakewood, New Jersey, which survived the original Modern School, the Ferrer Center, becoming the final surviving such school, lasting until 1958.
Ross Winn was an American anarchist writer and publisher from Texas who was mostly active within the Southern United States. Born in Dallas, Texas, Winn wrote articles for The Firebrand, a short-lived, but renowned weekly out of Portland, Oregon; The Rebel, an anarchist journal published in Boston; and Emma Goldman's Mother Earth. Winn began his first paper, known as Co-operative Commonwealth. He then edited and published Coming Era for a brief time in 1898 and then Winn's Freelance in 1899. In 1902, he announced a new paper called Winn's Firebrand. In 1901, Winn met Emma Goldman in Chicago, and found in her a lasting ally. As she wrote in his obituary, Emma "was deeply impressed with his fervor and complete abandonment to the cause, so unlike most American revolutionists, who love their ease and comfort too well to risk them for their ideals." Winn kept up a correspondence with Goldman throughout his life, as he did with other prominent anarchist writers at the time. Joseph Labadie, a prominent writer and organizer in Michigan, was another friend to Winn, and contributed several pieces to Winn's Firebrand in its later years. Enrico Arrigoni, pseudonym of Frank Brand, was an Italian American individualist anarchist Lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of Max Stirner.
In the 1910s, he started becoming involved in anarchist and anti-war activism around Milan. From the 1910s until the 1920s he participated in anarchist activities and popular uprisings in various countries including Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Argentina and Cuba. He lived from the 1920s onwards in New York City and there he edited the individualist anarchist eclectic journal Eresia in 1928. He also wrote for other American anarchist publications such as L' Adunata dei refrattari, Cultura Obrera, Controcorrente and Intessa Libertaria. During the Spanish Civil War, he went to fight with the anarchists but was imprisoned and was helped on his release by Emma Goldman. Afterwards Arrigoni became a longtime member of the Libertarian Book Club in New York City. Vanguard: A Libertarian Communist Journal was a monthly anarchist political and theoretical journal, based in New York City, published between April 1932 and July 1939, and edited by Samuel Weiner, among others. Vanguard began as a project of the Vanguard Group, composed of members of the editorial collective of the Road to Freedom newspaper, as well as members of the Friends of Freedom group. Its initial subtitle was "An Anarchist Youth Publication" but changed to "A Libertarian Communist Journal " after Issue 1. Within several issues Vanguard would become a central sounding board for the international anarchist movement, including reports of developments during the Spanish Revolution as well as movement reports by Augustin Souchy and Emma Goldman.
Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover, head of the United States Department of Justice's General Intelligence Division, were intent on using the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1918 to deport any non-citizens they could identify as advocates of anarchy or revolution. "Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman," Hoover wrote while they were in prison, "are, beyond doubt, two of the most dangerous anarchists in this country and return to the community will result in undue harm." At her deportation hearing on October 27, she refused to answer questions about her beliefs on the grounds that her American citizenship invalidated any attempt to deport her under the Anarchist Exclusion Act, which could be enforced only against non-citizens of the U.S. She presented a written statement instead: "Today so-called aliens are deported. Tomorrow Native Americans will be banished. Already some patrioteers are suggesting that native American sons to whom democracy is a sacred ideal should be exiled." The Labor Department included Goldman and Berkman among 249 aliens it deported en masse, mostly people with only vague associations with radical groups who had been swept up in government raids in November.
Goldman and Berkman traveled around Russia during the time of the Russian civil War after the Russian revolution, and they found repression, mismanagement, and corruption instead of the equality and worker empowerment they had dreamed of. They met with Vladimir Lenin, who assured them that government suppression of press liberties was justified. He told them: "There can be no free speech in a revolutionary period." Berkman was more willing to forgive the government's actions in the name of "historical necessity", but he eventually joined Goldman in opposing the Soviet state's authority. After a short trip to Stockholm, they moved to Berlin for several years; during this time she agreed to write a series of articles about her time in Russia for Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World. These were later collected and published in book form as My Disillusionment in Russia (1923) and My Further Disillusionment in Russia (1924). The titles of these books were added by the publishers to be scintillating and Goldman protested, albeit in vain.
In July 1936, the Spanish Civil War started after an attempted coup d'état by parts of the Spanish Army against the government of the Second Spanish Republic. At the same time, the Spanish anarchists, fighting against the Nationalist forces, started an anarchist revolution. Goldman was invited to Barcelona and in an instant, as she wrote to her niece, "the crushing weight that was pressing down on my heart since Sasha's death left me as by magic". She was welcomed by the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) organizations and for the first time in her life lived in a community run by and for anarchists, according to true anarchist principles. She would later write that "[i]n all my life I have not met with such warm hospitality, comradeship and solidarity." After touring a series of collectives in the province of Huesca, she told a group of workers that "[y]our revolution will destroy forever [the notion] that anarchism stands for chaos." She began editing the weekly CNT-FAI Information Bulletin and responded to English-language mail.
The first prominent American to reveal his homosexuality was the poet Robert Duncan. This occurred when in 1944, using his own name in the anarchist magazine Politics, he wrote that homosexuals were an oppressed minority.
Post-World War II period
An American anarcho-pacifist current developed in this period as well as a related Christian anarchist one. For Andrew Cornell, "[m]any young anarchists of this period departed from previous generations both by embracing pacifism and by devoting more energy to promoting avant-garde culture, preparing the ground for the Beat Generation in the process. The editors of the anarchist journal Retort, for instance, produced a volume of writings by WWII draft resistors imprisoned at Danbury, Connecticut, while regularly publishing the poetry and prose of writers such as Kenneth Rexroth and Norman Mailer. From the 1940s to the 1960s, then, the radical pacifist movement in the United States harbored both social democrats and anarchists, at a time when the anarchist movement itself seemed on its last legs." As such anarchism influenced writers associated with the Beat Generation such as Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder.
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance. It developed "mostly in Holland, Britain, and the United States, before and during World War II. Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert who advocated the Catholic economic theory of distributism. She was also considered to be an anarchist and did not hesitate to use the term. In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker movement, a nonviolent, pacifist movement that continues to combine direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf. The cause for Day's canonization is open in the Catholic Church. Ammon Hennacy was an American pacifist, Christian anarchist, vegetarian, social activist, member of the Catholic Worker Movement and a Wobbly. He practiced tax resistance and established the Joe Hill House of Hospitality in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Anarchism continued to influence important American literary and intellectual personalities of the time, such as Paul Goodman, Dwight Macdonald, Allen Ginsberg, Leopold Kohr, Judith Malina, Julian Beck and John Cage. Paul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd (1960) and an activist on the pacifist left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement. He is less remembered as a co-founder of Gestalt Therapy in the 1940s and 1950s. In the mid-1940s, together with C. Wright Mills, he contributed to politics, the journal edited during the 1940s by Dwight Macdonald. In 1947, he published two books, Kafka's Prayer and Communitas, a classic study of urban design coauthored with his brother Percival Goodman.
Anarchism proved to be influential also in the early environmentalist movement in the United States. Leopold Kohr (1909–1994) was an economist, jurist and political scientist known both for his opposition to the "cult of bigness" in social organization and as one of those who inspired the Small Is Beautiful movement, mainly through his most influential work The Breakdown of Nations. Kohr was an important inspiration to the Green, bioregional, Fourth World, decentralist, and anarchist movements, Kohr contributed often to John Papworth's "journal for the Fourth World", Resurgence. One of Kohr's students was economist E. F. Schumacher, another prominent influence on these movements, whose best-selling book Small Is Beautiful took its title from one of Kohr's core principles. Similarly, his ideas inspired Kirkpatrick Sale's books Human Scale (1980) and Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (1985). In 1958, Murray Bookchin defined himself as an anarchist, seeing parallels between anarchism and ecology. His first book, Our Synthetic Environment, was published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber in 1962, a few months before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The book described a broad range of environmental ills but received little attention because of its political radicalism. His groundbreaking essay "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" introduced ecology as a concept in radical politics.
In 1968, Bookchin founded another group that published the influential Anarchos magazine, which published that and other innovative essays on post-scarcity and on ecological technologies such as solar and wind energy, and on decentralization and miniaturization. Lecturing throughout the United States, he helped popularize the concept of ecology to the counterculture. Post-Scarcity Anarchism is a collection of essays written by Murray Bookchin and first published in 1971 by Ramparts Press. It outlines the possible form anarchism might take under conditions of post-scarcity. It is one of Bookchin's major works, and its radical thesis provoked controversy for being utopian and messianic in its faith in the liberatory potential of technology. Bookchin argues that post-industrial societies are also post-scarcity societies, and can thus imagine "the fulfillment of the social and cultural potentialities latent in a technology of abundance". The self-administration of society is now made possible by technological advancement and, when technology is used in an ecologically sensitive manner, the revolutionary potential of society will be much changed. In 1982, his book The Ecology of Freedom had a profound impact on the emerging ecology movement, both in the United States and abroad. He was a principal figure in the Burlington Greens in 1986 to 1990, an ecology group that ran candidates for city council on a program to create neighborhood democracy. In From Urbanization to Cities (originally published in 1987 as The Rise of Urbanization and the Decline of Citizenship), Bookchin traced the democratic traditions that influenced his political philosophy and defined the implementation of the libertarian municipalism concept. A few years later The Politics of Social Ecology, written by his partner of 20 years, Janet Biehl, briefly summarized these ideas.
The Libertarian League was founded in New York City in 1954 as a political organization building on the Libertarian Book Club. Members included Sam Dolgoff, Russell Blackwell, Dave Van Ronk, Enrico Arrigoni and Murray Bookchin. Its central principle, stated in its journal Views and Comments, was "equal freedom for all in a free socialist society". Branches of the League opened in a number of other American cities, including Detroit and San Francisco. It was dissolved at the end of the 1960s. Sam Dolgoff (1902–1990) was a Russian American anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist. After being expelled from the Young People's Socialist League, Dolgoff joined the Industrial Workers of the World in the 1922 and remained an active member his entire life, playing an active role in the anarchist movement for much of the century. He was a co-founder of the Libertarian Labor Review magazine, which was later renamed Anarcho-Syndicalist Review. In the 1930s, he was a member of the editorial board of Spanish Revolution, a monthly American publication reporting on the largest Spanish labor organization taking part in the Spanish Civil War. Among his books were Bakunin on Anarchy, The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939, and The Cuban Revolution (Black Rose Books, 1976), a denunciation of Cuban life under Fidel Castro.
Anarchism was influential in the counterculture of the 1960s and anarchists actively participated in the late sixties students and workers revolts. The New Left in the United States also included anarchist, countercultural and hippie-related radical groups such as the Yippies who were led by Abbie Hoffman and Black Mask/Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers. For David Graeber, "[a]s SDS splintered into squabbling Maoist factions, groups like the Diggers and Yippies (founded in '68) took the first option. Many were explicitly anarchist, and certainly, the late '60s turn towards the creation of autonomous collectives and institution building was squarely within the anarchist tradition, while the emphasis on free love, psychedelic drugs, and the creation of alternative forms of pleasure was squarely in the bohemian tradition with which Euro-American anarchism has always been at least tangentially aligned." By late 1966, the Diggers opened free stores which simply gave away their stock, provided free food, distributed free drugs, gave away money, organized free music concerts, and performed works of political art. The Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers led by Gerrard Winstanley and sought to create a mini-society free of money and capitalism. On the other hand, the Yippies employed theatrical gestures, such as advancing a pig ("Pigasus the Immortal") as a candidate for president in 1968, to mock the social status quo. They have been described as a highly theatrical, anti-authoritarian and anarchist youth movement of "symbolic politics". Since they were well known for street theater and politically themed pranks, many of the "old school" political left either ignored or denounced them. According to ABC News, "The group was known for street theater pranks and was once referred to as the 'Groucho Marxists'." By the 1960s, Christian anarchist Dorothy Day earned the praise of counterculture leaders such as Abbie Hoffman, who characterized her as the first hippie, a description of which Day approved.
Another influential personality within American anarchism is Noam Chomsky. Chomsky's political ideology is aligned with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. He is a member of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and the Industrial Workers of the World international union. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist, and a libertarian socialist intellectual. After the publication of his first books on linguistics, Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War, and since then has continued to publish books of political criticism. He has become well known for his critiques of foreign policy of the United States, state capitalism and the mainstream news media. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.
Late 20th century and contemporary times
Andrew Cornell reports that "Sam Dolgoff and others worked to revitalize the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), alongside new syndicalist formations like the Chicago-based Resurgence group and Boston's Root & Branch; Bookchin's Anarchos collective deepened the theoretical links between ecological and anarchist thought; the Fifth Estate drew heavily on French ultra-leftist thinking and began pursuing a critique of technology by decade's end. Meanwhile, the Social Revolutionary Anarchist Federation connected individuals and circles across the country through a mimeographed monthly discussion bulletin. Just as influential to the anarchist milieu that has taken shape in the decades which have followed, however, were the efforts of the Movement for a New Society (MNS), a national network of feminist radical pacifist collectives that existed from 1971 to 1988."
David Graeber reports that in the late 1970s in the northeast "[t]he main inspiration for anti-nuclear activists—at least the main organizational inspiration—came from a group called the Movement for a New Society (MNS), based in Philadelphia. MNS was spearheaded by a gay rights activist named George Lakey, who—like several other members of the group—was both an anarchist, and a Quaker ... Many of what have now become standard features of formal consensus process—the principle that the facilitator should never act as an interested party in the debate, for example, or the idea of the "block"—were first disseminated by MNS trainings in Philadelphia and Boston." For Andrew Cornell, "MNS popularized consensus decision-making, introduced the spokescouncil method of organization to activists in the United States, and was a leading advocate of a variety of practices—communal living, unlearning oppressive behavior, creating co-operatively owned businesses—that are now often subsumed under the rubric of "prefigurative politics."
Fredy Perlman was a Czech-born, naturalized American author, publisher, and militant. His most popular work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, details the rise of state domination with a retelling of history through the Hobbesian metaphor of the Leviathan. The book remains a major source of inspiration for anti-civilization perspectives in contemporary anarchism, most notably on the thought of philosopher John Zerzan. Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His five major books are Elements of Refusal (1988), Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994), Running on Emptiness (2002), Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections (2005) and Twilight of the Machines (2008). Zerzan was one of the editors of Green Anarchy, a controversial journal of anarcho-primitivist and insurrectionary anarchist thought. He is also the host of Anarchy Radio in Eugene on the University of Oregon's radio station KWVA. He has also served as a contributing editor at Anarchy Magazine and has been published in magazines such as AdBusters. The Match! is an atheist/anarchist journal published since 1969 in Tucson, Arizona. The Match! is edited, published, and printed by Fred Woodworth. The Match! is published irregularly; new issues usually appear once or twice per year. Over 100 issues have been published to date. Green Anarchy was a magazine published by a collective located in Eugene, Oregon. It had a circulation of 8,000, partly in prisons, the prison subscribers given free copies of each issue as stated in the magazine. Author John Zerzan was one of the publication's editors.
Fifth Estate is an American periodical based in Detroit established in 1965, but with remote staff members across North America. Its editorial collective sometimes has divergent views on the topics the magazine addresses but generally shares an anarchist, anti-authoritarian outlook and a non-dogmatic, action-oriented approach to change. The title implies that the periodical is an alternative to the fourth estate (traditional print journalism). Fifth Estate is frequently cited as the longest running English language anarchist publication in North America, although this is sometimes disputed since it became only explicitly anti-authoritarian in 1975 after ten years of publishing as part of the 1960s Underground Press movement. Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed is a North American anarchist magazine and was one of the most popular anarchist publications in North America in the 1980s and 1990s. Its influences could be described as a range of post-left anarchism and various strains of insurrectionary anarchism and sometimes anarcho-primitivism. It was founded by members of the Columbia Anarchist League of Columbia, Missouri, and continued to be published there for nearly fifteen years, eventually under the sole editorial control of Jason McQuinn (who initially used the pseudonym "Lev Chernyi"), before briefly moving to New York City in 1995 to be published by members of the Autonomedia collective. The demise of independent distributor Fine Print nearly killed the magazine, necessitating its return to the Columbia collective after just two issues. It remained in Columbia from 1997 to 2006, after which a Berkeley, California-based group continued to publish bi-annually. The magazine is noted for spearheading the Post-left anarchy critique ("beyond the confines of ideology"), as articulated by such writers as Hakim Bey, Lawrence Jarach, John Zerzan, Bob Black, and Wolfi Landstreicher (formerly Feral Faun/Feral Ranter among other pen names).
Anarchists became more visible in the 1980s, as a result of publishing, protests and conventions. In 1980, the First International Symposium on Anarchism was held in Portland, Oregon. In 1986, the Haymarket Remembered conference was held in Chicago, to observe the centennial of the infamous Haymarket Riot. This conference was followed by annual, continental conventions in Minneapolis (1987), Toronto (1988), and San Francisco (1989). Recently there has been a resurgence in anarchist ideals in the United States. In 1984, the Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) was founded. An anarcho-syndicalist political organization, the WSA published Ideas and Action and affiliated to the International Workers Association (IWA-AIT), an international federation of anarcho-syndicalist unions and groups.
In the late 1980s, started as a newspaper and in 1991 expanded into a continental federation. It brought new ideas to the movement's mainstream, such as white privilege, and new people, including anti-imperialists and former members of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialist League. It collapsed in 1998 amid disagreements about the organization's racial justice tenets and the viability of anarchism. Love and Rage involved hundreds of activists across the country at its peak and included a section based in Mexico City, Amor Y Rabia, which published a newspaper of the same name. Contemporary anarchism, with its shift in focus from class-based oppression to all forms of oppression, began to address race-based oppression in earnest in the 1990s with Black anarchists Lorenzo Ervin and Kuwasi Balagoon, the journal Race Traitor, and movement-building organizations including Love and Rage, , , and .
In the mid-1990s, an insurrectionary anarchist tendency also emerged in the United States mainly absorbing southern European influences. CrimethInc., is a decentralized anarchist collective of autonomous cells. CrimethInc. emerged during this period initially as the hardcore punk zine Inside Front, and began operating as a collective in 1996. It has since published widely read articles and zines for the anarchist movement and distributed posters and books of its own publication. CrimethInc. cells have published books, released records and organized national campaigns against globalization and representative democracy in favor of radical community organizing.
American anarchists increasingly became noticeable at protests, especially through a tactic known as the Black bloc. U.S. anarchists became more prominent as a result of the anti-WTO protests in Seattle. Common Struggle – Libertarian Communist Federation or Lucha Común – Federación Comunista Libertaria (formerly the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC) or the Fédération des Communistes Libertaires du Nord-Est) was a platformist/anarchist communist organization based in the northeast region of the United States which was founded in 2000 at a conference in Boston following the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Following months of discussion between former Atlantic Anarchist Circle affiliates and ex-Love and Rage members in the United States and ex-members of the Demanarchie newspaper collective in Quebec City. Founded as a bi-lingual French and English-speaking federation with member and supporter groups in the northeast of the United States, southern Ontario and the Quebec province, the organization later split up in 2008. The Québécoise membership reformed as the Union Communiste Libertaire (UCL) and the American membership retained the name NEFAC, before changing its name to Common Struggle in 2011 before merging into Black Rose Anarchist Federation. Former members based in Toronto went on to help found an Ontario-based platformist organization known as Common Cause. The Green Mountain Anarchist Collective, which a local affiliate of NEFAC following Seattle, supported leftist causes in Vermont such as unionization, the living wage campaign, and access to social services.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, anarchist activists were visible as founding members of the Common Ground Collective. Anarchists also had an early role in the Occupy movement. In November 2011, Rolling Stone magazine credited American anarchist and scholar David Graeber with giving the Occupy Wall Street movement its theme: "We are the 99 percent". Rolling Stone reported that Graeber helped create the first New York City General Assembly, with only 60 participants, on August 2, 2011. He spent the next six weeks involved with the burgeoning movement, including facilitating general assemblies, attending working group meetings, and organizing legal and medical training and classes on nonviolent resistance. Following the Occupy Wall Street movement, author Mark Bray wrote Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street, which gave a firsthand account of anarchist involvement.
In the period before and after the Occupy movement several new organizations and efforts became active. A series invitational conferences called the Class Struggle Anarchist Conference, initiated by Workers Solidarity Alliance and joined by others, aimed to bring together a number of local and regional based anarchist organizations. The conference was first held in New York City in 2008 and brought together hundreds of activists and subsequent conferences were held in Detroit in 2009, Seattle in 2010 and Buffalo in 2012. One group that was founded during this period was May First Anarchist Alliance in 2011 with members in Michigan and Minnesota which defines itself as having a working class orientation and promoting a non-doctrinaire anarchism. Another group founded during this period is Black Rose Anarchist Federation (BRRN) in 2013 which combined a number of local and regional groups including Common Struggle, formerly known as the Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC), Four Star Anarchist Organization in Chicago, Miami Autonomy and Solidarity, Rochester Red and Black, and Wild Rose Collective based in Iowa City. Some individual members of the Workers Solidarity Alliance joined the new group but the organization voted to remain separate. The group has a variety of influences, most notably anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, especifismo and platformism. Early activity of the group was coordinating the "Struggling to Win: Anarchists Building Popular Power In Chile" tour in 2014 of two anarchist organizers from Chile which had events in over 20 cities. In 2016, the organization published the online booklet Black Anarchism: A Reader. In May 2017, a member published an op-ed in The Oregonian responding to police repression of the Portland International Workers Day march and was also featured in a Vice News segment looking at left-wing antifa protests in Portland.
2020s
In June 2020, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported that while far-right terrorism remains the major threat, having "significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators", anarchists "could present a potential threat" in the United States. During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, anarchists participated in a proliferation of mutual aid organizations, exemplifying both the alleged failure of government to provide for people's needs, " practice of anarchism in a "peaceful and lawful" way. In June 2021, the National Security Council listed anarchists among the "anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists" which it claimed posed a threat of domestic terrorism. In January 2023, Atlanta police shot and killed eco-anarchist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán as part of the Stop Cop City protests. In February 2024, anarchist and USAF serviceman Aaron Bushnell self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC.
See also
:Category:American anarchists
List of anarchist movements by region
American Left
History of the socialist movement in the United States
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich. Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. 2012.
Andrew Cornell. "A new anarchism emerges, 1940–1954" .
Andrew Cornell. "Anarchism and the Movement for a New Society: Direct Action and Prefigurative Community in the 1970s and 80s." Perspectives 2009. Institute for Anarchist Studies.
James J. Martin Men Against the State: the State the Expositors of Individualist Anarchism. The Adrian Allen Associates, Dekalb, Illinois, 1953.
Eunice Minette Schuster. Native American Anarchism: A Study of Left-Wing American Individualism.
Jessica Moran. "The Firebrand and the Forging of a New Anarchism: Anarchist Communism and Free Love ".
Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism. Freedom Press, 1996.
William O. Reichert, Partisans of Freedom: A Study in American Anarchism. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1976.
Rocker, Rudolf. Pioneers of American Freedom: Origin of Liberal and Radical Thought in America. Rocker Publishing Committee. 1949.
Steve J. Shone. American Anarchism . Brill. Leiden and Boston. 2013.
Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.
External links
Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed.
Black Rose Anarchist Federation (BRRN).
Common Ground Collective.
First of May Anarchist Alliance.
Institute for Anarchist Studies.
Workers Solidarity Alliance.
1820s establishments in the United States
United States
Left-wing politics in the United States
Political movements in the United States | 0.760671 | 0.992202 | 0.754739 |
Emerging adulthood and early adulthood | Emerging adulthood, early adulthood, or post-adolescence refers to a phase of the life span between late adolescence and early adulthood, as initially proposed by Jeffrey Arnett in a 2000 article from the American Psychologist. It primarily describes people living in developed countries, but it is also experienced by young adults in wealthy urban families in the Global South. The term describes young adults who do not have children, do not live in their own homes, and/or do not have sufficient income to become fully independent. Arnett suggests emerging adulthood is the distinct period between 20 and 29 years of age where young adults become more independent and explore various life possibilities.
Arnett argues that this developmental period can be isolated from adolescence and young adulthood, although the distinction between adolescence and young adulthood has remained largely unclear over the last several decades.
Emerging adulthood's state as a new demographic is continuously changing, although some believe that twenty-somethings have always struggled with "identity exploration, instability, self-focus, and feeling in-between." Arnett referred to emerging adulthood as a "roleless role" because emerging adults engage in a wide variety of activities without the constraint of any "role requirements". The developmental theory is highly controversial within the developmental field, and developmental psychologists argue over the legitimacy of Arnett's theories and methods.
Arnett would go on to serve as the executive director of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood, a society dedicated to research on emerging adulthood.
Distinction from young adulthood and adolescence
Terminology
One of the most important features of emerging adulthood is that this age period allows for the exploration in love, work, and worldviews, also known as the volitional years. Though the process of identity formation begins in adolescence, most of the formation occurs in emerging adulthood. This stage in life allows young individuals to develop characteristics that will help them become self-sufficient, engage in mature committed relationships, and obtain a level of education and training that will set them up for work during the adult years. Regarding love, although adolescents in the United States usually begin dating between ages 12 and 14, they usually view dating at this time as recreational. It is not until emerging adulthood that identity formation in love becomes more serious. Emerging adults consider their own developing identities as a reference point for a lifetime relationship partner, so they explore romantically and sexually as there is less parental control. While in the United States during adolescence, dating usually occurs in groups and in situations such as parties and dances and some shared sexual experiences. In emerging adulthood, relationships last longer and often include more permanent sexual relations as well as cohabitation.
Considering work: the majority of working adolescents in the United States tend to see their jobs as a way to make money for recreational activities rather than preparing them for a future career. In contrast, 18- to 25-year-olds in emerging adulthood view their jobs as a way to obtain the knowledge and skills that will prepare them for their future adulthood careers. Because emerging adults have the possibility of having numerous work experiences, they can consider the types of work they would like to pursue later in life. For emerging adults, it is common for worldviews to change as they explore jobs, interests, and their personal identity as they continue cognitive development
Those in emerging adulthood that choose to attend college often begin their college or university experience with a limited worldview developed during childhood and adolescence. However, emerging adults who attend college or university are often exposed to different worldviews that they may consider and eventually commit to. Their worldview often expands and changes because of their exposure to various cultures, life experiences, and individuals with whom they form connections. This expansion of worldview is due in part to the feature of identity exploration that is a central feature of emerging adulthood. This includes emerging adults who attend college, as well as those who do not.
Opposed to all of the stresses that commonly accompany this time of life, a defining quality that is constant among most emerging adults is optimism about the future. Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 were asked if they thought that their lives would be better or worse than their parents. 92% of this survey stated that they believed that their lives would be as good or better than their parents. Though reasons for optimism differ from socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnic backgrounds, generally emerging adults believe that they will have a happier family, or that they will have a higher paying job. Though for emerging adults it is not just about the idea of having a better job or more income that is the source of their optimism, it has also been traced back heavily to the belief that they will have a better balance between work and home then their parents have. This optimism is usually traced back to young adults having less experience with failure than their older counterparts.
Jeffrey Arnett gained powerful insights by interviewing individuals and listening to them. He found five unique characteristics in this stage of life, which are identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between, and possibilities.
Five characteristics
"Starting in 1995, psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Ph.D., interviewed 300 young people ages 18 to 29 in cities around the nation over five years, asking them questions about what they wanted out of life." While interviewing these young adults, he found that many of them in this age range had similar things to say about the stage of life they were in even though each participant was coming from different situations and environments. While interviewing young adults, Jeffrey Arnett found five repeated themes' characteristics as distinctive and pertinent to this stage of emerging adulthood. Below, these characteristics and why Jeffrey Arnett felt they distinguished this developmental period are discussed.
Age of identity exploration
The age of identity exploration is probably the "most distinctive characteristic of emerging adulthood." During this time of life, Arnett found that many of his participants were in a stage of trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be. They are trying to find out "what they want out of work, school and love" and experiment in each of those areas. "Through trying out these different possibilities, they develop a more definite identity, including an understanding of who they are, what their capabilities and limitations are, what their beliefs and values are, and how they fit into the society around them."
Age of instability
"As emerging adults explore different possibilities in love and work, their lives are often unstable." While interviewing emerging adults, Arnett found that moving back and forth from college to a legal guardian's home, becoming independent, or moving because of involvement with a romantic partner characterizes this stage of life. During this stage of life, work, school, and love are very unstable and susceptible to change. This is because people at this age have not had the chance yet to establish themselves in a career, and because of that they cannot afford a home or any other kind of place to settle down. Many may see this characteristic of emerging adulthood in a negative light, but it is "during this time [that] many young people obtain the level of education and training that will provide the foundation for their incomes and occupational achievements for the remainder of their adult work lives."
Age of self focus
In this stage, "emerging adults focus on themselves as they develop the knowledge, skills, and self-understanding they will need for adult life." Because those in this period of life have not settled down yet and do not have others depending on them, this is a time where they can grow in personal areas of their life, work on themselves, and do what they want for themselves without affecting others. According to Arnett, "Identity formation involves trying out various life possibilities and gradually moving toward making enduring decisions."
Age of feeling in between
Emerging adults "regard themselves as being neither adolescents nor adults, in between the two but not really one or the other." This feels like an awkward time of life as these emerging adults have control and independence, yet they may still be relying on their parent's insurance, housing, and groceries. They are able to do many things by themselves and hold their own lives, but are not quite at the stage where they can do it all.
Age of possibilities
This is a time when "many different futures remain possible." During this stage of life, young adults are very optimistic about their possibilities and opportunities. Without the responsibility of working for and providing for a family, young adults have the flexibility to try their hands at many things and find out what they like best. Interestingly, "most emerging adults believe they have good chances of living "better than their parents did." They see their future as bright and full of potential and are willing to give their dreams–even if they are a long shot–an effort.
Subjective difference
When Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 are asked whether they believe they have reached adulthood, most do not answer with a "no" or a "yes", but answer with "In some respects yes, in some respects no." It is clear from this ambiguity that most emerging adults in the United States feel they have completed adolescence but not yet entered adulthood.
A number of studies have shown that regarding people in their late teens and early twenties in the United States, demographic qualities such as completing their education, finding a career, marrying, and becoming parents are not the criteria used in determining whether they have reached adulthood. Rather, the criteria that determine whether adulthood has been reached are certain characteristics, such as being able to make independent decisions and taking responsibility for one's self. In America, these qualities are usually experienced in the mid to late twenties, thus confirming that emerging adulthood is distinct subjectively.
Demographic distinctness
Emerging adulthood is the sole age period where there is nothing that is demographically consistent. As of 1997, over 95% of adolescents under the age of 20 in the United States lived at home with at least one parent. Additionally, 98% were not married, under 10% had become parents, and more than 95% attended school. Similarly, people in their thirties were also demographically normative: 75% were married, 75% were parents, and under 10% attended school. Residential status and school attendance are two reasons that the period of emerging adulthood is incredibly distinct demographically. Regarding residential status, emerging adults in the United States have very diverse living situations. About one third of emerging adults attended college and spend a few years living independently while partially relying on older, more established adults.
In contrast, 40% of emerging adults do not attend college but live independently and work full-time. Additionally, around 66% of emerging adults in the United States cohabitate with a romantic partner. Regarding school attendance, emerging adults are also extremely diverse in their educational paths (Arnett, 2000, p. 470–471). Over 60% of emerging adults in the United States enter college or university the year after graduating from high school. However, the years that follow college are incredibly diverse – only about 32% of 25- to 29-year-olds have finished four or more years of college. This diversity comes from differences in personality, culture, financial and relationship situations, and other circumstances. An emerging adult's experience may be very different from another emerging adult's experience. However, there tends to be a gap for emerging adulthood when students finish school and have yet to seek employment and romantic relationships.
This is because higher education is usually pursued non-continuously, where some pursue education while they also work, and some do not attend school for periods of time. Further contributing to the variance, about one third of emerging adults with bachelor's degrees pursue a postgraduate education within a year of earning their bachelor's degree. Because there is so much demographic instability, especially in residential status and school attendance, it is clear that emerging adulthood is a distinct entity based on its demographically non-normative qualities, at least in the United States. Some emerging adults end up moving back home after college graduation, which tests the demographic of dependency. During college, they may be completely independent, but that could quickly change afterward when they are trying to find a full-time job with little direction as to where to start their career. Only after self-efficiency has been reached and after a long period of freedom has experienced, that is when emerging adults will be ready to become adults and take on the full responsibility.
Established adulthood
Established adulthood is the proposed range of approximately 30 to 45, complementing emerging adulthood. They are essentially a combination of the later years of young adulthood (30–35), extending to the early years of middle adulthood (40–45). It is described as the most challenging yet most rewarding phase of adulthood. Mehta et al. (2020) state that "During this period of the life span most adults must negotiate the intersecting demands of progressing in a chosen career, maintaining an intimate partnership, and caring for children. Successes or difficulties in meeting these simultaneous demands have the potential to profoundly influence the direction of a person's adult life." There are also other challenges that take place in established adulthood namely the continuation or resolution of the states that began in emerging adulthood. The challenges that the established adult must face are these: the solidifying of their identity, lower work prospects, needing to focus on others, the continuation of stress from the previous stage evolved to this stage, and actually feeling like an adult. Although these are a continuation of the previous stages, they indicate a solidification of a person within established adulthood and opens doors to new experiences not previously available to the person, these can include better habits and higher intelligence.
History
In the United States during the early 1960s, the average age that young adults were marrying was 20 for women and 23 for men, which means young adulthood consisted of parenthood and continuing higher education. Young women concentrated on becoming full-time mothers, whereas men focused on their careers while parenthood took a backseat. In the 1970s, the average age for childbirth began increasing; by 2010, it rose to 26 years for women and 28 for men. As of 2021, the median age for marriage (not including re-marriage) was 28 for women and 30 for men. In the past, marriage and child-rearing have been considered the pivotal hallmarks of being an adult. As such, average ages of marriage and child-bearing can indicate when individuals are reaching "adulthood". As the average ages for marriage and child-bearing have increased, they indicate the time in which emerging adulthood began developing as an additional stage in adult development.
Jeffrey Arnett pointed out four revolutions that changed everything people knew in the 1960s and 70s and contributed to the existence of the emerging adulthood stages of life—the technology revolution, the sexual revolution, the women's movement, and the youth movement. Each of these movements led to impacts on the actions and development of people in separate ways. However, the culmination of all of these events led to the characteristics of emerging adulthood as a stage listed above.
Technology revolution
The technology revolution refers to a change in Western cultures where a rise in technology development eliminated some jobs and created others. This revolution transformed the United States (and other industrializing economies) from manufacturing economies to knowledge and skill-based economies. Jobs became outsourced to other countries, which eliminated most of the entry-level jobs that young adults used to hold to enter the workforce. With the development of technology like computers, people were needed to help with the operation and support of this tech as it was integrated into the American economy. These jobs generated usually required high-level education. Thus, while jobs were generated by the rise in technology, these jobs tended to be generated in urban areas. As a result, many in rural areas struggled to find jobs. Any jobs that were available required more schooling. This prompted younger adults to spend more and more time in school rather than working full-time or starting families. Other positions outside of technology also started requiring some sort of post-secondary credentials for their jobs, contributing to young adults spending more time in school. Because of this, typical hallmarks of adulthood like marriage, child-bearing, and home ownership were delayed. These are characteristics generally associated with "full-on" adulthood. As those characteristics had yet to be reached, adults within this stage did not seem to fit the standards.
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution describes a change in attitudes and actions regarding sex in Western cultures. It came to a head in the early 1960s, leading to emerging adulthood as a stage. This was due to young adults having sexual relations or children before marriage. While it came to a head in the 1960s, the sexual revolution started long before. It had its roots in 18th century philosophers that wrote in argument of sexual freedom. Many of those texts were censored as they were considered inappropriate for the time. It was until later that some of these texts were published, for example, Fourier's A New World of Love was finally published in 1967. These served to fan the flames.This movement finally coming to a head in the 1960s was in part due to the development of more effective methods of contraception. For example, in 1964, birth control became another option for young adults. The risk of children resulting from a sexual encounter was no longer a concern. This change of views regarding the use of sex resulted in young adults postponing marriage and parenthood age back a few years, changing the early and mid-twenties from a time of married relationships to a time of non-committed sexual relationships. Younger adults were no longer leaving home to get married. There was pushback against marriage as an institution due to contrasting views from some populations that it was sexist and homophobic in its practice. Marriage became less and less of a standard or "pre-requisite" of adulthood. Because of this, this stage of life was no longer characterized by the responsibilities and organization of marriage, leaving younger adults in qualitatively different relationships than before.
Women's movement
The women's movement also contributed to the development of emerging adulthood. This movement describes a change in expected roles of women and life opportunities available. Before and during the 1960s, their expected roles were to find a husband and bear children and become full-time housewives, but the social roles of women were altered as a result of the women's movement: they transitioned from the expectation of being mothers to being active members of the workforce, while still being supported as mothers. Thanks to pivotal work by feminist and individualistic groups, opportunities opened and women began to seek options for careers and education that were uncommon in the 1960s. More opportunities developed as more women spent their emerging adulthood years (approximately ages 18–29) pursuing careers and higher education rather than settling down and starting families. The women's movement, in conjunction with the sexual revolution and a devaluation of marriage, contributed to the delay in getting married. Women were delaying having children in order to pursue an education without the responsibility of raising children at the same time. The delay in participating in previous cornerstone aspects of adulthood supported the development of emerging adulthood. As most people (men and women) were then pushing off characteristics of full adulthood, this warranted an establishment of this new stage of life.
Youth movement
This movement represented a shift in the cultural attitudes and perceptions of adulthood in Western cultures. Previous to this movement in the 1960s and 1970s, many young people aspired to grow up and become adults who were considered wise, in control, and independent. Adulthood as a stage was something to desire to achieve. However, the youth movement changed perceptions of adulthood to be less favorable than those of youth. Music and phrases reflected the growing movement to celebrate youth and renounce aging. For example, phrases like "I want to be forever young" and "never trust adults" became increasingly common, and youth began to prevail over wisdom, associated with aging, in terms of popularity. Many youth groups developed at the beginning of the 20th century in several Western countries. One example was the Boy Scouts of America. These youth groups supported the development of the youth movement by idolizing the opportunities and qualities of youth. Because of this idolization of being young, young adults postponed adulthood and prolonged their youth into their twenties by living independently of conditions and characteristics associated with adulthood, like marriage and child-rearing. The delay of adulthood and popularization of remaining young brought about by this revolution led to the development of emerging adulthood. The youth movement, in conjunction with the technology revolution, sexual revolution, and women's movement, were thought to have contributed to the development of emerging adulthood as a stage of life by Arnett.
Physiological development
Biological changes
Emerging adulthood and adolescence differ significantly with regard to puberty and hormonal development. While there is considerable overlap between the onset of puberty and the developmental stage referred to as adolescence, there are considerably fewer hormonal and physical changes taking place in individuals between the ages of 18 and 25. Emerging adults have reached a stage of full hormonal maturity and are fully, physically equipped for sexual reproduction.
Emerging adulthood is usually thought of as a time of peak physical health and performance as individuals are usually less susceptible to disease and more physically agile during this period than in later stages of adulthood. However, emerging adults are generally more likely to contract sexually transmitted infections, as well as to adopt unhealthy behavioral patterns and lifestyle choices.
Personality organizations will have increased instability during this stage and after will have increased stability. This will help us understand personality development through the years. Social dominance, emotional stability, and conscientiousness increased more in this stage and during this time social vitality decreased. This is compared to changes in later adulthood. Emerging adults develop the ability to move away from spontaneous behavior to more stability and better self-control. This self-control that develops during this stage includes life planning, being reflective, intentional, and more cautious. Emerging adults will trust in themselves to create strategies that will completely guide them in their lives. They will experience a rise in their sense of their successes and social power and will reflect on what they have gained from meeting challenges such as the school-to-work challenge.
Cognitive development
The human body continues to develop while in emerging adulthood; particularly the brain. While some may believe that the brains of emerging adults are fully formed, they are in fact still developing. Many connections within the brain are strengthened and those that are unused are pruned away. Several brain structures develop that allow for greater processing of emotions and social information. Areas of the brain used for planning and processing risk and rewards also undergo important developments during this stage. These developments in brain structure and the resulting implications are one factor that leads emerging adults to be considered more mature than adolescents. This is due to the fact that they make fewer impulsive decisions and rely more on planning and evaluating of situations. Though emerging adults have not lived as long as older adults they tend to have better solutions to problems than older adults because of higher mental flexibility, which helps emerging adults to generate a greater number of solutions to a given problem. This shows that practical intelligence is prominent during emerging adulthood.
Shulman et al. found that tendencies of emerging adults differ between sexes. Risk-taking behaviors are often engaged in by males during the adolescent period and may continue through emerging adulthood. These tendencies will, however, decrease as the individual progresses in age and as the neurobiological need to engage in sensation-seeking activities and impulsivity reduces. Studies show that tendencies of women to engage in risk-taking behavior often occur earlier in life when compared with men which may be linked with pubertal development. After reaching the peak of impulsivity and sensation-seeking behaviors women will often decline rapidly in their need to engage in these behaviors whereas men will steadily taper off as they develop gradual impulse control.
While brain structures continue to develop during emerging adulthood, the cognition of emerging adults is an area that receives the majority of attention. Arnett explains, "Emerging adulthood is a critical stage for the emergence of complex forms of thinking required in complex societies." Crucial changes take place in their sense of self and capacity for self-reflection. At this stage, emerging adults often decide on a particular worldview and are able to recognize that other perspectives exist and are valid as well. While cognition generally becomes more complex, education level plays an important role in this development. Not all emerging adults reach the same advanced level in cognition because of the variety of education received during this age period.
Abnormal development
Much research has been directed at studying the onset of lifetime DSM disorders to dispel the common thought that most disorders begin earlier in life. Because of this reasoning, many people that show signs of disorders do not seek help due to its stigmatization. The research shows that those with various disorders will not feel symptoms until emerging adulthood. Kessler and Merikangas reported that "50% of emerging adults between the ages of 18 and 25 experience at least one psychiatric disorder." Not only is the emergence of various disorders prevalent in emerging adulthood, but the chance of developing a disorder drastically decreases at age 28.
Seventy-five percent of any lifetime DSM-V anxiety, mood, impulse-control, and substance abuse disorder begins before age 24. Most onsets at this age will not be, or become, comorbid. The median onset interquartile range of substance use disorders is 18–27, while the median onset age is 20. The median onset age of mood disorders is 25.
Even disorders that begin earlier, like schizophrenia spectrum diagnoses, can reveal themselves within the developmental stage of emerging adulthood. Often, patients will not seek help until several years of symptoms have passed, if at all. For example, those diagnosed with social anxiety disorder will rarely seek treatment until age 27 or later. Typically, symptoms of more severe disorders, such as major depression, begin at age 25 as well. Depression symptoms are higher in the 20s compared to the older generation with the exclusion of the 80s. The negative effect is also higher in the 20s but it will hit a peak then the negative effect will decrease.
With the exception of some phobias, symptoms of many disorders begin to appear and are diagnosable during emerging adulthood. Major efforts have been taken to educate the public and influence those with symptoms to seek treatment past adolescence. There is minimal but intriguing evidence that those who attend college appear to have less of a chance of showing symptoms of DSM-IV disorders. In one study, they were less prone to drug abuse and dependence and their mental health was better in college students. However, other research reports that chance of alcohol abuse and addiction is increased with college student status.
Relationships
Parent-child relationship
Emerging adulthood is characterized by a reevaluation of the parent-child relationship, primarily in regard to autonomy. As a child switches from the role of a dependent to the role of a fellow adult, the family dynamic changes significantly. At this stage, it is important that parents acknowledge and accept their child's status as an adult. This process may include gestures such as allowing increased amounts of privacy and extending trust. Granting this recognition assists the increasingly independent offspring in forming a strong sense of identity and exploration at a time when it is most crucial.
There is varied evidence regarding the continuity of emerging adults' relationships with parents, although most of the research supports the fact that there is moderate stability. A parent-child relationship of higher quality often results in greater affection and contact in emerging adulthood. Attachment styles tend to remain stable from infancy to adulthood. An initial secure attachment assists in healthy separation from parents while still retaining intimacy, resulting in adaptive psychological function. Changes in attachment are often associated with negative life events, as described below.
Divorce and remarriage of parents often result in a weaker parent-child relationship, even if no adverse effects were apparent during childhood. When parental divorce occurs in early adulthood, it has a strong, negative impact on the child's relationship with their father.
However, if parents and children maintain a good relationship throughout the divorce process, it could act as a buffer and reduce the negative effects of the experience. A positive parent-child relationship after parental divorce may also be facilitated by the child's understanding of divorce. Understanding the complexity of the situation and not dwelling on the negative aspects may actually assist a young adult's adjustment, as well as their success in their own romantic relationships.
Despite the increasing need for autonomy that emerging adults experience, there is also a continuing need for support from parents, although this need is often different and less dependent than that of children and earlier adolescents. Many people over the age of 18 still require financial support in order to further their education and career, despite an otherwise independent lifestyle. Furthermore, emotional support remains important during this transition period. Parental engagement with low marital conflict results in better adjustment for college students. This balance of autonomy and dependency may seem contradictory, but relinquishing control while providing necessary support may strengthen the bond between parents and offspring and may even provide space for children to be viewed as sources of support.
Parental support may come in the form of co-residence, which has varied effects on an emerging adult's adjustment. The proportion of young adults living with their parents has steadily increased in recent years, largely due to financial strain, difficulty finding employment, and the necessity of higher education in the job field. The economic benefit of a period of co-residence may assist an emerging adult in exploration of career options. In households with lower socioeconomic status, this arrangement may have the added benefit of the young adult providing support for the family, both financially and otherwise.
Co-residence can also have negative effects on an emerging adult's adjustment and autonomy. This may hinder parents' ability to acknowledge their child as an adult, While home-leaving promotes psychological growth and satisfying adult-to-adult relationships with parents characterized by less confrontation. Living in physically separate households can help both a young adult and a parent acknowledge the changing nature of their relationship.
Arnett argues that the title of "young adulthood" is ineffective because it implies that adulthood has already been met, including independence and autonomy. Parents that intervened regarding situations of employment and education for their children that live outside of their home decreased advancements of their child towards adulthood and independence. In contrast, parents who were in the shadows for their children, willing to help if there was a dire need, but allowed for autonomy and problem-solving in their developing adult had a stronger relationship with their child.
Romantic relationships
Serious romantic relationships often begin to occur in adulthood. Data on participants in a German longitudinal study indicated that 43% of middle adolescents and 47% of late adolescents reported romantic relationships compared to 63% in emerging adulthood. Emerging adulthood relationships carried on for an average of 21.3 months compared to adolescence, which averaged at 5.1 and 11.8 months. Montgomery and Sorell (1994) did a study on romantic love and it reported that unmarried emerging adults would be more dominating, clingy, possessive, and dependent compared to young and married couples who have an altruistic selfless love. Emerging adults had less satisfaction in their relationships. Emerging adults also tended to cohabit with their romantic partners, which helped with their finances and housing situations. Cohabitation usually led to marriage. Data shows that 60% of American emerging adults will live with a partner, and over half of cohabitation relationships result in marriage. Biological factors could come into play as well regarding the emerging adult relationships that do work out such as problem-solving behavior in order to reproduce. It is possible that lack of experience is what leads many emerging adults to failing in their relationships, however this biological aid as well as the individuals involved could be what is leading to the success of some of these relationships.
Sexual relationships
There are a wide variety of factors that influence sexual relationships during emerging adulthood; this includes beliefs about certain sexual behaviors and marriage. For example, among emerging adults in the United States, it is common for oral sex to not be considered "real sex." In the 1950s and 1960s, about 75% of people between the ages of 20–24 engaged in premarital sex. Today, that number is 90%. Unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections and diseases (STIs/STDs) are a central issue. As individuals move through emerging adulthood, they are more likely to engage in monogamous sexual relationships and practice safe sex.
Across most OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, marriage rates are falling, the age at first marriage is rising, and cohabitation among unmarried couples is increasing. The Western European marriage pattern has traditionally been characterized by marriage in the mid-twenties, especially for women, with a generally small age difference between the spouses, a significant proportion of women who remain unmarried, and the establishment of a neolocal household after the couple has married.
Housing affordability has been linked to home ownership rates, and demographic researchers have argued for a link between the rising age at first marriage and the rising age of first home ownership.
Friendships
Friendships are a resource that helps emerging adults help master this developmental stage of tasks. During emerging adulthood, friendships sometimes will be more important than your family relationships. Shulman (1975) found that when emerging adults (18–30) were asked who was in their personal networks 41% were more likely to put down friends instead of family members. Emerging adults have reported that they have less positive feelings with their siblings, but have positive feelings with their friends. There was a study done on single emerging adults, that reported their most preferred companions were friends, especially if the emerging adult has no partner and no longer fully relies on their parents.
Friendships seem to broaden as one enters into emerging adulthood. They tend to become more diverse if put in the position to become so, as well as more willing to have friends of the opposite-sex. Romantic relationships in emerging adulthood tend to affect the necessity and importance of friendships. Those who are single or dating tend to hold their friends to a higher importance while those in relationships have an increase in time spent with their friends at the beginning of a relationship but then gradually decrease the amount of time spent with their friends as the relationship continues. Although those in emerging adulthood use their friends as a safe haven, the presence of a romantic partner will decrease this use of friendship while the use of the significant other as a safe haven is more likely.
Gender differences
Several changes occur throughout adolescence and emerging adulthood. Adolescents begin to learn and use coping strategies in order to navigate the choices and crises of emerging adulthood. During emerging adulthood, males and females both use problem-solving-oriented coping most often. Males take a more passive approach to coping with the choices and adjustments of emerging adulthood, and females take on a more active approach. Females are more focused on quickly learning and adapting to adulthood. Male's success or their failure determined the negative life events that they would experience later. This could be attributed to the pressure they feel to e. Men feel more pressure to succeed in academic ways and create a successful life whereas women feel more of a pull towards family and children.
Culture
Of the world population in 2016 (7.5 billion), 6.1 billion people, or 80%, lived in developing economies. Demographers distinguish between developing countries and the economically advanced, industrialized nations that form the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This includes countries and regions like the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, all of which have significantly higher median incomes and educational attainment and significantly lower rates of illness, disease, and early death.
The theory of emerging adulthood is specifically applicable to cultures within these OECD nations, and as a stage of development has only emerged over the past half-century. It is specific to "certain cultural-demographic conditions, specifically widespread education, and training beyond secondary school and entry into marriage and parenthood in the early or late thirties or beyond."
Furthermore, emerging adulthood occurs only within societies that allow for occupational shifts, with emerging adults often experiencing frequent job changes before settling on a particular job by the age of 30. Arnett also argues that emerging adulthood happens in cultures that allow for a period of time between adolescence and marriage, the marker of adulthood. Such marital and occupational instability found among emerging adults can be attributed to the strong sense of individualization found in cultures that allow for this stage of development; in individualized cultures, traditional familial and institutional constraints have become less pronounced than in previous times or in non-industrialized or developing cultures, allowing for more personal freedom in life decisions. However, emerging adulthood even occurs in industrialized nations that do not value individualization, as is the case in some Asian countries discussed below.
Up until the latter portion of the 20th century in OECD countries, and contemporarily in developing countries around the world, young people made the transition from adolescence to young adulthood around or by the age of 22, when they settled into long-lasting, obligation-filled familial and occupational roles. Therefore, in societies where this trend still prevails, emerging adulthood does not exist as a widespread stage of development.
Among OECD countries, there is a general "one size fits all" model in regard to emerging adulthood, having all undergone the same demographic changes that resulted in this new stage of development between adolescence and young adulthood. However, the shape emerging adulthood takes can even vary between different OECD countries, and researchers have only recently begun exploring such cross-national differences. For instance, researchers have determined that Europe is the area where emerging adulthood lasts the longest, with high levels of government assistance and median marriage ages nearing 30, compared to the U.S. where the median marriage age is 27.
Emerging adult communities in East Asia may be most dissimilar from their European and American counterparts, for while they share the benefits of affluent societies with strong education and welfare systems, they do not share as strong a sense of individualization. Historically and currently, East Asian cultures have emphasized collectivism more so than those in the West. For instance, while Asian emerging adults similarly engage in individualistic identity exploration and personal development, they do so within more restrictive boundaries set by familial obligation. For example, European and American emerging adults consistently list financial independence as a key marker of adulthood, while Asian emerging adults consistently list capable of supporting parents financially as a marker with equal weight. Some Asian emerging adults feel that getting married is a step only after school is finished and parents are cared for. Furthermore, while casual dating and premarital sex has become normative in the West, in Asia parents still discourage such practices, where they remain "rare and forbidden." In fact, about 75% of emerging adults in the U.S. and Europe report having had premarital sexual relations by the age of 20, whereas less than 20% in Japan and South Korea reported the same.
While emerging adulthood exemplars are found mainly within the middle and upper classes of OECD countries, the stage of development still seems to occur across classes, with the main difference between different ones being length—on average, young people in lower social classes tend to enter adulthood two years before those in upper classes.
While emerging adulthood occurs on a wide scale only in OECD countries, developing countries may also exhibit similar phenomena in certain population subgroups. In contrast to those in poor or rural parts of developing nations, who have no emerging adulthood and sometimes no adolescence due to comparatively early entry into marriage and adult-like work, young people in wealthier urban classes have begun to enter stages of development that resemble emerging adulthood, and the amount to do so is rising. Such individuals may develop a bicultural or hybrid identity, with part of themselves identifying with local culture and another part participating in the professional culture of the global economy. One finds examples of such a situation among the middle-class young people in India, who lead the globalized economic sector while still, for the most part, preferring to have arranged marriages and take care of their parents in old age. While it is more common for emerging adulthood to occur in OECD countries, it is not always true that all young people in those societies have the opportunity to experience these years of change and exploration.
A study done by Shulman et al. (2009), followed students in two preparatory academies in Israel and examined personality and support. They found that family support was a strong contributing factor to a successful adulthood adjustment. Emerging adults that were self-critical had more difficulty in academic success, had an increase in negative life struggles, and were less motivated to achieve their goals. An Eastern culture that focuses more, on the whole, is more likely to put pressure on emerging adults.
Media
Emerging adulthood is not just an idea being talked about by psychologists, the media has propagated the concept as well. Hollywood has produced multiple movies where the main conflict seems to be a "grown" adult's reluctance to actually "grow" up and take on responsibility. Failure to Launch and Step Brothers are extreme examples of this concept. While most take on emerging adulthood (and the problems that it can cause) are shown in a light-humored attempt to poke fun at the idea, a few films have taken a more serious approach to the plight. Adventureland, Take Me Home Tonight, Cyrus and Jeff, Who Lives at Home are comedy-dramas that exhibit the plight of today's emerging adult. Television also is capitalizing on the concept of emerging adulthood with sitcoms such as $#*! My Dad Says and Big Lake.
However, it is not just on television that society sees the world becoming aware of this trend. In spring 2010, The New Yorker magazine showcased a picture of a post-grad hanging his PhD on the wall of his bedroom as his parents stood in the doorway. People do not have to seek out these media sources to find documentation of the emerging adulthood phenomenon. News sources about the topic are abundant. Nationwide, it is being found that people entering their 20s are faced with multitudes of living problems for which this age group has become noteworthy. The Occupy movement is an example of what has happened to the youth of today and exhibits the frustration of today's emerging adults. Other television shows and films showcasing emerging/early adulthood are Girls, How I Met Your Mother, and Less than Zero.
Criticism
The concept of emerging adulthood has not been without its critiques, which are centered on key aspects of life such as socioeconomic status/class, cultural values, and the current values and developmental theories of today.
First, sociologists have pinpointed that emerging adulthood neglects to address class differences. While it can be generalized that middle-class children in Western societies can afford to postpone life decisions; young adults within a lower class may have no choice at all, and stay in the parental home not because they want to, but because they cannot afford a life of their own: They experience a period of "arrested adulthood."
Second, emerging adulthood appears to only apply to specific people in specific cultures. Western cultures are more likely to focus on stages such as emerging adulthood because of their focus on individuality. Eastern cultures are more focused on the whole and are taught to have less individual exploration and expression. Therefore, the theory has no bearing if it is specific to a single demographic.
Third, a group of developmental psychologists, regard all stage theories as outdated. provide theoretical criticism. They argue that development is a dynamic interactive process, which is different for every individual because every individual has their own experiences. By inventing this additional stage, Arnett only describes (not explains) a time period in life for individuals within industrialized countries as opposed to developing countries and cannot be considered a scientific approach.
Moreover, this stage of life has nothing to say about people living in different conditions or at different points in history; essentially, the critique is that emerging adulthood is too specific for the current time period. This theory is not one that could fit all of the past generations. Because of movements such as the technology revolution, the sexual revolution, the women's movement, and the youth movement, it is a distinct time period. This criticism is not that it has no bearing as a theory, but that it is too specific to the recent young generations based on environmental factors specific to the modern day.
Arnett has taken up some of these critical points in public discussion such as in "Debating Emerging Adulthood: Stage or Process" in which he and Jennifer Tanner debate this theory with Marion Kloep and Leo Hendry who argue against its validity.
See also
Quarter-life crisis
Suicide among LGBT youth
Waithood
Youth culture
Youth politics
Youth rights
Youth suicide
References
Further reading
External links
Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood
University of Pennsylvania Transition to Adulthood Blog
Human development
Young adult
Developmental psychology
Demographics | 0.762414 | 0.989922 | 0.754731 |
19th century in fashion | The nineteenth century marks the period beginning January 1, 1801 and ends December 31, 1900.
It was a period of dramatic change and rapid socio-cultural advancement, where society and culture are constantly changing with advancement of time.
The technology, art, politics, and culture of the 19th century were strongly reflected in the styles and silhouettes of the era's clothing.
For women, fashion was an extravagant and extroverted display of the female silhouette with corset pinched waistlines, bustling full-skirts that flowed in and out of trend and decoratively embellished gowns. For men, three piece suits were tailored for usefulness in business as well as sporting activity.
The fashion in this article includes styles from the 19th century through a Western context – namely Europe and North America.
Historical overview and fashions
Early 1800s (1800–1829)
Technological innovations
At the turn of the 18th century, the Western world – namely Europe and the United States – were revelling in the prosperity of the rapid progress that came with the rise of the Industrial Revolution. The period from approximately 1760 to between 1820 and 1840 saw the transition to new manufacturing processes from traditional hand production methods to new machine production methods.
The textile industry was the first to use modern production techniques, namely mechanised cotton spinning with automatic machine looms. With the arrival of automated methods, through industrialisation came too the creation of factories which maximised productivity and enhanced efficient production. The unprecedented rapid and sustained economic growth demonstrated by the textile industry – through employment and value output – saw huge changes in the affordability of clothes and materials as prices fell.
Art, culture, and politics
The early 19th century saw a shift from 18th century Enlightenment ideologies of order, reason and rationalism to new values of imagination and emotion with the emergence of Romanticism. The period of Romanticism from around 1800–1840 emphasised an opposition to stability, celebrating an appreciation of the chaotic which admires creativity, individuality, subjectivity, spontaneity, the sensory and the transcendental.
In England, this period is also known as the Georgian [or Regency] Era which saw great change with rapid urbanisation as cities grew, trade expanded, and a capitalist-driven consumer culture emerged.
The fashion of the time reflects this transitional period as it gradually moves away from the Empire silhouette and Neoclassical influences of Enlightenment which take inspiration from 'classical antiquity'. The shift towards a new Romantic style inspired by creativity and imagination, is defined by more theatrical and dramatic designs which are inspired by a blend of the mysterious medieval past with lavish and dramatic Gothic decoration. The extravagance of these displays reaches its peak nearing the end of Romanticism as 'exuberance becomes sentimentality'. For both men and women, silhouettes were increasingly exaggerated with the establishment of curvaceous shapes pointing to an obvious rejection of previous Neoclassical geometric style. Layers of colour and pattern added to the dramatic and expressive display which became characteristic of Romanticism and again contrasted the 18th century monochromatic palette.
Mid-1800s (1830–1869)
Technological innovations
By mid-nineteenth century people were settling into the normal routine of life as shaped by the changes and innovations that came with the First Industrial Revolution. Further discoveries in mathematics, science and engineering saw advancements in medicine as well as huge progress for communication and transportation. The introduction of telegraphy and the opening of major railways connected people in major industrial cities to one another. Emerging globalisation and world-wide economic integration saw new trade routes and brought wealth to the capitalist powers of the Western world. As standards of living slowly improved and income per capita was on the rise, the middle-class were beginning to spend more on indulgent rather than solely necessary goods.
The modernisation of communication and transportation technologies saw a shift in the traditional consumption patterns of retail consumers. The invention of mail order business by Pryce Pryce-Jones in 1861 revolutionised shopping patterns and enabled people to order clothing and accessories [via telegram] from other parts of the world [to then be delivered via train] a much similar concept to contemporary online shopping habits.
Art, culture and politics
The mid-19th century again shifts from Romanticism to Realism, sometimes called Naturalism. This ideological art movement 'sought to convey a truthful and objective vision of contemporary life'.
1837 marked the beginning of the Victorian era, a time that saw tremendous progress, change and power for the British Empire and one that characterises an entire genre of fashion history.
Women's fashion at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign became more modest – corsets were paired with swelled skirts which aligned with early Victorian ideals of the modest domestic lady stereotype. Layered petticoats with crinoline and steel-hoop structures,. Menswear of the early Victorian Era was understated with the rise of the respectable male bourgeois gentleman. However, soon after both men's and women's fashion became more colourful and relaxed with more exuberant styles and new techniques including passementerie trims thanks to increasing availability of the sewing machine. By the latter half of mid-nineteenth century it becomes clear that fashion technologies revolutionised the designs of particularly womenswear fashion with cage crinoline enabling a larger but more lightweight hoop skirt. In align with the trend of offering greater comfort, menswear 'relaxed into wide, easy cuts'.
Late 1800s (1870–1899)
Technological innovations
The late-19th century constituted further industrialization with the Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological revolution, which was responsible for illustrious innovations. The modern social and economic infrastructure continued to revolutionise consumption patterns as the prices of consumer goods decreased dramatically with the increase in productivity. The growth of urban centres and 'new technologies, such as the introduction of electricity into clothing manufacturing, produced a boom in the ready-to-wear market'.
Progress in communications and the media meant that fashionable styles and silhouettes were widespread globally and accessible to the everyday person. With the rise of publications, magazines aimed especially at women depicted the styles in vogue at the time and began to introduce paper patterns. The popularity of these patterns paired with machine innovation and ease-of-use saw a rise in the popularity of at home dressmaking.
Art, culture and politics
Late 19th century movements in art and culture include Impressionism and Post-Impressionism which are characterised by their rebellion against classical subject matter and that which embraces depictions of modern life including new technology and ideas – 'concentrating on themes of deeper symbolism to express emotions, rather than simply optical impressions'.
The women's rights and suffragist movement towards the turn of the 20th century also saw a shift in gender roles. As the 19th century neared its end, the world began to transition away from stiff Victorian fashions with the rise of the Edwardian era to new freedoms of a more simplistic dress structure and silhouette.
Women's fashion of the late 19th century saw an introduction of styles with a long, slim, body-hugging silhouette that revealed the natural figure, including the popular 'princess line' and later 'artistic' style dresses. These styles featured seamless waists, streamlined skirts and a slow move away from corsetry, much more practical than the conventional attire. These 'slender and angular' styles, had excessive decoration which compensated for the rebellion against heavy, ultra-restrictive trends. Dress embellishments included bows, emphasised ruching, thick rich fabrics and trims. Menswear began to have a significant influence on women's clothing with masculine styles and tailoring becoming increasingly popular, women sometimes wore a shirt collar and tie, particularly when exercising. For men, lounge suits were becoming increasingly popular and were often quite slim, maintaining an overall narrow silhouette. A three-piece suit was a more casual attire regularly worn by businessmen, with jackets open or partially undone with a waistcoat underneath. Heavily starched collars on shirts were worn high and stiff-standing, with turned down wingtips.
Women's fashion
Dress style by the decade
1800s–1810
1810s–1820
1820s–1830
1830s–1840
1840s–1850
1850s–1860
1860s–1870
1870s–1880
1880s–1890
1890s–1900
Hairstyles and Headwear
Up-do's
Accessories
Handmade shawls, fans and umbrellas, hats, purses and handbags were popular.
Makeup and Jewelry
Shoes
Men's Fashion
Suit style
Children's Fashion
For most of the 19th century babies wore 'long, white dresses with short sleeves' whilst toddlers and young children wore 'short dresses with frilled drawers peeking out underneath'.
As children grew into young adults the dress styles mimicked that of the elder generation, with the only difference being more simplistic styles and shorter lengths.
Workwear
Introduced in the beginning of the century, proper work clothes and work uniforms were a sign of a new era. It started off with small businesses and factories creating a specific uniform for their company. Not too long later, government bodies such as the police, firefighters, and miners adopted the idea.
See also
19th century fashion history (Western Countries)
1795–1820 in fashion
1820s in fashion
1830s in fashion
1840s in fashion
1850s in fashion
1860s in fashion
1870s in fashion
1880s in fashion
1890s in fashion
References | 0.762424 | 0.989906 | 0.754728 |
Yoruba culture | Distinctive cultural norms prevail in Yorubaland and among the Yoruba people.
Religion (Ẹsìn)
The Yoruba are said to be religious people, but they are also pragmatic and tolerant about their religious differences. Whilst many profess the Yoruba school of thought; many more profess other faiths e.g. Christianity (Ẹsìn Ìgbàgbọ́), Islam (Ẹsìn Ìmàle) etc.
Law
Yoruba law is the legal system of Yorubaland. It is quite intricate, each group and subgroup having a system that varies, but in general, government begins within the immediate family. The next level is the clan, or extended family, with its own head known as a Baálé. This chief will be subject to town chiefs, and these chiefs are usually themselves subject to their Oba, who may or may not be subject to another Oba himself.
Most of what survived of this legal code has been assimilated into the customary laws of the sovereign nations that the Yoruba inhabit.
Language (Èdè)
Yoruba people traditionally speak the Yorùbá language, a member of the Niger–Congo language family. Apart from referring to the aggregate of dialects and their speakers, the term Yoruba is also used for the standard, written form of the language.
Linguistics
Yoruba written literature begins with the formation of its grammar published in 1843. The standard language incorporates several features from other dialects.
Philosophy
Yoruba culture consists of the folk/cultural philosophy, the autochthonous religion and folktales. They are embodied in Ifa-Ife Divination, known as the tripartite Book of Enlightenment or the Body of Knowledge in Yorubaland and in its diaspora. Other components of the Book of Knowledge or the Book of Enlightenment are psychology, sociology, mathematics, cosmogony, cosmology, and other areas of human interests.
Yoruba cultural thought is a witness of two epochs. The first epoch is an epoch-making history in mythology and cosmology. This is also an epoch-making history in the oral culture during which time the divine philosopher Orunmila was the head and a pre-eminent diviner. He pondered the visible and invisible worlds, reminiscing about cosmogony, cosmology, and the mythological creatures in the visible and invisible worlds. This philosopher, Orunmila, epitomizes wisdom and idealism. He has been said to be more of a psychologist than a philosopher. He is the cultivator of ambitions and desires, and the interpreter of ori (head) and its destiny. The non-literate world, compelled by the need to survive, impelled by the need to unravel the mysteries of the days and nights, made Orunmila to cultivate the idea of Divination.
The second epoch is the epoch of metaphysical discourse. This commenced in the 19th century when the land became a literate land through the diligence and pragmatism of Dr. Ajayi Crowther, the first African Anglican Bishop. He is regarded as the cultivator of modern Yoruba idealism.
The uniqueness of Yoruba thought is that it is mainly narrative in form, explicating and pointing to the knowledge of the causes and nature of things, affecting the corporeal and the spiritual universe and its wellness. Yoruba people have hundreds of aphorisms, folktales, and lores, and they believe that any lore that widens people's horizons and presents food for thought is the beginning of a philosophy.
As it was in the ancient times, Yoruba people always attach philosophical and religious connotations to whatever they produced or created. Hence some of them are referred to as artist-philosophers. This is an accretion to the fact that one can find a sculptor, a weaver, a carver or a potter in every household in Yoruba land.
Despite the fact that the Yoruba cannot detail all their long pedigrees, such as Oduduwa, Obatala, Orunmila, Sango, Ogun, Osun (one of the three wives of Sango), Olokun, Oya (one of the three wives of Sango), Esu, Ososi, Yemoja, Sopona etc., nonetheless it is a fact of truth that they had all impacted the Yoruba people and contributed to the wellness and well-being of the Yoruba society. Without their various contributions, Yoruba land could have been lost in a hay of confusion.
Although religion is often first in Yoruba culture, nonetheless, it is the thought of man that actually leads spiritual consciousness (ori) to the creation and the practice of religion. Thus thought/philosophy is antecedent to religion.
Today, the academic and the nonacademic communities are becoming more and more interested in Yoruba culture, as well as in its Book of Enlightenment. Thus more and more research is being carried out on Yoruba cultural thought, as more and more books are being written on it — embossing its mark and advancing its research amongst non-African thinkers such as the political philosophers and political scientists who are beginning to open their doors to other cultures, widening their views.
Yoruba idealism
Idealism in Yoruba-land and for the Yoruba people is equated with the ideal purpose of life, the search for the meaning of life and the yearning for the best in life. Orunmila, the cultivator of Ifa-Ife divination, is the father of ancient Yoruba idealism. His (divine) idealism has inspired the entire Yoruba people in Africa and in the diaspora, especially those who were stolen (to the Americas and the West Indies) during the inhuman slave trade.
Based on the definition of the Yoruba idealism, which is the search for the meaning of life and the yearning for the best in life, Yoruba idealism is a kind of Enlightenment Movement in its own right, as every scion in the land endeavors to reach the height or the acme of his idealistic ambition.
Orunmila's idealism ushered in a more modern idealism that inspired the pragmatic Dr. Ajayi Crowther in the 19th century, and Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the 20th century, who succeeded in creating a moral atmosphere for the Yoruba land to thrive, impacting a moral majority to which idealism belongs and from which realism emerges. His leadership philosophy helped him with big ideas. He built the first Radio and TV Houses in Africa. He cultivated the big ideas that led to the building of the first modern stadium in Africa and the first Cocoa House in the world. Generally speaking, Yoruba people are idealists by nature.
Art
Sculpture
The Yoruba are said to be prolific sculptors, famous for their terra cotta works throughout the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries; artists have also made artwork out of bronze.
Esiẹ Museum is a museum in Esiẹ; a neighbouring town to Oro in Irepodun, Kwara. The museum was the first to be established in Nigeria when it opened in 1945. It once housed over a thousand tombstone figures or images representing human beings. It is reputed to have the largest collection of soapstone images in the world. In modern times, the Esie museum has been the center of religious activities and host a festival in the month of April every year.
Textile
Weaving is done on different types of looms in order to create hundreds of different patterns. Adire and Aso Oke are some of the popular textiles in Yoruba land. Adire(tie and dye) is the name given to indigo dyed cloth produced by Yoruba women of south western Nigeria using a variety of resist dye techniques. Adire translates as tie and dye, and the earliest cloths were probably simple tied designs on locally-woven hand-spun cotton cloth much like those still produced in Mali.
Cuisine
Some common foods native to the Yoruba include moin-moin (steamed bean pudding) and akara (bean cake). Native Yoruba soups include ewedu (jute), gbegiri (which is made from beans), and efo riro (a type of vegetable soup). Such soups as okra soup (locally known as obé ila) and egusi (melon soup) have become very popular in Western Nigeria in recent times and, in addition to Amala (yam flour), a traditional Yoruba meal made of yam flour, these can be eaten with ewedu and gbegiri. Numerous Nigerian meals, including pounded yam (locally referred to as iyan); lafun, a Nigeria fufu made from cassava; semolina; and garri (eba).
Some dishes are prepared specially for festivities and ceremonies. Jollof rice, fried rice and Ofada rice are very common in Nigeria (especially in the southwest region, which includes Lagos). Other popular dishes include Asaro, Efokore, Ekuru and Aro, stews, corn, cassava, and flours (such as maize, yam and plantain flours), eggs, chicken, and assorted meat and fish). Some less well known meals and many miscellaneous staples are arrowroot gruel, sweetmeats, fritters and coconut concoctions; and some breads such as yeast bread, rock buns, and palm wine bread. Yoruba cuisine is quite vast and often includes plantains which can be boiled, fried and roasted.
Music
Music and dance have always been an important part of the Yoruba culture; they are used in many different forms of entertainment. Musical instruments include bata, saworo, sekere, gangan etc. Musical varieties include Juju, Fuji and Afrobeat, with artists including King Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey, and KWAM 1.
Naming customs
The Yoruba people believe that people live out the meanings of their names. As such, Yoruba people put considerable effort into naming a baby. Their philosophy of naming is conveyed in a common adage, ile ni a n wo, ki a to so omo l'oruko ("one pays attention to the family before naming a child"): one must consider the tradition and history of a child's relatives when choosing a name.
Some families have long-standing traditions for naming their children. Such customs are often derived from their profession or religion. For example, a family of hunters could name their baby Ogunbunmi (Ogun favors me with this) to show their respect to the divinity who gives them metal tools for hunting. Meanwhile, a family that venerates Ifá may name their child Falola (Ifa has honor).
Naming
Since it is generally believed that names are like spirits which would like to live out their meanings, parents do a thorough search before giving names to their babies. Naming ceremonies are performed with the same meticulous care, generally by the oldest family member. Symbolic of the hopes, expectations and prayers of the parents for the new baby, honey, kola, bitter kola, atare (alligator pepper), water, palm oil, sugar, sugar cane, salt, and liquor each have a place and a special meaning in the world-view of the Yoruba. For instance, honey represents sweetness, and the prayer of the parents is that their baby's life will be as sweet as honey.
After the ritual, the child is named and members of the extended family have the honour of also giving a name to the child. The gift of a name comes with gifts of money and clothing. In many cases, the relative will subsequently call the child by the name they give to him or her, so a new baby may thereafter have more than a dozen names.
Preordained name
Amutorunwa (brought from heaven)
Oruko - name
Some Yorubas believe that a baby may come with pre-destined names. For instance, twins (ibeji) are believed to have natural-birth names. Thus the first to be born of the two is called Taiwo or Taiye, shortened forms of Taiyewo, meaning the taster of the world. This is to identify the first twin as the one sent by the other one to first go and taste the world. If he/she stays there, it follows that it is not bad, and that would send a signal to the other one to start coming. Hence the second to arrive is named Kehinde (late arrival); it is now common for many Kehindes to be called by the familiar diminutive "Kenny". Irrespective of the sex the child born to the same woman after the twins is called Idowu, and the one after this is called Alaba, then the next child is called Idogbe. Ige is a child born with the legs coming out first instead of the head; and Ojo (male) or Aina (female) is the one born with the umbilical cord around his or her neck. When a child is conceived with no prior menstruation, he or she is named Ilori. Dada is the child born with locked hair; and Ajayi (nicknamed Ogidi Olu) is the one born face-downwards.
Other natural names include Abiodun (one born on a festival day or period), Abiona (one born on a journey) Abidemi or Bidemi (one born without the presence of its father) i.e the child's father didn't witness his baby's naming ceremony but not dead, maybe he just traveled, Enitan (one of a story) this child might have had any of its parents dead before its birth, Bosede (one born on a holy day); Babatunde/Babatunji (meaning father has come back) is the son born to a family where a father has recently passed. This testifies to the belief in reincarnation. Iyabode, Yeside, Yewande, and Yetunde, ("mother has come back") are female counterparts, names with the same meaning.
Name given at birth
Oruko - name
Abi - birthed
So - named
These are names that are not natural with the child at birth but are given on either the seventh day of birth (for females) and ninth day of birth (for males). Some Yoruba groups practice ifalomo (6th) holding the naming rites on the sixth day. The influence of Christianity and Islam in Yoruba culture was responsible for the eighth-day naming ceremony. Twin-births when they are male and female are usually named on the eighth day but on the seventh or ninth day if they are same-sex twins. They are given in accordance with significant events at time of birth or with reference to the family tradition as has been mentioned above.
Examples of names given with reference to the family tradition include Ogundiran (Ogun has become a living tradition in the family); Ayanlowo (Ayan drumming tradition is honorable); Oyetoso (Chieftaincy is ornament); Olanrewaju (Honor is advancing forward); Olusegun (God has conquered the enemy).
Abiku names
Abi - birthed, or Bi - born
Iku - death, or Ku - die / dead
The Yoruba believe that some children are born to die. This is derived from the phenomenon of the tragic incidents of high rate of infant mortality sometimes afflicting the same family for a long time. When this occurs, the family devises various methods to forestall a recurrence, including giving special names at a new birth. Such names reflect the frustration of the poor parents:
Malomo (do not go again)
Kosoko (there is no hoe anymore). This refers to the hoe that is used to dig the grave.
Kashimawo (let's wait and see). This suggests a somewhat cynical attitude in the parent(s).
Banjoko (sit with me)
Orukotan (all names have been exhausted)
Yemiitan (stop deceiving me)
Kokumo (this will not die)
Durojaiye (stay and enjoy life)
Durotimi or Rotimi (stay with me)
Durosola (stay and enjoy wealth)
Pet names
The Yoruba also have pet names or oriki. These are praise names, and they are used to suggest what the child's family background is or to express one's hope for the child: Akanbi- (one who is deliberately born); Ayinde (one who is praised on arrival); Akande (one who comes or arrives in full determination); Atanda (one who is deliberately created after thorough search). For females, Aduke (one who everyone likes to take care of), Ayoke (one who people are happy to care for), Arike (one who is cared for on sight), Atinuke or Abike (one that is born to be pampered).
Wedding
The Yoruba culture provides for the upbringing of the child by the extended family. In traditional society, the child is placed with a master of whatever craft the gods specify for him or her (although this rarely happens nowadays). Alternatively, he may take to the profession of the father, in the case of a boy, or the mother, in the case of a girl. The parents have the responsibility for his/her socialization into the norms of the larger society, in addition to giving him a means of livelihood. His or her wedding is also the responsibility of the parents.
The wedding ceremony is the climax of a process that starts with courtship. The young man identifies a young woman that he loves. He and his friends seek her out through various means. The young man sends messages of interest to the young woman until such a time that they are close enough to avoid a go-between (known as an alarina). Then once they both express mutual love, they let their parents know about their feelings for each other. The man's parents arrange to pay a visit to the prospective bride's parents. Once their consent is secured, the wedding day may be set. Prior to the wedding day, the payment of bride price is arranged. This secures the final consent of the bride's parents, and the wedding day is fixed. Once the day has been fixed through either consultation of the Orishas by a babalawo (in the case of followers of the Yoruba religion) or the decision of a man of God (in the case of the Muslims or Christians), the bride and bridegroom are warned to avoid travelling out of town, including to the farm. This is to prevent any mishap. The wedding day is a day of celebration, eating, drinking and dancing for parents, relations, the new husband and wife and their friends and, often, even foes. Marriage is not considered to be only a union of the husband and wife, it is also seen among the Yoruba as the union of the families on both sides.
But before the bride goes to her husband's house, she is escorted by different people i.e. family and friends to the door step of her new home in a ritual called Ekun Iyawo meaning 'The cry of the new bride', this is to show that she is sad leaving her parents' home and signify her presence in the new home. There she is prayed for and her legs are washed. It is believed that she is washing every bad-luck that she might have brought into her husband's house away. Before she is finally ushered into her house, if she is an adherent of the Yoruba faith, she is given a calabash (igba) and is then asked to break it. When it breaks, the number of pieces it is broken into is believed to be the number of children she will give birth to. On the wedding night, she and her husband have their first meeting and he is ordinarily expected to find her to be a virgin. If he doesn't, she and her parents are disgraced and may be banished from the village where they live.
While this is the only marital ceremony that is practiced by the more traditional members of the tribe, Muslim and Christian members generally blend it with a nikkah and registry wedding (in the case of Muslims) or a church wedding and registry wedding (in the case of Christians). In their communities, the Yoruba ceremony described above is commonly seen as more of an engagement party than a proper wedding rite.
Money Spraying (Owó-Níná)
Originating from Yorubaland, the Yoruba have always been a very flamboyant people as seen in their art, language, and poetry. Money spraying is an integral part of the Yoruba culture in Southwest Nigeria. It is a tradition loved by many Nigerians today, irrespective of their ethnic background or tribe. Money spraying symbolizes a showering of happiness, good fortune, and a display of the guest's affection for the couple at a wedding ceremony. The bride and groom are ushered in and dance behind the wedding party. Guests walk in in turns or more recently encircle the couple on the dance floor and come forward, placing bills on the couple's forehead, allowing them to “rain down.” As the money is sprayed, 'collectors’ take the cash from the floor and place it in bags for the couple.”
In the mid 40s, the culture was absorbed by other ethnic groups and tribes who had moved into the Yoruba region of Nigeria. Money is now sprayed at weddings, house warmings, thanksgiving, etc across Yorubaland as a good gesture for the celebrants by the attendees. The money is placed one after the other on the celebrant's temple, and is then left to drop onto the floor or into a tray that would later be collected by the celebrants' family or friends.
Funeral (Ìsínku)
In Yoruba belief, death is not the end of life; rather, it is a transition from one form of existence to another. The ogberis (ignorant folks) fear death because it marks the end of an existence that is known and the beginning of one that is unknown. Immortality is the dream of many, as "Eji-ogbe" puts it: Mo dogbogbo orose; Ng ko ku mo; Mo digba oke; Mo duro Gbonin. (I have become an aged ose tree; I will no longer die; I have become two hundred hills rolled into one; I am immovable.) Reference to hills is found in the saying "Gboningbonin ni t'oke, oke Gboningbonin".
The Yoruba also pray for many blessings, but the most important three are wealth, children and immortality: ire owo; ire omo; ire aiku pari iwa. There is a belief in an afterlife that is a continuation of this life, only in a different setting, and the abode of the dead is usually placed at a place just outside this abode, and is sometimes thought of as separated by a stream. Participation in this afterlife is conditional on the nature of one's life and the nature of one's death. This is the meaning of life: to deliver the message of Olodumare, the Supreme Creator by promoting the good of existence. For it is the wish of the Deity that human beings should promote the good as much as is possible. Hence it is insisted that one has a good capacity for moral uprightness and personhood. Personhood is an achieved state judged by the standard of goodness to self, to the community and to the ancestors. As people say: Keni huwa gbedegbede; keni lee ku pelepele; K'omo eni lee n'owo gbogboro L'eni sin. (Let one conduct one's life gently; that one may die a good death; that one's children may stretch their hands over one's body in burial.)
The achievement of a good death is an occasion for celebration of the life of the deceased. This falls into several categories. First, children and grand children would celebrate the life of their parent who passed and left a good name for them. Second, the Yoruba are realistic and pragmatic about their attitude to death. They know that one may die at a young age. The important thing is a good life and a good name. As the saying goes: Ki a ku l'omode, ki a fi esin se irele eni; o san ju ki a dagba ki a ma ni adie irana. (if we die young, and a horse is killed in celebration of one's life; it is better than dying old without people killing even a chicken in celebration.)
It is also believed that ancestors have enormous power to watch over their descendants. Therefore, people make an effort to remember their ancestors on a regular basis. This is ancestor veneration, which some have wrongly labelled ancestor worship. It is believed that the love that exists between a parent and a child here on earth should continue even after death. And since the parent has only ascended to another plane of existence, it should be possible for the link to remain strong.
Gender and Sexuality in Yoruba Culture
Conceptions of Gender in Traditional Yoruba Faith
One can glean an understanding of Yoruba conceptions of gender and sexuality through an examination of how these subjects featured in their faiths and culture. An important insight into the pre-colonial view of women can be gained through a review of the central figures of Yoruba myth.
In one of the myths of the creation of the world, Olodumare, the supreme creator of the Universe created the orishas, divine deities who embodied specific natural forces, human practices, and other important features of the social and natural world. In this story, the orisha Osun, the shining goddess of beauty, fertility, and sensuality, was the youngest of the orishas sent down by the supreme god to set up the world and foster humanity. However, the rest of the Orisha disregarded her contribution, and she was ostracized by them as they used their manly forces to put the world together without her help.
However, their marginalization of Osun coincided with the continual failure of the Earth that was spearheaded by the male orishas, and following their appeal to Olodumare for help, it was revealed that the failure of the world was a result of the men marginalizing Osun and attempting to create a world without the essential feminine influence of Osun. Thus, this story has as a moral the importance of femininity to the orderly working of society in the Yoruba.
Another important figure in the conception of gender and sexuality is Yemoja. According to the different traditions, Yemoja was worshipped as the mother of all Orishas and life on Earth, or the patron deity of women and mothers, as well as of the Ogun river and other in Nigeria. In all cases, she is worshipped as a river goddess to whom adherents of the Ifa religion direct their appeals for fertility. She is one of the most popular deities, and is known by multiple names, including La Sirene, and Yemaya by adherents in Cuba and other parts of the Caribbean.
Shango was, according to tradition, a ruler of the powerful Yoruba polity of Oyo. As is typical of stories in the Yoruba oral tradition, there are multiple variations of the story of Shango. Nevertheless, the essence of the myth maintains that in his mortal life, King Shango ruled the kingdom of Oyo during a period of great battles and conquest. But his rule ended prematurely following his suicide, in some versions due to being overthrown by subordinate chief, in some versions due to his grief after accidentally killing his family with a newly discovered spell. In any case, his great achievements were posthumously by the gods, and following his death the Orisha deified him, whereupon he became Shango, the Yoruba Orisha of lightning. He is recognized in Africa, Cuba, and elsewhere as a god of thunder and power, symbolizing masculinity and virility.
Another deity which encompasses the Yoruba view of masculinity is Ogun, the Orisha whose cult worships him as the patron deity of iron, war, and hunting. According to the oral tradition, when the Orishas were sent by the Supreme Creator to put the newly created world in order, they were faced with a massive, unfathomable forest which blocked their sight and their access. The Orishas' effort to cut down this forest was futile, as the tools they had were of wood. Ogun then retreated to the inside of a mountain and, after gathering the necessary materials, created iron, from which he was able to fashion suitable tools and clear away the indomitable forest. As the patron god of iron and war, Ogun is the Orisha to whom men and blacksmiths appeal to for matters relating to war and the creation of weapons and tool; thus he encapsulates much of the masculine themes which are relevant to the life of a strong, manly Yoruba warrior, hunter or craftsman. Like Shango, Osun and Yemoja, he is still widely revered among the descendants of the Yoruba in Nigeria and the Caribbean.
These are only four of hundreds of different venerated by the different Yoruba polities in Yorubaland. The Yoruba as a people have never been politically or culturally heterogeneous, and people's views of the orisha varied by according to the dominant views and practices. That being said, Osun, Yemoja, Shango, and Ogun are four of the most widely worshipped deities in the Yoruba pantheon, as demonstrated by the abundance of worshippers of these specific deities in regions outside of Africa. Thus, the cultural significance of these deities provides useful insight into Yoruba conceptions of gender, based on the deities they used to conceptualize these ideas in their theology.
Gender Roles
Yorùbá language does not include distinct gender-based pronouns, therefore, Yoruba culture is not as linguistically dichotomized in regards to gender as many Western societies are. Rather, the existence of gender distinctions pertaining to societal roles and expectations can be attributed to mythology, with female and male principles represented differently. These representations typically adhere to the following principles along gendered lines; femininity and coolness, masculinity and toughness. These ideals thus inform gendered norms in Yoruba society. These norms however do not include norms of oppression between genders as the overarching philosophy is one of complementary gender relations. No sex is inherently dominant, rather each gender enjoys prominence in certain areas. Examples would be farming for men and working the marketplace for women.
Polygamy
Polygamy has a longstanding history within traditional Yoruba culture. As seen in a Yoruba framework, marriage is first and foremost a union between families with the goal of childbearing rather than a romantic contract between two individuals. Thus, sexual pleasure and love between the parties involved are not the objects of marriage. Naturally, the position of king holds great importance in Yoruba culture, but importance is also particularly accorded to the king's partners. As it is ideal for the king to produce as many children as possible, he is expected to have more wives than anyone else.
Gender Fluidity
Women as Bridegrooms
As the practice of having multiple wives was common in pre-colonial and colonial times, the primary wife would sometimes encourage and even help her husband find a new wife. This was financially beneficial for the new bride and allowed for the social responsibilities of a wife to be shared between more than one woman.
Actions and Language Not Indicative of Sexual Behaviours
While a senior wife might address the new wife as iyawo mi or aya mi which means my wife, there is no evidence of this being linked to eroticism or a sexual relationship between them. Similarly, in the traditional role of priest, gender fluidity is common but not indicative of homosexuality. The Elegun Sango who are feminine in nature often have many wives and children. The Aboke ‘Badan maintain feminine hairstyles and occasionally dress as women for cultural rites and in the presence of other priests or chiefs. There is no evidence to indicate that the men in either role partake in homosexuality.
Sexual Health
Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention
Among the Yoruba people in Southwestern Africa sexual health is the focus of young people, the elderly are often removed from the conversation. The sexual health of elderly people is not given as much attention as that of young people. They are often excluded from sexual healthcare services and culturally have more faith in traditional forms of prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections than they do in western medicine or condoms. Some acceptable prevention tools are sarun domi and aseje, both of which are traditionally made concoction meant to turn disease into water for the body. Other forms of prevention include incisions, amulets, and wraps.
Condoms in Culture
Among subjects of a research study on the sexual health of Yoruba elders, it was found that 71% of participants were Muslim, most were in polygynous relationship, had no formal education, and were retired. Although some of the subjects did have a formal education, only 20.4% of men and 2.8% of women believed in the usefulness of condoms in the prevention of STIs, making the use of condoms limited and female condoms non-existent. The stigma, shame, lack of awareness of its efficacy, and the misconception about its reduction of sexual pleasure all contribute to the decision not to use them during sex.
Among the elderly Yoruba people, it is commonly accepted than most people will contract gonorrhoea in their lives, one subject of a study even suggesting that only those who have the disease can give birth. Three types of gonorrhoea are acknowledged: those that cause people to ooze pus, blood, and what is described as the dog type (atot si alaja). The perceived risk of contracting HIV is very low but it is acknowledged in the term eedi which describes the highest level of infection and improper treatment for that person. Aisan ti o gboogun which describes the general inadequate treatment of certain health conditions is also proper for those who contract HIV.
Sexual Duties of a Wife
While it is socially acceptable for men to have multiple sexual partners while married, even sometimes endorsed by their aging wives, a woman doing the same is frowned upon. The adult children of women will sometimes monitor the activities of their mother to ensure she is not being promiscuous. The folk STI known as magun is a magical substance or curse placed upon a woman to punish her next sexual partner which could result in his death. It is seen as a punishment for sexual immorality. The commonality of male extramarital affairs increases their risk for STIs much more than the risk for women.
Sex and Menopause
The body of a young woman is distinct from a man’s which displays her ability to procreate and her desire for sex. In aging women who no longer have the same level of attractiveness, her value comes from her children and her seniority. Since women had a duty to give their husbands sex whenever he pleased, aging offers some sexual liberation to women who might have found it painful. Beliefs surrounding the dangers of peri and post-menopausal sex discourage it.
The dangers of a folk pregnancy or fibroid is called oyun iju. This is believed to occur when women beyond child-bearing age have unproductive sex resulting in a fibroid to which there is no treatment, rather than a baby. It is also understood that a woman over the age of 60 has the right to retire from her sexual duties to her husband. After having his children and being a good wife, she allows him to engage in extramarital affairs so she can focus on raising her children and grandchildren. For aging women, menopause is a legitimate reason to avoid sex. A woman’s sexual desire is not absent from her life as an elder but is detached from her duty to her husband.
References
Ogunyemi, Yemi D. (Yemi D. Prince) "'The Oral Traditions in Ile-Ife, Academic Press, 2010,
Ogunyemi, Yemi D. (Yemi D. Prince) Yoruba Idealism (A Handbook of Yoruba Idealism), Diaspora Press of America, 2017,
Ogunyemi, Yemi D. (Yemi D. Prince) Yoruba Philosophy and the Seeds of Enlightenment, Vernon Press, 2017,
Ogunyemi, Yemi D. (Yemi D. Prince) The Aesthetic and Moral Art of Wole Soyinka, Academica Press, 2017,
Ogunyemi, Yemi D. (Yemi D. Prince) "Yoruba Idealism, 2022: Peter Lang"
Further reading
Ogunyemi, Yemi D., Yoruba Idealism, published by Peter Lang, March 2022.
Ogunyemi, Yemi D., "Yoruba Philosophy and the Seeds of Enlightenment" Vernon Press, 2018,
External links
Yoruba Culture
A Yoruba Family Website
Culture | 0.764796 | 0.986831 | 0.754725 |
Description | Description is any type of communication that aims to make vivid a place, object, person, group, or other physical entity. Description is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse), along with exposition, argumentation, and narration.
As a fiction-writing mode
Fiction-writing specifically has modes such as action, exposition, description, dialogue, summary, and transition. Author Peter Selgin refers to methods, including action, dialogue, thoughts, summary, scenes, and description. Currently, there is no consensus within the writing community regarding the number and composition of fiction-writing modes and their uses.
Description is the fiction-writing mode for transmitting a mental image of the particulars of a story. Together with dialogue, narration, exposition, and summarization, description is one of the most widely recognized of the fiction-writing modes. As stated in Writing from A to Z, edited by Kirk Polking, description is more than the amassing of details; it is bringing something to life by carefully choosing and arranging words and phrases to produce the desired effect. The most appropriate and effective techniques for presenting description are a matter of ongoing discussion among writers and writing coaches.
Purple prose
A purple patch is an over-written passage in which the writer has strained too hard to achieve an impressive effect, by elaborate figures or other means. The phrase (Latin: "purpureus pannus") was first used by the Roman poet Horace in his Ars Poetica (c. 20 BC) to denote an irrelevant and excessively ornate passage; the sense of irrelevance is normally absent in modern usage, although such passages are usually incongruous. By extension, purple prose is lavishly figurative, rhythmic, or otherwise overwrought.
Philosophy
In philosophy, the nature of description has been an important question since Bertrand Russell's classical texts.
See also
Anthropomorphism
Cliché
Diction
Grammatical modifier
Grammatical voice
Metaphors
Nouns
Objectification
Personification
Referential density
Relevance
Rhetorical devices
Simile
Species description
Verisimilitude
Notes
References
Rozakis, Laurie (2003). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Grammar and Style, 2nd Edition. Alpha.
Grammar
Narratology
Writing
Rhetoric
Literary concepts
Rhetorical techniques
Philosophical logic
Fiction-writing mode | 0.762277 | 0.990049 | 0.754691 |
LGBT themes in mythology | LGBT themes in mythology occur in mythologies and religious narratives that include stories of romantic affection or sexuality between figures of the same sex or that feature divine actions that result in changes in gender. These myths are considered by some modern queer scholars to be forms of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) expression, and modern conceptions of sexuality and gender have been retroactively applied to them. Many mythologies ascribe homosexuality and gender fluidity in humans to the action of gods or of other supernatural interventions.
The presence of LGBT themes in mythologies has become the subject of intense study. The application of gender studies and queer theory to non-Western mythic tradition is less developed, but has grown since the end of the twentieth century.
Myths often include being gay, bisexual, or transgender as symbols for sacred or mythic experiences. Devdutt Pattanaik argues that myths "capture the collective unconsciousness of a people", and that this means they reflect deep-rooted beliefs
about variant sexualities that may be at odds with repressive social mores.
Critical perspective
The status of mythology varies by culture. Cultures may regard myths as containing psychological or archetypal truths. Myths may explain and validate the social institutions of a particular culture, as well as educate the members of that culture. This societal role has been posited for stories that included same-sex love, which educate people as to the correct attitude to adopt toward same-sex sexual activity and gender constructions.
Since the beginning of recorded history and in a multitude of cultures, myths, folklore and sacred texts have incorporated themes of same-sex eroticism and gender identity. Myths often include homosexuality, bisexuality or transgender themes as a symbol for sacred or mythic experiences. Homoeroticism or gender variance in myths have been analysed according to modern conceptions of LGBT identities and behaviours, for example, deities that disguise themselves as, or adopt behaviors traditional to, the opposite gender for a given culture may be called transgender, and beings with no reproductive organs or with both male and female organs may be called androgynous or intersex. Individual myths have been denoted "queer" for rejecting a heteronormative and binary view of gender. The queer interpretations may be based on only indirect evidence, such as an unusually close same-sex friendship or dedication to chastity. Such readings have been criticised for ignoring cultural context or mis-applying modern or Western preconceptions, for example in assuming that celibacy means only avoiding penetration or reproductive sex (hence allowing homoerotic sex), while ignoring the widespread beliefs in the spiritual potency of semen that mandate an avoidance of all sex.
Researchers have long recognised the presence of LGBT themes in Western mythologies, and have studied the subject intensely. The application of gender studies and queer theory to non-Western mythic tradition is less developed, but has grown since the end of the twentieth century. Devdutt Pattanaik writes that myths "capture the collective unconsciousness of a people", and that this means they reflect deep-rooted beliefs about variant sexualities that may be at odds with repressive social mores.
Many mythologies ascribe homosexuality and gender variance in humans to the action of gods or other supernatural interventions. This includes myths in which gods teach people about same-sex sexual practices by example, as in Aztec religion or Hawaiian religion or myths that explain the cause for transgender identities or homosexuality, such as the story in which Prometheus accidentally creates some people with the wrong genitalia while drunk, or instances of reincarnation or possession by a spirit of the opposite gender in African diaspora religions.
It is common in polytheistic mythologies to find characters that can change gender, or have aspects of both male and female genders at the same time. Sexual activity with both genders is also common within such pantheons and is compared to modern bisexuality or pansexuality.
Mythologies of Africa
Egyptian
Few records of homosexuality exist in Egyptian mythology, and existing written and pictorial works are reticent in representing sexualities. The sources that do exist indicate that same-sex relations were regarded negatively, and that penetrative sex was seen as an aggressive act of dominance and power, shameful to the receiver (a common view in the Mediterranean basin area).
The most well-known example of this occurs in the power-struggle between the sky-god Horus, and his uncle Set, the destructive god of the desert. Set's attempts to prove his superiority include schemes of seduction, in which he compliments Horus on his buttocks and tries to anally penetrate him. Unknowingly failing, Set ejaculates between Horus's thighs, allowing Horus to collect his semen to use against him. Set believes that he has conquered Horus by having "performed this aggressive act against him". Horus subsequently throws the semen in the river, so that he may not be said to have been inseminated by Set. Horus then deliberately spreads his own semen on some lettuce, which was Set's favorite food (the Egyptians regarded lettuce as phallic). After Set has eaten the lettuce, they go to the gods to try to settle the argument over the rule of Egypt. The gods first listen to Set's claim of dominance over Horus, and call his semen forth, but it answers from the river, invalidating his claim. Then, the gods listen to Horus' claim of having dominated Set, and call his semen forth, and it answers from inside Set. The association with an evil god such as Set reinforces the negativity towards all participants in homosexual relationships.
Some authors, however, have interpreted an at least more neutral message. In some versions, the act between Horus and Set was consensual, if improper, and Set's consumption of Horus' seed produced Thoth's lunar disc, thus being somewhat positive in outcome. Likewise, Set was not demonised until very late in Egyptian history, and the sexual act has been recorded since the first versions.
Human fertility, a major aspect of Egyptian mythology, often became intertwined with the crop fertility provided by the annual flooding of the river Nile. This connection appeared in the iconography of Nile-gods, such as Hapy, god of the Nile River, and Wadj-wer, god of the Nile Delta, who – although male – were depicted with female attributes such as pendulous breasts, symbolizing the fertility the river provides.
West African, Yoruba and Dahomean (Vodun)
The celestial creator deity of Dahomean religion is Mawu-Lisa, formed by a merger of the twin brother and sister gods Lisa (the moon) and Mawa (the sun). In combined form, they presented as intersex or transgender (with changing gender). Other androgynous gods include Nana Buluku, the "Great mother" that gave birth to Lisa and Mawa and created the universe, and contains both male and female essences.
The Akan people of Ghana have a pantheon of gods that includes personifications of the planets. These personifications manifest as androgynous or transgender deities, and include Abrao (Jupiter), Aku (Mercury), and Awo (Moon).
Possession by spirits is an integral part of Yoruba and other African religions. The possessed are usually women, but can also be men, and both genders are regarded as the "bride" of the deity while possessed. The language used to describe possession has a sexual and violent connotation but unlike in Yoruba-derived American religions, there is no link assumed between possession and homosexual or gender-variant activity in everyday life.
Zimbabwean
The mythology of the Shona people of Zimbabwe is ruled over by an androgynous creator god called Mwari, who occasionally splits into separate male and female aspects.
Mythologies of Americas
Maya and Aztec
The Maya god Chin, reported from the sixteenth century, is said to have introduced homoeroticism into the Mayan culture and subsequently became associated with same-sex love. His example inspired noble families to purchase young men as lovers for their sons, creating legal relationships akin to marriage.
An important Mayan deity best known from the Classical period (200–900), the so-called Tonsured Maize God. The Classical Maya classified maize as masculine, but the Tonsured version of the Maize God is depicted in ancient Maya art as an effeminate young man associated with art and dance, was represented by queens on Maya stelae, and is thought to have constituted a third gender.
In the Codex Chimalpopoca, the male deity Tezcatlipoca and his alter ego sorcerer [necoc] Yāōtl "Enemies on Both Sides" once transformed themselves into women to copulate with Huemac.
Xōchipilli is an Aztec god seen as the patron of homosexuals and male prostitutes.
Native American and Inuit
In Inuit shamanism, the first two humans were Aakulujjuusi and Uumarnituq, both male. This same-sex couple desired company and decided to mate. This sexual encounter resulted in pregnancy for Uumarnituq. As he was physically not equipped to give birth, a spell was cast that changed his sex, giving him a vagina capable of passing the child. The now-female Uumarnituq was also responsible for introducing war into the world via magic, in order to curb overpopulation. The goddess Sedna is an Inuit creator deity, with dominion of marine animals. She is depicted as gynandrous or hermaphroditic in some myths, and is served by two-spirit shamans. Other myths show Sedna as a bisexual or lesbian, living with her female partner at the bottom of the ocean.
Many stories of Native Americans include Coyote seducing apparently lesbian couples, usually much to his detriment in the end. Other great spirits will sometimes take over a female body if no other presents itself when they wish to seduce a beautiful young woman.
Santería and Candomblé
Santería and Candomblé are syncretic religions derived from Yoruba diasporic beliefs and Catholicism, most prevalent in South Americas, including Cuba and Brazil. Their mythologies have many similarities to that of Yoruba, and contains a pantheon of Oríshas (spirits), comparable to (and often identified with) the lwa of Voodoo.
In one Cuban Santería "pataki", or mythological story, the sea goddess Yemaha is tricked into incestuous sex with her son Shango. To hide her shame at this event, she banished her other two sons, Inle and Abbata, to live at the bottom of the ocean, additionally cutting out Inle's tongue and making Abbata deaf. As a result of their isolation and loneliness, Inle and Abbata become passionate friends and then lovers, able to communicate empathically. This pataki is used to explain the origin of incest, muteness, and deafness in addition to homosexuality.
In Brasil Candomblé, there's Oxumaré.
Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo
A large number of lwa (spirits or deities) exist in Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo. These lwa may be regarded as families of individuals or as a singular entity with distinct aspects, with links to particular areas of life.
Some lwa have particular links with magic, veneration of the dead or death such as the Gede and Bawon. A number of these are further particularly associated with transgender identities or same-sex interactions. These include Guede Nibo, a spirit caring for those who die young. He is sometimes depicted as an effeminate drag queen and inspires those he inhabits to lascivious sexuality of all kinds, especially transgender or lesbian behaviour in women. Gede Nibo's parents are Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte; Baron Samedi is the leader of the Gede and Bawon and is depicted as bisexual dandy or occasionally transgender, wearing a top-hat and frock coat along with a woman's skirt and shoes. Samedi tends towards "lascivious movements" that cross gender boundaries and also imply a lust for anal sex.
Other bawon displaying gay behaviour are Baron Lundy and Baron Limba, who are lovers and teach a type of homoerotic nude wrestling at their school, believed to increase magical potency. Baron Oua Oua, who often manifests with a childlike aspect, has been called the baron "most closely linked to homosexuality" by Voodoo practitioners.
Another lwa, Erzulie, is associated with love, sensuality and beauty. Erzulie can manifest aspects that are LGBT-related, including transgender or Amazonian traits, in addition to traditionally feminine guises. When inhabiting men, these aspects can result in transgender or homoerotic behaviour, whereas they may result in lesbianism or anti-male sentiment in women. Erzulie Freda is seen as the protector of gay men, and Erzulie Dantor is associated with lesbians.
Mexican folk religion
Santa Muerte is revered and seen as a saint and protector of the LGBT community in Mexico, since LGBTQ+ people are considered and treated as outcasts by the Catholic Church, evangelical churches, and Mexican society at large. Many LGBTQ+ people ask her for protection from violence, hatred, disease, and to help them in their search for love. Her intercession is commonly invoked in same-sex marriage ceremonies performed in Mexico. The now defunct Iglesia Católica Tradicional México-Estados Unidos, also known as the Church of Santa Muerte, recognized gay marriage and performed religious wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples.
Mythologies of Asia
Chinese
Chinese mythology has been described as "rich in stories about homosexuality". The mythological stories and folklore of China reflect ancient Chinese perspectives toward homosexuality, rather than modern views. These myths are greatly influenced by religious beliefs, particularly Daoist and Confucian, and later incorporated Buddhist teachings.
The religion of the Shang and Predynastic Zhou were predominately shamanistic. Male same-sex love was believed to have originated in the mythical South, thus homosexuality is sometimes still called the "Southern wind". From this period, numerous spirits or deities were associated with homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender identities. These include Chou Wang, Lan Caihe, Shan Gu, and Yu the Great, and Gun.
Homosexual encounters are common in Chinese folk stories. The animal spirits or fairies often choose same-sex partners, usually young men or boys. According to the Xiaomingxiong, one exception to this age preference is the dragon, a powerful mythological beast. Chinese dragons "consistently enjoy sexual relationships with older men", one example being in the tale of "Old Farmer and a Dragon", in which a sixty-year-old farmer is forcibly sodomised by a passing dragon, resulting in wounds from penetration and bites that require medical attention.
Despite the later literature of some Daoist schools disapproval of homosexuality, Tu'er Shen is a deity in Chinese folklore who manages the love and sex between homosexual men. His name means "leveret deity". According to "The Tale of the Rabbit God" in the What the Master Would Not Discuss, Tu Er Shen was originally a man called Hu Tianbao, who fell in love with a handsome young imperial inspector of Fujian. One day Hu Tianbao was caught peeping on the inspector, at which point he confessed his reluctant affections for the other man. The imperial inspector had Hu Tianbao sentenced to death by beating. Since his crime was one of love, underworld officials decided to right the injustice by delegating Hu Tianbao as the god and safeguarder of homosexual affections.
In modern times, the priest Lu Weiming founded a temple in Yonghe City, Taiwan that worships Tu'er Shen and provides spiritual comfort for homosexual Daoists.
For thousands of years, male homosexuality was referred to in literature by alluding to two semi-legendary figures from the early Zhou dynasty. The first was Mizi Xia and the half-eaten peach which he shared with his lover, the actual historical figure, Duke Ling of Wey. The second was Lord Long Yang, who convinced an unnamed King of Wey to remain faithful to him by comparing himself to a small fish which the King might throw back if a larger fish came along. While both Mizi Xia and Lord Long Yang may have existed, nothing is known about them beyond their defining stories, and their presence in Chinese literature was very much that of legendary characters who served as archetypes of homosexual love.
Japanese
Shinto gods are involved in all aspects of life, including the practice of shudo (traditional pederasty). An overarching patron deity of male-male love and sex, "Shudō Daimyōjin", exists in some folk Shinto sects, but is not a part of the standard Shinto pantheon.
Other kami associated with same-sex love or gender variance include: Oyamakui, a transgender mountain spirit that protects industry and childbearing; and Inari Ōkami, the kami of agriculture and rice, who is depicted as various genders, the most common representations being a young female food goddess, an old man carrying rice, and an androgynous bodhisattva. Inari is further associated with foxes and kitsune, shapeshifting fox trickster spirits. Kitsune sometimes disguise themselves as women, hiding their true gender, to trick human men into sexual relations with them. A common belief in medieval Japan was that any woman encountered alone, especially at dusk or night, could be a fox.
Cross-dressing in Japanese Mythology
There is widespread agreement that cross-dressing of heroes and gods is widely observed in Japanese mythology. Through a woman dressed as a man or a man dressed as a woman, a double gender condition is created, gaining powerful power and divinity. Such beliefs existed in Japan before Westernization, according to . Mitsuhashi calls this belief, Sōsei Genri (; no standard translation. lit. “the Double Gender Principle”). Yamato Takeru, the prince of Emperor Keikō, the hero of Japan's founding mythology, is cross-dressed and infiltrates the Kumaso’s castle. He succeeded in killing the brave . In , the mythical Japanese invasion of Korea, Empress Jingū dressed in a man and achieved stunning results. According to Mitsuhashi, these are examples of Sōsei Genri. Sōsei Genri can also be seen in the early modern fiction. For example, Inusaka Keno and Inuzuka Shino, swordsmen in the Edo-period novel Nansō Satomi Hakkenden by Takizawa Bakin, are young men raised as a girl, but played superhuman activities to kill the enemy. Mitsuhashi considers that the cross-dressing of men seen at modern Japanese festivals originated from the ancient Sōsei Genri.
Yamato Takeru
Regarding Yamato Takeru’s cross-dressing, it has had various views. Kojiki-den by Motoori Norinaga emphasized that it was a way to obtain the protection of Yamatohime-no-mikoto and more specifically Amaterasu, and most commentaries of Kojiki and historians such as supported Kojikiden’s view. While acknowledged the spiritual power of the unmarried princess Yamatohime but argued that Amaterasu need not be taken into consideration, emphasized the spiritual dignity of Amaterasu and claimed that Yamatotakeru visited Ise Shrine. Toshihiko Moriya appealed to “common sense” and made the case for visiting Ise Shrine, but Mariko Hoshiyama was skeptical and saw the cross-dressing by Yamatotakeru as a part of the rites of coming-of-age. However, Sanae Fukutō points out that “a reexamination is now required” since the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki are entirely separate mythologies that should not be uncritically contrasted or compared.
Reincarnation into Yang Guifei
As a part of , Yamato Takeru’s cross-dressing attracted attention in the Middle Ages. In Bai Juyi's Song of Everlasting Regret, there is a passage in which Emperor Xuanzong sees Yang Guifei’s soul floating in Mount Penglai after her death. Japanese intellectuals identified Mount Penglai with Japan, and so they turned their attention to Bai Juyi’s poetry. A setsuwa in the Keiranshūyōshū by Kōshu identifies Yang Guifei’s palace at Penglei with Atsuta Shrine in Japan. The Soga Monogatari states that Emperor Xuanzong also came to Japan after his death and became the god Hakkengū. In a Shinto theological book in 1523, Unshū Hinokawa Ame ga Uchi no Ki, Emperor Xuanzong planned to invade Japan in search of Yang Guifei, and it is said that the Japanese gods held a conference and had a god from Atsuta Shrine dress up as a woman and become Yang Guifei to calm Emperor Xuanzong’s mind. Tōgoku Kikō by and also held this story in the Sengoku period. Edo period scholars such as Hayashi Razan (in Honchō Jinja-kō , Tōkō Nichiroku , Heishin Kikō ), (in ) and Izawa Banryō criticized this as an ignorant theory, and it gradually fell out. A stupa dedicated to Yang Guifei was erected at Atsuta Shrine, but was removed during renovations during the Jōkyō era (1684-1688) but the stones, believed to have been fragments, can still be seen today.
Empress Jingū
Regarding Empress Jingū’s cross-dressing, Shinobu Orikuchi understood it as a shamanic act, since warfare in ancient times was a divine ritual. He also pointed out that a similar example was the wife of the Asuka period warrior , who had dressed as a man and fought in the invasion against the Emishi. Hisashi Yamada shares a similar view, and believes that the example of armed Kikoe-ōgimi in Omoro Sōshi pointed out by Ifa Fuyū is also related to this cross-dressing.
Susanoo
When Susanoo slays the dragon Yamata no Orochi, he wears the comb that Kushinadahime transformed into. Since combs symbolize women in ancient Japan, some have interpreted this as Susanoo cross-dressing. An early example is in The Tale of the Heike, written in the Middle Ages, which interprets Susanoo as cross-dressing. , , and Hayao Kawai have linked this attire of Susanoo to the cross-dressing Yamatotakeru. However, claims that cross-dressing cannot be inferred from the act of wearing a comb.
Amaterasu's queerness
Amaterasu, the supreme deity in Japanese mythology and the imperial ancestor, is also called Ōhirume (ō-hiru-me; lit. “great-daylight-woman”) and is generally known as a goddess. However, a lot of third gender interpretations have been performed since ancient times, so the pronoun here is they.
In ancient Japanese mythology, Amaterasu was surprised to see Susanoo ascending to Takamagahara, so they dressed as a man and armed themself. This is often thought to stem from Amaterasu's third gender shamanic nature.
Amaterasu retreats from conflict with their brother Susanoo into the cave of Amano-Iwato, depriving the Earth of sunlight and life. To coax Amaterasu from the cave, the deity of humour and dance, Ame-no-Uzume, performs a bawdy sexual dance that involved exposing her breasts and vulva. On Amaterasu's stepping out of the cave, Ishikori-dome no Mikoto held up a magical mirror, and the combination of the dance and their reflection distracted Amaterasu so much that they did not notice other deities closing the cave entrance behind them. In Japanese academia, Ame-no-Uzume's sexual dance has generally been understood to have a magical significance: an Edo period scholar Hirata Atsutane, for example, linked Ame-no-Uzume's genital exposure to genital folklore of the time. In the scene where the male god Ninigi-no-Mikoto descends to earth, Ame-no-Uzume similarly exposes her genitals and breasts. On the other hand, Conner, Sparks & Sparks (1998) is reading lesbianism in this story.
As seen above, Amaterasu is often noted for their gender variance or queerness. Already in the Heian period, Amaterasu was associated with cross-dressing or gender variance. Nakayama Tadachika’s diary and ’s diary , written at the end of the Heian period, contain records of men's clothing being presented to Amaterasu at the of Ise Grand Shrine.
Medieval Shintoism offered esoteric interpretations of the ancient Japanese mythology. In many medieval sources, Amaterasu’s gender is ambiguous and “confused.” Nihongi ichi Jindaikan Shuibun in the early 15th century states that Amaterasu first appears as a man and is a god of yang, and sometimes as a woman and is a goddess of yin for the sake of enlightenment of the sentient beings. Tenchi Kanjōki in 1568 states that Amaterasu at the of Ise Grand Shrine is female but resides in a male body, and that at is male but resides in a female body. Nichiiki Hongi in the Nanboku-chō period saw Amaterasu as physically androgynous, and of a gender variance, probably, “one that could not be determined as either a god or a goddess”.:9 Furthermore, some medieval esoteric commentaries identify Kuni-no-Tokotachi with Konrin’ō (; a Chakravarti) and Rāgarāja. Nichiiki Hongi, Daijingū Hon’en, and Nihongi Sanrin-ryū consider Kuni-no-Tokotachi's spiritual essence to be an androgynous third gender.: 10―14 The third gender deities mentioned here, Amaterasu and Kuni-no-Tokotachi, are both regarded as supreme deities in Japanese panthea. According to Yui Yoshida, medieval esotericists considered Amaterasu, a third gender deity born from the marriage of the primordial brother and sister Izanagi and Izanami, to be more “complete” than Kuni-no-Tokotachi, a spontaneously generated third gender deity.: 22 In both and , Amaterasu was associated with gender variance.: 125(20) For example, Amaterasu is believed to have appeared in Hyūga as the boy deity in Ryōbu Shintō.
In the Edo period, wrote in his Naikū Dantai Kōshō that Amaterasu was female as a sun goddess and male as an imperial ancestor. , who advocated egalitarianism, used Amaterasu's androgynous nature as a basis for his argument on equality between men and women.
Amaterasu's gender variance or queer nature was retained in the early Meiji era. For instance, during the first years of the Meiji era, Emperor Meiji was the only male permitted to wear ohaguro. This was also recognized as cross-dressing by people at the time. Kei Chiba points out that in early modern Japan, ohaguro was a feminine grooming habit and may have signified a certain third gender nature of the emperor, the human deity and a descendant of Amaterasu.: 8 However, through the Meiji Restoration, Amaterasu's queer symbolization was eventually removed from the legitimacy and regarded as heresy. This elimination is also related to the fact that Amaterasu was sometimes used as a symbol of anti-government movements from the Edo period to the early Meiji era. For example, an that occurred in Hokuetsu in 1874 used Amaterasu as a symbol and called for the restoration of the Tokugawa shogunate. Around 1885, Yohei Kobayashi started a social movement called Jindai Hukko Seigan Undō, which called for a return to the pre-imperial era of myth, videlicet of Amaterasu. Kei Chiba argues that Amaterasu's queerness and dissident traits were an obstacle to the Meiji government's aims of Westernization and the emperor-centered family system of heteronormativity and patriarchy. The symbology of Amaterasu in ancient mythology was sometimes interpreted as cross-dressing, but ultimately their gender variance feature was “castrated” and they were “domesticated” under fascism as the supreme mother.
Even after the Meiji period, Amaterasu's gender variance continued to be believed in unorthodox new sects that was sometimes deemed heretical by the imperial government.: 12―13 Nao Deguchi, the originator of Oomoto-kyō, in their later years claimed that their soul is the same as that of Amaterasu's sister, and therefore that although their body is female (i.e. ; ), they are spiritually male. The shintai worshipped by the Jikōson’s sect, which arose after the war and was banned by Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, is considered as an androgynous deity that was a fusion of Emperor Jimmu and Amaterasu. Sayo Kitamura, the founder of Tenshō Kōtai Jingū-kyō, claimed that the god residing in her was a single deity embodied by the male deity Kōtaijin and the female deity Amaterasu.: 15―16
Michiomi no Mikoto
was the vanguard of the Jinmu's Eastern Expedition and also served as guards at the enthronement ceremony of Emperor Jimmu. He was appointed as a priest to worship Takamimusubi and given a woman's name Itsuhime. Ryūzō Torii understood this as a change of sex, in other words, a kind of transgender shaman.
Shino no Hafuri and Amano no Hafuri
It has been suggested since the Edo period that the oldest recorded homosexual relationship in Japan was between Shino no Hōri/Hafuri and Amano no Hōri/Hafuri. These were priests of different shrine, speculatively the sun goddess Amaterasu. When Shino died of illness, Amano committed suicide from grief, and the couple were buried together in the same grave.
According to Nihon Shoki, when Empress Jingū defeated the rebellion of Emperor Chūai’s and Ōnakatsu Hime's son, , it became dark as night even though it was day. It was discovered that the cause of this strange phenomenon was the sin of azunai committed by Shino and Amano. Although Nihon Shoki states that the sin of azunai was the sin of burying priests from two shrines in the same grave, homophobic Edo period researchers argued that the sin of azunai was a sin related to homosexuality.
Indian
Buddhist
In traditional Thai Buddhism, accounts propose that "homosexuality arises as a karmic consequence of violating Buddhist proscriptions against heterosexual misconduct" in a previous incarnation. Thai Buddhists also believe the disciple Ānanda to have been reincarnated several times as a woman, and in one previous life to have been transgender. Ānanda is popular and charismatic, and known for his emotionality. In one story of one of his previous lives, Ānanda was a solitary yogi who fell in love with a nāga, a serpent king of Indian folklore, who took the form of a handsome youth. The relationship became sexual, causing Ānanda to regretfully break off contact, to avoid distraction from spiritual matters.
According to one legend, male same-sex love was introduced into Japan by the founder of Shingon Buddhism, Kūkai. Historians point that this is probably not true, since Kūkai was an enthusiastic follower of monastic regulations.
Some bodhisattvas change sexes in different incarnations, which causes some to associate this with homosexuality and transgender identities. Guanyin, Avalokiteśvara, and Tara are known to have different gender representations.
Hindu
Hindu mythology has many examples of deities changing gender, manifesting as different genders at different times, or combining to form androgynous or hermaphroditic beings. Gods change sex or manifest as an Avatar of the opposite sex in order to facilitate sexual congress. Non-divine beings also undergo sex-changes through the actions of the gods, as the result of curses or blessings, or as the natural outcome of reincarnation.
Hindu mythology contains numerous incidents where sexual interactions serve a non-sexual, sacred purpose; in some cases, these are same-sex interactions. Sometimes the gods condemn these interactions but at other times they occur with their blessing.
In addition to stories of gender and sexual variance that are generally accepted by mainstream Hinduism, modern scholars and queer activists have highlighted LGBT themes in lesser known texts, or inferred them from stories that traditionally are considered to have no homoerotic subtext. Such analyses have caused disagreements about the true meaning of the ancient stories.
Philippines
In Tagalog mythology, the hermaphrodite Lakapati is identified as the most important fertility deity in the Tagalog pantheon. A prayer dedicated to Lakapati was recited by children when sowing seeds: "Lakapati, pakanin mo yaring alipin mo; huwag mong gutumin (Lakapati, feed this thy slave; let him not hunger)".
In Suludnon mythology, there are accounts of female binukots (well-kept maidens) who had powers to transition into male warriors. The most famous of which are Nagmalitong Yawa and Matan-ayon. In one epic, after Buyong Humadapnon was captured by the magical binukot Sinangkating Bulawan, the also powerful female binukot, Nagmalitong Yawa, cast her magic and transitioned into a male warrior named Buyong Sumasakay. He afterwards successfully rescued the warrior Buyong Humadapnon. In a similar epic, the female binukot Matan-ayon, in search of her husband Labaw Donggon, sailed the stormy seas using the golden ship Hulinday together with her less powerful brother-in-law Paubari. Once when she was bathing after sailing far, Buyong Pahagunong spotted her and tried to make her his bride. The event was followed by a series of combat, where in one instance, Matan-ayon transitioned into the male warrior Buyong Makalimpong. After a series of battles, Labaw Donggon arrives and attacks Buyong Pahagunong, while Buyong Makalimpong once again transitioned into Matan-ayon. Matan-ayon then has a conversation with the supreme goddess Laonsina about why the men are fighting and agree to sit back and watch them if they truly are seeking death.
In Waray mythology, the supreme creator deity has both female and male aspects. Usually spoken of in her female aspect, Malaon ("the ancient one"), she was regarded as a more sympathetic deity of justice and equality. However, her male aspect, Makapatag (literally "the leveler"), is regarded as a destructive deity of punishment and vengeance.
Abrahamic
Christian
The saints Sergius and Bacchus' close relationship has led many modern commentators to believe they were lovers. The most popular evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, in the Greek language, describes them as erastai (. Historian John Boswell considered their relationship to be an example of an early Christian same-sex union, reflecting his contested view of tolerant early Christian attitudes toward homosexuality.
The official stance of the Eastern Orthodox Church is that the ancient Eastern tradition of adelphopoiesis, which was done to form a "brotherhood" in the name of God and is traditionally associated with these two saints, had no sexual implications.
In a similar matter regarding paired male saints, Saints Cosmas and Damian have been referred to as potentially originally having homoerotic overtones, and later Christian traditions added them being brothers to conceal that.
Saint Sebastian is a long-standing gay icon. The combination of his strong, shirtless physique, the symbolism of the arrows penetrating his body, and the look on his face of rapturous pain have intrigued artists (gay or otherwise) for centuries, and began the first explicitly gay cult in the 19th century. Richard A. Kaye wrote, "contemporary gay men have seen in Sebastian at once a stunning advertisement for homosexual desire (indeed, a homoerotic ideal), and a prototypical portrait of tortured closet case."
Islamic and Pre-Islamic Arabian
Islamic folk beliefs remain common, such as the myths surrounding the jinn, long-lived shape-shifting spirits created from "smokeless fire" (Quran 15:27) and which correspond to the second group of angels who were created on the fifth day of Creation in the text of Jewish Kabbalah called the Bahir "Illumination", which were created from "flameless fire". Some believe their shape-shifting abilities allow them to change gender at will but this is not consistent throughout the Islamic world although their ability to fly and travel exceedingly fast are consistent traits of the Jinn. The word Jinn means "hidden from sight" and they are sometimes considered to be led by Iblis, representing powers of magic and rebellion, and posing as bringers of wealth as the devil acclaim.
These traits are associated with the Jinn on account of Iblis' rebellion against the order of God to acknowledge Adam's ability to be superior to the Jinn and his refusal to bow down stating that "he was created from fire and Adam was created from clay" (Quran 7:11-12). The ability of the Jinn to travel to the heavens and listen to the discussion of angels and bring back what they overhear and relay it to seers and oracles has linked them with magic (Quran 72:8-10).
Jinn are served by the al-Jink and mukhannathun, transgender and homoerotically inclined wanderers with entertainment and spiritual functions. In pre-Islamic Arabic and Oikoumene cultures, third-gender individuals such as mukhannathun were worshippers in widespread goddess cults. These cults revered a trio of goddesses: al-lāt, al-Uzza, and Manāt. which in pre-Islamic Arabia were believed to be daughters of God but were denounced as false idols in Quran 53:19-23.
Arabian mythology also contains magical sex-changing springs or fountains, such as al-Zahra. Upon bathing in or drinking from al-Zahra, a person will change sex. The folklore of Swat in northern Pakistan often includes same-sex relationships in which the "beloved" is a handsome younger man or boy.
Judaism
The story of David and Jonathan has been described as "biblical Judeo-Christianity's most influential justification of homoerotic love". The relationship between David and Jonathan is mainly covered in the Hebrew Bible in the 1st Book of Samuel as part of the story of David's ascent to power. The mainstream view found in modern biblical exegesis argues that the relationship between the two is merely a close platonic friendship. However, there has recently been a tradition of interpreting the love between David and Jonathan as romantic or sexual.
Another biblical hero, Noah, best known for his building an ark to save animals and worthy people from a divinely-caused flood, later became a wine-maker. One day he drank too much wine and fell asleep naked in his tent. When his son Ham enters the tent, he sees his father naked, and Canaan, one of Ham's sons is cursed with banishment. In Jewish tradition, it is also suggested that Ham had anal sex with Noah or castrated him.
Mesopotamian: Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, and Canaanite
The ancient regions of Mesopotamia and Canaan were inhabited by a succession of overlapping civilisations: Sumer, Phoenicia, Agade, Babylonia, and Assyria. The mythologies of these people were interlinked, often containing the same stories and mythological gods and heroes under different names.
The Eridu Genesis, "The Creation of Man", from circa the 20th century BC, lists physically differing people created by the goddess Ninmah. These included "the woman who cannot give birth" and "the one who has no male organ or female organ", which have been regarded as being third gender or androgynous. Enki, the supreme god, is accepting of these people and assigns them roles in society as naditu (priestesses) and girsequ (servants to the king).
The Akkadian mythical epic Atrahasis contains another iteration of this story in which Enki specifically requests that Nintu create a "third-category" of people that includes third-gender people, barren women, and an "infant-stealing demon".
In ancient Mesopotamia, worship of the goddess Inanna included "soothing laments" sung by third-gender priests called "gala". According to First Babylonian dynastic texts, these priests were created specifically for this purpose by the god Enki. Some gala took female names, and the word itself means "penis+anus", hinting at their androgynous status. The cultural practice, or "me", of androgynous, third-gender or homoerotically inclined priests were part of those said to have been stolen by Innana from Enki in "The Descent of Innana" myth. In the Babylonian Erra myth, the gender of the "kurgaru" and "assinnu" priests was supernaturally changed by the goddess Ishtar, making them feminine. The changes may also facilitate possession by the goddess, causing a psychological change or prompting physical castration.
The relationship between the semi-divine hero Gilgamesh and his "intimate companion" Enkidu in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh has been interpreted as a sexual one by some modern scholars. Enkidu was created as a companion to Gilgamesh by the goddess Aruru, and civilised by a priestess. As Gilgamesh and Enkidu were of similar ages and status, their relationship has been seen as relatively egalitarian, in contrast with the typically pederastic mode of ancient Greece.
Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism has been said to have a "hatred of male anal intercourse". This is reflected in its mythology: When Ahriman, the "Spirit of Aridity and Death" and "Lord of Lies", seeks to destroy the world, he engages in self-sodomy. This homosexual self-intercourse causes an "explosion of evil power" and results in the birth of a host of evil minions and demons. Ahriman has also been regarded as the patron of men who partake of homosexual sex. However, this negative portrayal of homosexuality in Zoroastrianism is not found in the Gathas, their original holy book which is said to be the direct sayings of the prophet Zoroaster.
Mythologies of Europe
Celtic
Celtic mythology has no known stories of gay or lesbian relationships nor LGBT characters. Peter Chicheri argues that non-procreative sexual experiences were removed from myths by Christians.
suggest that the heroes and foster-brothers Cúchulainn and Ferdiadh may have had a sexual relationship. The tale has led to comparisons to Greek "warrior-lovers", and Cúchulainn's reaction to the death of Ferdiadh in particular compared to Achilles' lament for Patroclus.
In the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion of Welsh mythology, Gwydion helps his brother Gilfaethwy rape Goewin, Math's female servant. When Math hears of this, he turns his nephews into a series of mated pairs of animals; Gwydion becomes a stag for a year, then a sow, and finally a wolf. Gilfaethwy becomes a hind, a wild boar, and a she-wolf. Each year they must mate and produce an offspring which is sent to Math: Hyddwn, Hychddwn and Bleiddwn; after three years Math releases his nephews from their punishment.
In the Matter of Britain, originating in Welsh mythology, the Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot and Galehaut, share intimacy as recounted in the 13th century Lancelot-Grail. The nature of their relationship is a subject of debate among modern scholars, with some interpreting it as intimate friendship and others as love similar to that between Lancelot and Guinevere.
The 14th-century chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is considered by some modern scholars to blur the line between male homosociality common at the time and male homosexuality. The Green Knight's attractiveness defies the homosocial rules of King Arthur's court and poses a threat to their way of life, with the friendship between him and Gawain being seen with homoerotic overtones.
Greek and Roman
Greek mythology features male same-sex love in many of the constituent myths. These myths have been described as being crucially influential on Western LGBT literature, with the original myths being constantly re-published and re-written, and the relationships and characters serving as icons. In comparison, lesbianism is rarely found in classical myths.
Achilles and Patroclus
Achilles and Troilus
Agamemnon and Argynnus
Ameinias and Narcissus
Apollo and Admetus
Apollo and Adonis
Apollo and Boreas
Apollo and Branchus
Apollo and Carnus
Apollo and Cyparissus
Apollo and Helenus
Apollo and Hyacinthus
Apollo and Hymenaios
Apollo and Iapis
Ares and Alectryon
Artemis and Callisto
Asclepius and Hippolytus
Athena and Myrmex
Athis and Lycabas
Boreas and Hyacinthus
Chiron and Dionysus
Cleostratus and Menestratus
Cycnus and Phaethon
Cycnus and Phylius
Cydon and Clytius
Deiphobus and Antheus
Dionysus and Ampelus
Dionysus and Prosymnus
Eurybarus and Alcyoneus
Helios and Nerites
Hephaestus and Peleus
Heracles and Abderus
Heracles and Eurystheus
Heracles and Hylas
Heracles and Iolaus
Hermes and Amphion
Hermes and Crocus
Hermes and Perseus
Hermes and Pollux
Hesperus and Hymenaeus
Hymenaeus and Argynnus
Hypnos and Endymion
Ianthe and Iphis
Kalamos and Karpos
Laius and Chrysippus
Marsyas and Olympus
Minos and Atymnius
Minos and Ganymede
Minos and Miletus
Minos and Theseus
Nisus and Euryalus
Orestes and Pylades
Orpheus and the Thracians
Orpheus and Kalais
Pan and Daphnis
Paris and Antheus
Polyphemus and Silenus
Poseidon and Nerites
Poseidon and Pelops
Polyeidos and Glaucus
Rhadamanthus and Talos
Sarpedon and Atymnius
Sarpedon and Miletus
Silvanus and Cyparissus
Tantalus and Ganymede
Thamyris and Hyacinthus
Theseus and Pirithous
Zephyrus and Cyparissus
Zephyrus and Hyacinthus
Zeus and Aëtos
Zeus (Artemis) and Callisto
Zeus and Euphorion
Zeus and Ganymede
Apollo, an eternal beardless youth himself, had the most male lovers of all the Greek gods, as could be expected from a god who presided over the palaestra. In spite of having no male lovers himself, the love god Eros was sometimes considered patron of pederastic love between males. Aphroditus was an androgynous Aphrodite from Cyprus, in later mythology became known as Hermaphroditus the son of Hermes and Aphrodite.
Thamyris, the Thracian singer who developed love for Hyacinthus, is said to have been the first man to fall in love with another man. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the characters Iphis and Caeneus change sex.
Antinous was a Greek youth from Bithynia and a favourite and lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Following his premature death before his 20th birthday, Antinous was deified on Hadrian's orders, being worshipped in both the Greek East and Latin West, sometimes as a god and sometimes merely as a hero.
Norse
Georges Dumézil suggested that Freyr, a Norse god of fertility, may have been worshiped by a group of homosexual or effeminate priests, as suggested by Saxo Grammaticus in his .
Some Old Norse deities are attested as changing their shape at will, turning into animals or otherwise disguising themselves. For example, the god Loki is attested as disgusing himself as a woman. In Gylfaginning, he transforms himself into a mare and, after being chased all night by a stallion Svaðilfari, he gives birth to Sleipnir, an eight-legged foal.
Norwegian archaeologist Brit Solli suggests that Odin may have been connected to a shamanistic cult that viewed gender transgression as a source of power.
According to socialist David F. Greenberg:
Mythologies of Oceania
Australian Aboriginal
The indigenous population of Australia have a shamanistic religion, which includes a pantheon of gods. The Rainbow Serpent of the Wunambal known as Ungud has been described as androgynous or transgender. Clever men identify their erect penises with Ungud and his androgyny inspires some to undergo ceremonial subincision of the penis. Angamunggi is another transgender rainbow-serpent god, worshipped as a "giver of life".
Other Australian mythological beings include Labarindja, blue-skinned wild women or "demon women" with hair the colour of smoke. Stories about them show them to be completely uninterested in romance or sex with men, and any man forcing his attention upon them could die, due to the "evil magic in their vaginas". They are sometimes depicted as gynandrous or intersex, having both a penis and a vagina. This is represented in ritual by having their part played by men in women's clothes.
Pacific Island: Celebes, Vanuatu, Borneo and the Philippines
Third gender, or gender variant, spiritual intermediaries are found in many Pacific island cultures, including religion in pre-colonial Philippines, such as the bajasa of the Torajan people of Sulawesi, the bantut of the Tausūg people of the south Philippines, and the bayogin. These shamans are typically biologically male but display feminine behaviours and appearance. The pre-Christian Philippines had a polytheistic religion, which included the transgender or hermaphroditic gods Bathala and Malyari, whose names means "Man and Woman in One" and "Powerful One" respectively; these gods are worshipped by the Bayagoin.
The Big Nambas of Vanuatu have the concept of divinely approved homoerotic relationships between men, with the older partner called the dubut. This name is derived from the word for shark, referring to the patronage of the shark-human hydrid creator god Qat.
Among their pantheon of deities, the Ngaju of Borneo worship Mahatala-Jata, an androgynous or transgender god. The male part of this god is Mahatala, who rules the Upperworld, and is depicted as a hornbill living above the clouds on a mountain-top; the female part is Jata, who rules the Underworld from under the sea in the form of a katuali. These two manifestations are linked via a jewel-encrusted bridge that is seen in the physical world as a rainbow. Mahatala-Jata is served by balian, female hierodules, and basir, transgender shamans metaphorically described as "water snakes which are at the same time hornbills".
Similar transgender shamans, the "manang bali", are found in the Iban. Girls fated to become manang bali may first dream of becoming a woman and also of being summoned by the deities Menjaya Raja Manang or Ini. Menjaya Raja Manang began existence as a male god until the wife of her brother Sengalang Burong became sick. This prompted Menjara to become the world's first healer, allowing her to cure her sister-in-law, but this treatment also resulted in Menjara changing into a woman or androgynous being.
Polynesian: Hawaiian and Māori
Polynesian religions feature a complex pantheon of deities. Many of these gods refer to their companions of either sex as "aikane", a term encompassing passionate friendship and sexual-love, often in bisexual contexts.
Wahine-ʻŌmaʻo, a goddess of Hawaiian religion whose name means "ʻŌmaʻo woman", is depicted in relationships with other goddesses Hiʻiaka and Hopoe. When Hi'iaka was suspected of infidelity with her sister Pele's husband, the volcano goddess Pele killed Hi'iaka's beloved Hopoe by covering her in lava. In addition to Wahineomo and Hopoe, Hi'iaka had lesbian relationships with the fern goddess Pauopalae and Pele-devotee Omeo. Omeo was part of the retinue that brought the bisexual Prince Lohiau to Pele after his death. During his life Lohiau was the lover of both the female Pele and male Paoa.
Other Polynesian LGBT figures include the Hawaiian Haakauilanani, a male servant and lover to the "Earth mother" creator goddess Papahānaumoku and her husband Wākea. Non-divine LGBT characters also exist in Polynesian mythology, such as the male priest Pakaʻa and his chief and lover Keawe-nui-a-ʻUmi, and the famed fisherman Nihooleki, who was married to a woman but also had a relationship with the pig god Kamapuaʻa. Kamapua'a was also responsible for sending the love-god Lonoikiaweawealoha to seduce Pele's brother gods Hiiakaluna and Hiiakalalo, hence distracting them from attacking him. Kamapuaʻa's other male lovers included Limaloa, the bisexual god of the sea and mirages.
Hiʻiaka, a daughter or sister of Pele, had aikane (from: "ai", meaning: [intimate sexual relationship]; kane, [man, husband, consort]) relationships with several female lovers including Hopoe, Omeo, Wahineʻomaʻo, and Pauo-Palae.
The Healing Stones of Kapaemahu tells the story of four māhū - individuals of dual male and female mind, heart, and spirit - who long ago brought healing arts from Tahiti to Hawai'i. Before they left, they used special dual male-female kiʻi to transfer their powers to four large boulders that the people brought to Waikiki. These stones still exist on Waikiki Beach and may be the only monument in the world to honor and uplift gender fluidity.
See also
Religion and homosexuality
Queer theology
LGBT literature
LGBT history
LGBT themes in speculative fiction
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Mythology
Mythology | 0.760189 | 0.992715 | 0.754651 |
Traditional education | Traditional education, also known as back-to-basics, conventional education or customary education, refers to long-established customs that society has traditionally used in schools. Some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressive education practices, and a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students' needs; academics, mental health, and social-emotional learning. In the eyes of reformers, traditional teacher-centered methods focused on rote learning and memorization must be abandoned in favor of student centered and task-based approaches to learning.
Depending on the context, the opposite of traditional education may be progressive education, modern education (the education approaches based on developmental psychology), or alternative education.
Purposes
The primary purpose of traditional education is to continue passing on those skills, facts, and standards of moral and social conduct that adults consider to be necessary for the next generation's material advancement. As beneficiaries of this plan, which educational progressivist John Dewey described as being "imposed from above and from outside", the students are expected to docilely and obediently receive and believe these fixed answers. Teachers are the instruments by which this knowledge is communicated and these standards of behavior are enforced.
Historically, the primary educational technique of traditional education was simple oral recitation: In a typical approach, students spent some of their time sitting quietly at their places and listening to one student after another recite his or her lesson, until each had been called upon. The teacher's primary activity during such sessions was assigning and listening to these recitations; students studied and memorized the assignments at home. A test or oral examination might be given at the end of a unit, and the process, which was called "assignment–study–recitation–test", was repeated. There was also a reliance on rote memorization (memorization with no effort at understanding the meaning). It is believed that the use of recitation, rote memorization, and unrelated assignments is inefficient and an extremely inefficient use of students' and teachers' time. This traditional approach also insisted that all students be taught the same materials at the same point; students that did not learn quickly enough failed, rather than being allowed to succeed at their natural speeds. This approach, which had been imported from Europe, dominated American education until the end of the 19th century, when the education reform movement imported progressive education techniques from Europe.
Traditional education is associated with much stronger elements of coercion than seems acceptable now in most cultures. It has sometimes included: the use of corporal punishment to maintain classroom discipline or punish errors; inculcating the dominant religion and language; separating students according to gender, race, and social class, as well as teaching different subjects to girls and boys. In terms of curriculum there was and still is a high level of attention paid to time honored academic knowledge.
Current status
In the present, it varies enormously from culture to culture, but still tends to be characterized by a much higher level of coercion than alternative education. Traditional schooling in Britain and its possessions and former colonies tends to follow the English Public School style of strictly enforced uniforms and a militaristic style of discipline. This can be contrasted with South African, US and Australian schools, which can have a much higher tolerance for spontaneous student-to-teacher communication.
Instruction centre
Marking
Subject areas
See also
Classical education movement, which emphasizes Western Civilization
List of abandoned education methods
Curriculum
Notes
Education reform
Curricula
Philosophy of education | 0.761896 | 0.990472 | 0.754636 |
Diction | Diction ( (nom. ), "a saying, expression, word"), in its original meaning, is a writer's or speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a piece of writing such as a poem or story. In its common meaning, it is the distinctiveness of speech: the art of speaking so that each word is clearly heard and understood to its fullest complexity and extremity, and concerns pronunciation and tone, rather than word choice and style. This is more precisely and commonly expressed with the term enunciation or with its synonym, articulation.
Diction has multiple concerns, of which register, the adaptation of style and formality to the social context, is foremost. Literary diction analysis reveals how a passage establishes tone and characterization, e.g. a preponderance of verbs relating physical movement suggests an active character, while a preponderance of verbs relating states of mind portrays an introspective character. Diction also has an impact upon word choice and syntax.
Aristotle, in The Poetics (20), defines the parts of diction as the letter, the syllable, the conjunction, the article, the noun, the verb, the case, and the speech, though one commentator remarks that "the text is so confused and some of the words have such a variety of meanings that one cannot always be certain what the Greek says, much less what Aristotle means."
In literature
Diction is usually judged in reference to the prevailing standards of proper writing and speech and is seen as the mark of quality of the writing. It is also understood as the selection of certain words or phrases that become peculiar to a writer.
Example:
Certain writers in the modern day and age use archaic terms such as "thy", "thee", and "wherefore" to imbue a Shakespearean mood to their work.
Forms of diction include: archaic diction (diction that is antique, that is rarely used), high diction (lofty sounding language), and low diction (everyday language). Each of these forms is meant to enhance the meaning or artistry of an author's work.
See also
Action (philosophy)
Description
Elocution
Greetings
Orthoepeia
Poetic diction
Register (sociolinguistics)
Speech production
Vocal pedagogy
References
Citations
General sources
(preview of 1997 edition)
External links
Examples of diction in poetry
Style and Diction—free software by the GNU Project
Diction Översättningsbyrå
Descriptive technique
Phonetics
Poetics
Style (fiction) | 0.763473 | 0.988384 | 0.754605 |
Reputation | The reputation or prestige of a social entity (a person, a social group, an organization, or a place) is an opinion about that entity – typically developed as a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria, such as behavior or performance.
Reputation is a ubiquitous, spontaneous, and highly efficient mechanism of social control. It is a subject of study in social, management, and technological sciences. Its influence ranges from competitive settings, like markets, to cooperative ones, like firms, organizations, institutions and communities. Furthermore, reputation acts on different levels of agency: individual and supra-individual. At the supra-individual level, it concerns groups, communities, collectives and abstract social entities (such as firms, corporations, organizations, countries, cultures and even civilizations). It affects phenomena of different scales, from everyday life to relationships between nations. Reputation is a fundamental instrument of social order, based upon distributed, spontaneous social control.
The concept of reputation is considered important in business, politics, education, online communities, and many other fields, and it may be considered as a reflection of a social entity's identity.
Corporate reputation
Reputation as a concept for companies
Academic literature
Since 1980, the study of 'corporate reputation' has attracted growing scholarly attention from economics, sociology, and management. The concept of reputation has undergone substantial evolution in the academic literature over the past several decades. Terminology such as reputation, branding, image and identity is often used interchangeably in both the popular press and – until recently – in the academic literature, as well.
The academic literature has generally settled on a small cluster of perspectives on "what reputation is" in a company context.
Economists use game-theory to describe corporate reputations as strategic signals that companies use to convey to markets some of their qualities and abilities. Sociologists view corporate reputation as descriptions of the relative status that companies occupy in an institutional field of rivals and stakeholders. Management scholars describe corporate reputations in one of two main ways, including:
the broad view: as an aggregation of perceptions that form as audiences judge the behaviors of companies.
This is often evaluated by broad ranking measures of the company as a whole, such as the Fortune Most Admired Companies rankings
the specific view: as an assessment, by some specific audience, of the company's ability to perform or behave in a certain way. These are split into two broad categories: (a) outcome/capability reputation and (b) behavior/character reputation, which is intended to capture both the economic and sociological forms of reputation.
(a) outcome/capability reputation: this reputation type involves an assessment of how well the company performs on a certain dimension. The most common examples of these is performing well financially or providing high quality products or services. All of these dimensions can be objectively ordered, such as better/worse financial performance (as evaluated by objective, market-based measures of financial performance) or better/worse product quality (as evaluated by a collection of users).
(b) behavior/character reputation: this reputation type is said to arise when a company is recognized as consistently behaving in a certain way, in a manner that is relatively devoid of objectively identifiable performance. For instance, a company might prioritize investment in innovation, the improvement of its operational efficiency, or sourcing from local suppliers.
Practical measurement of reputation
In practice, corporate reputations are revealed by the relative rankings of companies created and propagated by information intermediaries. For example, business magazines and newspapers such as Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal regularly publish lists of the best places to work, the best business schools, or the most innovative companies. These rankings are explicit orderings of corporate reputations, and the relative positions of companies on these rankings reflect their relative performance on various cognitive attributes. Corporate reputations are found to influence the attractiveness of ranked companies as suppliers of products, as prospective employers, and as investments. For those reasons, companies themselves have become increasingly involved with the practice of reputation management.
Connections to related, company-level concepts
Like any social construct, reputation is similar to (i.e., convergent with) certain concepts and different (i.e., discriminant) from others. Reputation can be compared to other "social evaluation" or "social judgment" constructs. For instance, reputation is said to be convergent with adjacent concepts like corporate image, identity, celebrity, status, legitimacy, social approval (likability), and visibility (prominence), but discriminant from related constructs like stigma and infamy. Reputation is often considered to be a pragmatic evaluation – actors determine whether the target of the evaluation can be seen as useful to them.
Until recently, the relationships with these adjacent constructs were merely theoretical; that is, they were not formally tested or empirically validated for their "nomological relationships" with these other, related constructs.
Conceptual relationships: In 2012, the Oxford Handbook of Corporate Reputation was released to provide some clarity to the increasingly fragmented field of social evaluation constructs, all of which had been referred to (either implicitly or explicitly) under an umbrella of "reputation" concepts. In 2020, the introductory part of The Power of Being Divisive: Understanding Negative Evaluations, develops a framework to disentangle a variety of concepts in the field of social evaluations – in particular making the point that negative and positive evaluations can be on different continua, and social actors can be both positively and negatively evaluated at the same time. In this opus and in the Oxford handbook, scholars made incremental efforts to distinguish between handfuls of these constructs, such as:
reputation vs. celebrity
reputation vs. status
reputation vs. legitimacy vs. status
reputation vs. social approval
reputation vs. stigma
reputation vs. status vs. celebrity vs. stigma
Empirical relationships: In 2020, Bitektine and colleagues conducted the first major construct validation study to: (a) create scales for the constructs of reputation, cognitive legitimacy, sociopolitical legitimacy, and status, and (b) empirically distinguish between them by undertaking a multiple studies involving several confirmatory factor analyses.
This construct validation effort addressed the "broad view" of reputation as a company-level evaluation (not an evaluation for specific attributes). The scale items for reputation that resulted from this effort, as evaluated by an audience of respondents representing the general public, included: "The reputation of this company is excellent", "[this] is a reputable company", and "[this] is a dependable company".
There still exists no construct validation effort for the "specific view" of reputation (i.e., that reputation is best understood as a specific audience's view of the company with respect to a specific attribute).
Consequences
Performance outcomes
Myriad reputation studies from the 1980s to the 2000s demonstrated that a company's reputation was positively related to various performance measures, such as financial success and profitability. However, more recent work demonstrated that reputation can be both "a benefit and a burden", suggesting that "the bigger you are, the harder you (might) fall" with respect to reputation.
Decision outcomes
Relatedly, researchers have theorized or demonstrated that a company's reputation could also influence the decisions and perceptions of its managers; in some cases, reputation can promote the use of risk-reduction strategies by managers as they seek to preserve the reputation they have cultivated. In other cases, researchers argue that reputation can embolden managers to take risks in areas unrelated to their reputation, since stakeholders may be focused on the reputation itself and inattentive to other areas of the company.
Topics relating to reputation
Reputation management
Many organizations create public relations and corporate communication departments dedicated to assisting companies with reputation management. In addition, many public relations and consulting firms claim expertise in reputation management. The growth of the public relations industry has largely been due to the rising demand for companies to establish credibility and reputation. Incidents which damage a company's reputation for honesty or safety may cause serious damage to finances. For example, in 1999 Coca-Cola lost $60 million (by its own estimate) after schoolchildren reported suffering from symptoms like headaches, nausea and shivering after drinking its products.
Although most companies see reputation management as a central part of a CEO's role, managing reputation involves a set of ongoing activities that are best managed when they are delegated to a specific individual in the organization. This is why some companies have created the position of chief reputation officer (CRO). A growing number of people in the business world now have the word "reputation" in their titles – including Dow Chemical, SABMiller, Coca-Cola, Allstate, Repsol YPF, Weber Shandwick, and GlaxoSmithKline (although no longer). Hoover's shows a list of such officers.
Social media like Twitter, Linked In, and Facebook have made it increasingly important for companies to monitor their online reputations in order to anticipate and respond to criticisms of their actions. There are two main routes that customers can take when complaining about companies: individual-direct response or broadcast-based response. For a company, it takes a lot of time and effort to address individual-direct responses. One study showed that "...72% of customers expect a reply within one hour." In order to best recover from negative complaints on social media, it is important for a company to prove its authenticity by providing more specific answers directly to its critics.
Reputation capital
A corporate reputation can be managed, accumulated and traded in for trust, legitimization of a position of power and social recognition, and people are prepared to pay a premium price for goods and services offered, which in turn generates higher customer loyalty, a stronger willingness from shareholders to hold on to shares in times of crisis, and greater likelihood to invest in the company's stock. Therefore, reputation is one of the most valuable forms of "capital" of a company. "Delivering functional and social expectations of the public on the one hand and manage to build a unique identity on the other hand creates trust and this trust builds the informal framework of a company. This framework provides "return in cooperation" and produces reputation capital. A positive reputation will secure a company or organisation long-term competitive advantages. The higher a company's reputation capital, the lower the costs of supervising and exercising control."
Building reputation through stakeholder management
According to stakeholder theory, corporations should be managed for the benefit of all their "stakeholders," not just their shareholders. Stakeholders of a company include any individual or group that can influence or is influenced by a company's practices. The stakeholders of a company can be suppliers, consumers, employees, shareholders, financial community, government, and media. Companies must properly manage the relationships between stakeholder groups and they must consider the interest(s) of each stakeholder group carefully. Therefore, it becomes essential to integrate public relations into corporate governance to manage the relationships between these stakeholders which will enhance the organization's reputation. Corporations or institutions which behave ethically and govern in a good manner build reputational capital which is a competitive advantage. A good reputation enhances profitability because it attracts customers to products, investors to securities and employees to its jobs. A company's reputation is an intangible asset and a source of competitive advantage against rivals because the company will be viewed as more reliable, credible, trustworthy and responsible to its employees, customers, shareholders and financial markets.
In addition, according to MORI's survey of about 200 managers in the private sector, 99%
responded that the management of corporate reputation is very (83%) or fairly (16%) important. Reputation is a reflection of companies' culture and identity. Also, it is the outcome of managers' efforts to prove their success and excellence. It is sustained through acting reliably, credibly, trustworthily and responsibly in the market. It can be sustained through consistent communication activities both internally and externally with key stakeholder groups. This directly influences a public company's stock prices in the financial market. Therefore, this reputation makes a reputational capital that becomes a strategic asset and advantage for that company. As a consequence, public relations must be used in order to establish long lasting relationships with the stakeholders, which will enhance the reputation of the company.
Causes and consequences
Reputation models can be placed in a broader framework that distinguishes reputation from its underlying causes and from its consequences. This approach is important to clarify the meaning of reputation.
Causes of reputation are seen to reside in stakeholder experiences. Stakeholder experiences relate to a company's day-to-day business operations, its branding and marketing and "noise" in the system, such as the media and word of mouth. Further causes of reputation may include the perceived innovativeness of a company, the customers' expectations, the (perceived) quality of the company's goods and services and the subsequent customer satisfaction, all of which differ according to the respective customers' cultural background.
The consequences of reputation reside in the behaviors (supportive or resistant) that stakeholders demonstrate towards a company. Behaviors such as advocacy, commitment, and cooperation are key positive outcomes of a good reputation. Boycotts and lawsuits are key negative outcomes of a bad reputation.
Reputation recovery/repair
Organizations frequently make missteps that cause them to lose the positive regard of stakeholders. In the wake of studies addressing the disproportionate penalties that accrue to high reputation firms when they make such missteps, reputation researchers have proposed models to account for both reputation damage and reputation repair, summarizing prior work in disciplines including economics, marketing, accounting, and management.
Reputation transfer
In the context of brand extension strategies, many companies rely on reputation transfer as a means of transferring the good reputation of a company and its existing products to new markets and new products. Consumers who are already familiar with other products of an established brand, exhibiting customer satisfaction and loyalty, will more easily accept new products of the same brand. In contrast to brand extension, the general concept of reputation transfer also requires the transfer of a company's values and identity to the new products and/or services and the related brands when entering new markets. It is important, however, to pay attention to the image fit between preexisting and new brands, for this factor has been proven to be critical for the success of brand extensions. In contrast to the special case of brand extension, the general concept of reputation transfer also requires the transfer of the values and identity of a company to the new products and/or services and the related brands when entering new markets. A strong image might therefore even hamper the introduction of new product lines if customers do not associate the competences relevant to the new market/category/product line with the existing company or brand.
A company's reputation is furthermore influenced by culture, as nationalities differ with regard to how valued specific aspects of the company's brand identity are in the respective national culture (e.g. environmental concerns or work ethics) as well as with regard to popular cultural dimensions (e.g. Hofstede). Subsequently, these differences impact the success of reputation transfer significantly.
Cognitive view of reputation
The cognitive view of reputation has become increasingly prominent in reputation research. It has led to improved understanding of the role played by reputation in a number of practical domains and scientific fields. In the study of cooperation and social dilemmas, for instance, the role of reputation as a partner selection mechanism started to be appreciated in the early 1980s.
Working toward such a definition, reputation can be viewed as a socially transmitted meta-belief (i.e., belief about belief) that is a property of an agent, that results from the attitudes other actors have about some socially desirable behaviour, be it cooperation, reciprocity, or norm-compliance. Reputation plays a crucial role in the evolution of these behaviours: reputation transmission allows socially desirable behaviour to spread. Rather than concentrating on the property only, the cognitive model of reputation accounts not only for reputation-formation but also for the propagation of reputation.
To model this aspect, it is necessary to specify and develop a more refined classification of reputation. In informal settings, gossip, although vague, may contain precious hints both to facts ("I've been told this physician has shown questionable behavior") and to conflicts taking place at the information level (if a candidate for a role spreads defamatory information about another candidate, whom should you trust?).
Moreover, the expression "it is said that John Smith is a cheater" is intrinsically a reputation spreading act, because on one hand it refers to a (possibly false) common opinion, and on the other the very act of saying "it is said" is self-assessing, since it provides at least one factual occasion when that something is said, because the person who says so (the gossiper), while appearing to spread the saying a bit further, may actually be in the phase of initiating it.
Gossip can also be used as an identifier only – as when gossiping about unreachable icons, like royalty or showbiz celebrities – useful only to show the gossiper belongs to the group of the informed ones. While most cases seem to share the characteristic of being primarily used to predict future behavior, they can have, for example, manipulative sub-goals, even more important than the forecast.
In the case of a communication between two parties, one (the advisee) that is requesting advice about the potential for danger in a financial transaction with another party (the potential partner, target), and the other (the adviser, evaluator) that is giving advice. Roughly speaking, the advice could fall under one of the following three categories :
the adviser declares it believes the potential partner is (is not) good for the transaction in object;
the adviser declares it believes another (named or otherwise defined) agent or set of agents believes the potential partner is (is not) good for the transaction in object;
the adviser declares it believes in an undefined set of agents, hence there is a belief the potential partner is (is not) good for the transaction in object.
Note the care to maintain the possible levels of truth (the adviser declares – but could be lying – it believes – but could be wrong – etc..). The cases are listed, as it is evident, in decreasing order of responsibility. While one could feel most actual examples fall under the first case, the other two are not unnecessarily complicated nor actually infrequent. Indeed, most of the common gossip falls under the third category, and, except for electronic interaction, this is the most frequent form of referral. All examples concern the evaluation of a given object (target), a social agent (which may be either individual or supra-individual, and in the latter case, either a group or a collective), held by another social agent, the evaluator.
The examples above can be turned into more precise definitions using the concept of social evaluation. At this point, we can propose to coin a new lexical item, image, whose character should be immediately evident and is clearly linked to reputation.
Image
Image is a global or averaged evaluation of a given target on the part of an agent. It consists of (a set of) social evaluations about the characteristics of the target. Image as an object of communication is what is exchanged in examples 1 and 2, above. In the second case, we call it third-party image. It may concern a subset of the target's characteristics, i.e., its willingness to comply with socially accepted norms and customs, or its skills (ways), or its definition as pertaining to a precise agent. Indeed, we can define special cases of image, including third-party image, the evaluation that an agent believes a third party has of the target, or even shared image, that is, an evaluation shared by a group. Not even this last is reputation, since it tries to define too precisely the mental status of the group.
Reputation, as distinct from image, is the process and the effect of transmitting a target image. We call reputation transmission a communication of an evaluation without the specification of the evaluator, if not for a group attribution, and only in the default sense discussed before. This covers the case of example 3 above. More precisely, reputation is a believed, social, meta-evaluation; it is built upon three distinct but interrelated objects :
a cognitive representation, or more precisely a believed evaluation – this could be somebody's image, but is enough that this consist of a communicated evaluation;
a population object, i.e., a propagating believed evaluation; and
an objective emergent property at the agent level, i.e., what the agent is believed to be.
In fact, reputation is a highly dynamic phenomenon in two distinct senses: it is subject to change, especially as an effect of corruption, errors, deception, etc.; and it emerges as an effect of a multi-level bidirectional process. Reputation is also how others know and perceive you as an individual.
While image only moves (when transmitted and accepted) from one individual cognition to another, the anonymous character of reputation makes it a more complex phenomenon. Reputation proceeds from the level of individual cognition (when is born, possibly as an image, but not always) to the level of social propagation (at this level, it not necessarily believed as from any specific agent) and from this level back to individual cognition again (when it is accepted).
Moreover, once it gets to the population level, reputation gives rise to a further property at the agent level. It is both what people think about targets and what targets are in the eyes of others. From the very moment an agent is targeted by the community, his or her life will change whether he or she wants it or not or believes it or not. Reputation has become the immaterial, more powerful equivalent of a scarlet letter sewed to one's clothes. It is more powerful because it may not even be perceived by the individual to whom it sticks, and consequently it is out of the individual's power to control and manipulate.
More simply speaking for those who want a working definition of reputation, reputation is the sum of impressions held by a company's stakeholders. In other words, reputation is in the "eyes of the beholder". It need not be just a company's reputation but could be the reputation of an individual, country, brand, political party, industry. But the key point in reputation is not what the leadership insists but what others perceive it to be. For a company, its reputation is how esteemed it is in the eyes of its employees, customers, investors, talent, prospective candidates, competitors, analysts, alumni, regulators and the list goes on.
Online
Online reputation is a factor in any online community where trust is important. Examples include eBay, an auction service that uses a system of customer feedback to publicly rate each member's reputation, or Amazon.com, which has a similar review system. One study found that a good reputation added 7.6% to the price received. In addition, building and maintaining a good reputation can be a significant motivation for contributing to online communities.
Individuals employ monitoring to ensure that they keep up with their online reputation. Given the number of sites on the Internet, it is impossible to manually monitor the entire web for pages that may affect one's online reputation. Free tools such as Google Alerts can be used to keep track of online reputations on a small scale, while larger businesses and clients may use more powerful analytics to monitor online interactions and mentions.
Paid tools for online reputation management focus on either brand protection or online reputation. These tools track mentions of a brand or product on the Internet, on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social networking sites and websites.
Online reputation can be evaluated by how well it is managed. This form of reputation is usually called web or digital reputation to distinguish it from online reputation. Indeed, digital or web reputation does not concern the virtual online reputation only, but the whole real reputation of a person or a company as it is affected by the Internet. Online reputation, furthermore, should not be confused with a company's digital identity.
An online reputation is the perception that one generates on the Internet based on their digital footprint. Digital footprints accumulate through all of the content shared, feedback provided, and information that is created online. Due to the fact that if someone has a bad online reputation, they can easily change their pseudonym, new accounts on sites such as eBay or Amazon are usually distrusted. If an individual or company wants to manage their online reputation, they will face many more difficulties.
According to one study, 84% of responding business leaders saw the greatest reputation threat online to companies as negative media coverage. The next two greatest threats are customer complaints in the media or on grievance sites online (71%) and negative word of mouth (54%). This negative word of mouth could come not only from dissatisfied customers but from employees as well. With the power of business review websites and customer forums, a company's online reputation can be damaged anonymously.
Employers have begun using the online reputations of job applicants to guide their hiring choices. By checking a candidate's social networking profiles on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, employers gain insight into a candidate's character and suitability for a job.
Some individuals and organizations hire reputation management companies to attempt to hide truthful but unflattering information about themselves. A recent alleged example is that of Dr. Anil Potti, who resigned from Duke University after it was discovered that he had misrepresented himself on his resume and became the subject of a scientific misconduct investigation.
See also
Digital identity
Face (sociological concept)
Governance
Honour
Id, ego and super-ego
Reputation management
Social capital
Social map
Social software
Virtual community
References
Further reading
Alsop, R (2004). The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation: Creating, Protecting, and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset,
Barnett, M. et al. (2006). Corporate Reputation: The Definitional Landscape, in: Corporate Reputation Review, 1/2006
Burkhardt, R. (2007). Reputation Management in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises,
Fombrun, C. (1996). Reputation. Realizing Value from the Corporate Image,
Greco, M.; Branca, A. M.; Morena, G. (2010). An Experimental Study of the Reputation Mechanism in a Business Game, Simulation & Gaming, SAGE. Full text .
Jackson, K.T. (2004). Building Reputational Capital: Strategies for Integrity and Fair Play that Improve the Bottom Line,
Jazaieri, H., Logli Allison, M., Campos, B., Young, R. C., & Keltner, D. (2018). Content, structure, and dynamics of personal reputation: The role of trust and status potential within social networks. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations.
McElreath, R. (2003). Reputation and the evolution of conflict. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 220(3):345–57. Full text
Wilkinson, Shannon M. (2012). Online Reputation Management Frequently Asked Questions. Online Reputation Frequently Asked Questions
External links
Reputation by Roger Dingledine, Michael J Freedman, David Molnar, David Parkes, Paul Syverson
Moral psychology
Reputation management
Social status
Social psychology | 0.763155 | 0.988793 | 0.754602 |
Michelangelo phenomenon | The Michelangelo phenomenon is an interpersonal process observed by psychologists in which close, romantic partners influence or 'sculpt' each other. Over time, the Michelangelo effect causes individuals to develop towards what they consider their "ideal selves". This happens because their partner sees them and acts around them in ways that promote this ideal.
The phenomenon is referred to in contemporary marital therapy. Recent popular work in couples therapy and conflict resolution points to the importance of the Michelangelo phenomenon. Diana Kirschner reported that the phenomenon was common among couples reporting high levels of marital satisfaction.
It is the opposite of the Blueberry phenomenon "in which interdependent individuals bring out the worst in each other." The Michelangelo phenomenon is related to the looking-glass self concept introduced by Charles Horton Cooley in his 1902 work Human Nature and the Social Order.
This phenomenon has various positive effects for both the individual and the couple. Various factors impact components and processes involved in the phenomenon.
Description of the model
Overview
The Michelangelo phenomenon describes a three step process where close partners shape each other so as to bring forth one another's ideal selves. This ideal self is conceptualized as a collection of an individual's "dreams and aspirations" or "the constellation of skills, traits, and resources that an individual ideally wishes to acquire." These span different domains, such as one's profession, relationship, health, and personality. An example of an ideal self is one that includes "completing medical school, becoming more sociable, or learning to speak fluent Dutch." This is different from the actual self, which consists of attributes the self currently possesses and the ought self, which consists of attributes the self feels obligated to possess. Note that in this article, the "self" refers to a specific, target individual.
This phenomenon is significant given that the self does not experience growth in complete isolation of the influence of others. Yet, prior to 1999, much research on self growth consisted of examining individual processes. Research into the influence of others was neglected, even though those with whom the self interacts most regularly can lead to more constant, stable changes in disposition and behavior. The general topic of growth is itself worth studying given that people are motivated to work toward it.
The three core parts of the phenomenon are as follows: partner perceptual affirmation, partner behavioral affirmation, and self-movement toward the ideal self.
Components of the model
Partner affirmation appears in the model as two different parts. Partner affirmation names how partners bring about aspects of the ideal self from the self. Partner perceptual affirmation describes how a partner's views of the self aligns with the self's view of their ideal self. A partner will show greater partner perceptual affirmation if they believe the self to be, or to be capable of being, the ideal self. In other words, Jay will show more perceptual affirmation if he sees his partner Kaylee, whose ideal self includes being competent as piano, as actually competent at piano or as capable of being competent at piano. Partner behavioral affirmation describes how a partner acts in a way that aligns with the ideal self. A partner, such as Jay, will show more partner behavioural affirmation if they act in a way such that Kaylee's ideal self can come forward, such as if he drives Kaylee to piano lessons. Self-movement toward the ideal self describes how the distance between the self and ideal self closes. Kaylee will experience self-movement toward the ideal self when she becomes more competent at piano.
Note that both perceptual and behavioural aspects of partner affirmation can take place consciously or unconsciously. For example, someone with a partner who wants to be more sociable may consciously encourage them to spend more time with their friends, in an effort to help them meet this goal. This is conscious behavioural affirmation. On the other hand, knowing that sociability is a goal of their partner, someone may feel less apprehension when organising a social gathering in their space. This would inadvertently give the partner an opportunity to socialise and is an example of unconscious behavioural affirmation.
These three components come together under two hypotheses which are part of the Michelangelo phenomenon. The partner affirmation hypothesis says that the more a partner's view of the self aligns with the ideal self, the more that partner will act in a way to bring out that ideal self. For example, the more Jay views Kaylee as being competent at piano, the more he will do things to elicit that view by way of positively enforcing her piano achievements or supporting her piano lessons. The movement toward ideal hypothesis says that the more the partner behaves in a way aligned with the ideal self, the more the self will become more like their ideal self. The more Jay acts in a way that aligns with Kaylee's ideal self of being competent at piano, the more Kaylee will increasingly become competent at piano.
Variations in sculpting and related phenomena
An affirming partner may shape someone through a series of selection mechanisms:
Retroactive selection in which an individual reinforces behaviours of their partner by punishing or rewarding them
Preemptive selection wherein an individual initiates an interaction that promotes certain behaviours in their partner
Situation selection where an individual creates a situation in which the elicitation of desired partner behaviours is probable
To add to these three types, other more specific examples of ideal-self-affirming behaviors a partner can enact includes expressing approval of the self's efforts toward goals and offering support such as strategy improvement tips.
Note that not all of a partner's acts to reinforce certain qualities counts as affirming or, to be more specific, ideal-self-affirming. Exploring related phenomena can further clarify what partner affirmation is not. Partner enhancement is when a partner acts in a way that is more so positive than reflective of objective reality. For example, Jay acts toward Kaylee as if she is the best piano player, even if the average piano instructor would rate her as simply decent at piano. There is partner verification, which involves the partner reinforcement of qualities that the target, or self, believes to be true already. An example would be if Jay laughs at Kaylee's jokes and, subtly, reinforces the conception she has of herself as a funny person.
Note that on another part of this spectrum, a partner may not affirm the self's ideal and may instead reinforce an ideal that does not belong to the self or that is the opposite of the self's ideal.
There is, for example, the Pygmalion phenomenon, where the partner attempts to sculpt the target to align with their ideals rather than the target's ideals. For example, this would occur if Jay, who differently from Kaylee seeks to be a regular voter, behaves in a way to draw out that quality of consistent voting behavior in Kaylee.
Movement away from the ideal self may occur for Kaylee if Jay supported, for example, Kaylee's rare endeavors in binge drinking, a high-risk behavior antithetical to her ideal self as a healthy person. Other ways an individual may disaffirm their partner is "by communicating indifference, pessimism, or disapproval, by undermining [their] ideal pursuits, or by affirming qualities that are antithetical to [their] ideal self." This disaffirmation may occur passively, in the failure to affirm, or actively, in disaffirmation.
The metaphor
The phenomenon is named after the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer Michelangelo (1475-1564). Michelangelo "described sculpting as a process whereby the artist released a hidden figure from the block of stone in which it slumbered." The metaphor of chipping away at a block of stone to reveal the 'ideal form' is extended, in this context, to close relationships. According to the Michelangelo phenomenon, a person will be 'sculpted' into their self-conceived ideal form by their partner. The metaphor and term was first introduced by the US psychologist Stephen Michael Drigotas (et al.) in 1999.
Michelangelo phenomenon effects
Couple well being
Drigotas et al. (1999) found support for their couple well being hypothesis, which states that greater self movement toward the ideal self is linked to greater functioning and health within the couple. Partner affirmation is generally beneficial to relationships as it increases perceived responsiveness, which increases the self's trust in their partner and the self's commitment.
There is also a benefit Drigotas et al. (1999) found where, across four studies, individuals who helped sculpt their partners to resemble the partner's ideal selves experienced movement towards their own ideal self as well. With Jay and Kaylee, this might look like Jay experiencing becoming more like his ideal of being a supportive teammate the more he helps Kaylee attain her ideal self.
Individual well being
Drigotas found support that the Michelangelo phenomenon is strongly linked to personal well-being across varied dimensions such as life satisfaction, self esteem, and loneliness. The distance between our actual self, or current attributes, and ideal self impacts emotions such that a smaller distance engenders joy and a larger distance engenders emotions like sadness. Further, it is the specific aspect of partner behavioral affirmation that predicts personal well being, and not the general relationship satisfaction that comes about as an effect of processes in the Michelangelo phenomenon.
Factors impacting the Michelangelo phenomenon
Several different factors relating to attributes of either the individual (the self) and the individual's partner (the partner) contribute varying effects on various components of the phenomenon.
Ideal similarity
Ideal similarity can be defined as the alignment of a partner to the self's ideal self. Higher ideal similarity means there is a greater match between the partner's attributes and the ideal self's attributes. Higher ideal similarity is linked to higher partner affirmation, self movement toward the ideal self, and couple well being, vitality, adjustment.
The effects of ideal similarity go beyond the realm of close partners as well. When individuals, or targets, were exposed to an experimental partner who was manipulated to resemble the targets' ideal selves, their perceptions of themselves and their partners increased such that targets thought themselves to be more capable of moving toward their ideal self and that partners were not only more affirming in the targets' minds, but were more attractive and generally more desirable interaction partners.
Locomotion vs assessment orientations
These two traits revolve around multiple parts of goal pursuit, including selection of the goal, evaluation of the goal, and pursuit of the goal. Locomotion orientation describes the inclination of an individual to take action to reach their goals. Those more inclined toward locomotion tend to focus on quickly accomplishing realistic goals and tend to have more positive affect. Assessment orientation describes the inclination of an individual to focus more so on evaluation in their goal pursuit, rather than action. Those more inclined toward assessment tend to focus on dissecting goals, analyzing how to obtain those goals and tend to have more negative affect as well as more sensitive to how far they have to go to reach their goals.
An individual's orientation impacts processes in the Michelangelo phenomenon. The orientation not only impacts the target's goal selection and pursuit, but how their partner affirms the target in their efforts and how the target affirms their own partner in their efforts. Specifically, individuals with locomotion orientations, as opposed to assessment orientations, seem more receptive to being sculpted; those with assessment orientations seem less receptive to being sculpted. As the partners who are sculpting, partners with locomotion as opposed to assessment orientations reported being more affirming of their partners' goal pursuits such that the targets were perceived to experience greater movement toward their ideal self.
Other individual attributes
Rusbult et al. (2005) speculate that there are three individual attributes which lead to increased self-movement toward the ideal self. These include insight or a solid construction of one's ideal and actual self, ability which includes skills and attributes like goal-relevant planning that are relevant to pursuit of the goal, and motivation to reach the goal, which includes commitment toward achieving the goal.
Related phenomena
Growth-as-hell model
In contrast, it has been posited by Guggenbühl-Craig that it is precisely through disaffirmation that we grow and move towards our ideal-selves. This is because it is through disaffirmation that we are made aware of our flaws and can overcome them. Much like the Michelangelo phenomenon, this growth-as-hell model of self-growth and movement towards the ideal self is understood to occur most potently in close, romantic relationships.
See also
Symbolic interactionism
William James
George Herbert Mead
References
Interpersonal relationships
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Informal education | Informal education is a general term for education that can occur outside of a traditional lecture or school based learning systems. The term even include customized-learning based on individual student interests within a curriculum inside a regular classroom, but is not limited to that setting. It could work through conversation, and the exploration and enlargement of experience. Sometimes there is a clear objective link to some broader plan, but not always. The goal is to provide learners with the tools they need to eventually reach more complex material. It can refer to various forms of alternative education, such as unschooling or homeschooling, autodidacticism (self-teaching), and youth work.
Informal education can include accidental and purposeful ways of collaborating on new information. It can be discussion-based and focuses on bridging the gaps between traditional classroom settings and life outside of the classroom.
Role
People interpret information differently, and therefore a structured curriculum may not allow all learners to understand the information. Informal education is less controlled than the average classroom setting, which is why informal education can be so powerful. Informal education can help individuals learn to react to and control different situations and settings. In addition, it combines social entities that are important for learning. Informal education may be viewed as the learning that comes as a part of being involved in youth and community organizations. This type of education is a spontaneous process, which helps people to learn information in a new way. It helps to cultivate communities, associations and relationships that make for a positive learning environment.
Characteristics
Some characteristics of informal education are:
Informal education looks to create or deepen situations where people can learn, explore and enlarge experiences, and make changes.
Provides an environment where everyone can learn together and can scaffold off of one another.
Understanding that the activity can be based on any form of learning, the teaching does not have to be deliberate, more so implied. We give students the tools to do complex materials over time, rather than teaching the complex material and then giving the tools.
Focuses on the social aspects of learning, and how important collaborative learning is.
The tools students are given are tangible for the processes in which they will be applied.
Bridges the gap between school and life.
Allows students a choice in learning, and how to approach the material.
Make learning accessible in everyday life and in the future.
Informal education is driven by conversation and interacting with others.
Benefits
Responsiveness when interacting with the environment.
Possibiations or restrictions.
Allows for free choice and changes in interests.
Ability to create ones own
Bridges gap between theory and practical
Values
Work for the well being of all.
Respect the unique value and dignity of each human being.
Dialogue.
Equality and justice.
Democracy and the active involvement of people in the issues that affect their life. (Jeff and Smith 2005:95-6)
Informal education focuses on values. There is no curriculum or guiding plan for a lot of work.
In indigenous African communities
Informal education has been the practice of indigenous communities in Africa as long as people have lived there. The tradition of African education has long been closely intertwined with the daily life of the African people with the idea that children "learnt what they lived". The philosophy of traditional African education suggests that one’s education cannot be separated from the everyday life and the "curriculum" is thus considered "a way of life" with the ultimate goal being to create a "complete individual, [and] a lifelong learner". The knowledge and practices that are important to the community are generally passed down through the sharing of memories and participation in cultural activities. Their education system serves as "the information base for the community, which facilitates communication and decision-making". Similar to other indigenous communities such as the Chillihuani in Peru, African education is created with goals in mind but is not limited to typical classroom settings; students continually participate in various learning activities as they grow in the community.
The culture within traditional African communities contain methods of learning. Through song and dance children learn more about their language as well as how to read and write. Oral traditions are used to teach children about history and morals as well as other forms of culture and practical skills for survival. In northern Tanzania and southern Kenya, the children of the Maasai pastoralists learn skills such as "where to find water and green shrubs that can be fed to young calves" in case of drought. Children are encouraged to show respect to their elders and through this, children learn how to show respect through their actions and words. A child can even learn the circumstances of their birth through their names. Onipede, a Yoruba name in Nigeria, suggests that the child was born soon after the death of a family member. Through their traditional science, children learn how to contribute to health and food production. everything that is a part of their life is used as a means to learn about themselves, their communities, and their culture.
Advantages
If a person masters a skill by becoming deeply engaged in solving a problem, then giving students real world issues or opportunities to solve problems in their own lives and communities would significantly motivate and help them to master new concepts. Teaching students new scientific concepts by using cultural tools could eliminate the time spent trying to figure out whether concepts are useful or not. This may motivate learners and help them to master what we teach from the start. If we applied English and grammar lessons to effectively communicate with others in the community, students would be more inclined to effectively master these concepts since they would be using them for individual or group purposes. Finally, formal schooling, unlike an informal school setting, discourages students from learning and problem solving on their own.
Informal learning can open up a plethora of intellectual growth in those that seek to learn outside a standard academic setting. Pursuits can be influenced by a smaller class size to be the best that they can be, with instructors better able to see to the individual care of each of their students.
See also
Nonformal learning
Formal learning
Informal learning
References
Bibliography
Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. 18(1), 32.
Blyth, C. (2008). The Art of Conversation. London: John Murray.
Callanan, M., Cervantes, C., & Loomis, M. (2011). Informal learning.2, 646. doi:10.1002
Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think. New York: D. C. Heath.
Kahane, R. (1997). The Origins of Postmodern Youth: Informal Youth Movements in a Comparative Perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110817188.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. NY: Oxford University Press.
Sennett, R. (2012) Together. The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. London: Allen Lane.
Zeldin (1999). Conversation: How Talk Can Change Your Life. London: Harvill Press.
External links
Formal vs. , WGBH.
Informal Education, The National Academy of Sciences.
Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings, National Science Foundation.
Moving Beyond Broadcast and Traditional Pedagogy: Making a Children’s Documentary for the New Media Landscape Master of Fine Arts Thesis, Science and Natural History Filmmaking, Montana State University.
infed.org: What is informal education?
Alternative education
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Resocialization | Resocialization or resocialisation (British English) is the process by which one's sense of social values, beliefs, and norms are re-engineered. The process is deliberately carried out in military boot camps through an intense social process or may take place in a total institution. An important thing to note about socialization is that what can be learned can be unlearned. That forms the basis of resocialization: to unlearn and to relearn.
Resocialization can be defined also as a process by which individuals, defined as inadequate according to the norms of a dominant institution, are subjected to a dynamic redistribution of those values, attitudes and abilities to allow them to function according to the norms of the said dominant institutions. That definition relates more to a jail sentence. If individuals exhibit deviance, society delivers the offenders to a total institution, where they can be rehabilitated.
Resocialization varies in its severity. A mild resocialization might be involved in moving to a different country. One who does so may need to learn new social customs and norms such as language, eating, dress, and talking customs. A more drastic example of resocialization is joining a military or a cult, and the most severe example would be if one suffers from a loss of all memories and so would have to relearn all of society's norms.
The first stage of resocialization is the destruction of an individual's former beliefs and confidence.
Institutions
The goal of total institutions is resocialization, which radically alters residents' personalities by deliberate manipulation of their environment. A total institution refers to an institution in which one is totally immersed and controls all of one's day-to-day life. All activity occurs in a single place under a single authority. Examples of a total institution include prisons, fraternity houses, and the military.
Resocialization is a two-part process. First, the institutional staff try to erode the residents' identities and independence. Strategies to erode identities include forcing individuals to surrender all personal possessions, get uniform haircuts and wear standardized clothing. Independence is eroded by subjecting residents to humiliating and degrading procedures. Examples are strip searches, fingerprinting, and assigning serial numbers or code names to replace the residents' given names.
The second part of resocialization process involves the systematic attempt to build a different personality or self. That is generally done through a system of rewards and punishments. The privilege of being allowed to read a book, watch television, or make a phone call can be a powerful motivator for conformity. Conformity occurs when individuals change their behavior to fit in with the expectations of an authority figure or the expectations of the larger group.
No two people respond to resocialization programs in the same manner. Some residents are found to be "rehabilitated," but others might become bitter and hostile. As well, over a long period of time, a strictly-controlled environment can destroy a person's ability to make decisions and live independently, which is known as institutionalisation, a negative outcome of total institution that prevents an individual from ever functioning effectively in the outside world again. (Sproule, 154–155)
Resocialization is also evident in individuals who have never been "socialized" in the first place or have not been required to behave socially for an extended period of time. Examples include feral children (never socialized) or inmates who have been in solitary confinement.
Socialization is a lifelong process. Adult socialization often includes learning new norms and values that are very different from those associated with the culture in which the person was raised. The process can be voluntary. Currently, joining a volunteer military qualifies as an example of voluntary resocialization. The norms and values associated with military life are different from those associated with civilian life (Riehm, 2000).
The sociologist Erving Goffman studied resocialization in mental institutions. He characterized the mental institution as a total institution, one in which virtually every aspect of the inmates' lives is controlled by the institution and calculated to serve the institution's goals. For example, the institution requires patients to comply with certain regulations, even when that is not necessarily in the best interest of individuals.
In Military
Those who join the military enter a new social realm in which they become socialized as military members. Resocialization is defined as a "process wherein an individual, defined as inadequate according to the norms of a dominant institution(s), is subjected to a dynamic program of behavior intervention aimed at instilling and/or rejuvenating those values, attitudes, and abilities which would allow... to function according to the norms of said dominant institution(s)."
Boot camp serves as an example for understanding how military members are resocialized within the total institution of the military. According to Fox and Pease (2012), the purpose of military training, like boot camp, is to "promote the willing and systematic subordination of one’s own individual desires and interests to those of one’s unit and, ultimately, country." To accomplish it, all aspects of military members' lives exist within the same military institution and are controlled by the same "institutional authorities" (drill instructors) and are done to accomplish the goals of the total institution. The individual's "civil[ian] identity, with its built-in restraints is eradicated, or at least undermined and set aside in favor of the warrior identity and its central focus upon killing." This warrior identity or ethos, is the mindset and group of values that all United States armed forces aim to instill in their members. Leonard Wong in “Leave No Man Behind: Recovering America’s Fallen Warriors,” describes the warrior ethos as placing the mission above all else, not accepting defeat, not ever quitting, and never leaving another American behind.
Military training prepares individuals for combat by promoting traditional ideas of masculinity, like training individuals to disregard their bodies' natural reactions to run from fear, have pain or show emotions. Although resocialization through military training can create a sense of purpose in military members, it can also create mental and emotional distress when members are unable to achieve set standards and expectations.
Military members, in part, find purpose and meaning through resocialization because the institution provides access to symbolic and material resources, helping military members construct meaningful identities. Fox and Pease state, "like any social identity, military identity is always an achievement, something dependent upon conformity to others' expectations and their acknowledgment. The centrality of performance testing in the military, and the need to 'measure up,' heightens this dependence. Although resocialization through military training can create a sense of purpose in military members, it also has the likelihood to create mental and emotional distress when members are unable to achieve set standards and expectations."
In the first couple of days, the most important aspect of basic training is the surrender of their identity. Recruits in basic training are exposed to a degrading process, where leaders break down the recruits’ civilian selves and essentially give them a new identity. The recruits go through a brutal, humbling, and physically and emotionally exhausting process. They are subjected to their new norms, language, rules, and identity. Recruits shed their clothes and hair, which are the physical representation of their old identities. The processes happen very quickly and allows no time for recruits to think over the loss of their identity and so the recruits have no chance to regret their decisions.
Drill sergeants then give the young men and women a romanticized view on what it is to be a soldier and how manly it is. When the training starts, it is physically demanding and gets harder every week. The recruits are constantly insulted and put down to break down their pride and destroy their ability to resist the change that they are undergoing. Drill sergeants put up a facade that tells their recruits that finishing out basic training sets them apart from all of the others who fail. However, almost all recruits succeed and graduate from basic training.
The training is also set up with roles. There are three younger drill sergeants closer to the recruits in age and one senior drill sergeant, who becomes a father figure to the new recruits. The company commander plays a god-like role, which the recruits look up to. The people in the roles will become role models and authority figures but also help to create a sense of loyalty to the entire organization.
Recruits are made to march in a formation in which every person moves the same way at the same time, which causes a sense of unity. It makes the recruits feel less like individuals and more like parts of a group. They sing in cadence to boost morale and to make the group feel important. Drill sergeants also feed the group small doses of triumphs to keep the soldiers proud and feeling accomplished. According to Jeff Parker Knight, the ultimate function for these songs is described as “marching precision,” but Knight argues that these jodies have a secondary socialization purpose that creates a type of “rite of passage” for the recruits. These jody performances, “reflect martial attitudes, and, as symbolic action, help to induce attitude changes in initiates.”
The troop also undergoes group punishment, which unifies the unit. Generally, the similar hatred of something will bring everyone together. In this case, group punishment allows all the recruits to hate the drill sergeants and the punishment but to find unity within their unit. They will encourage others to push themselves and create shared hardships.
In Prisons
Prisons have two different types of re-socialization. The first type is that prisoners must learn the new normal behaviors that apply to their new environment. The second type is the prisoners must partake in rehabilitation measures to help fix their deviant ways. When the individual violates the dominant society's norms, the criminal system subjects them to a form of re-socialization called criminal rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation aims to bring an inmate's real behavior closer to that of most individuals, who make up the dominant society. The ideal societal behavior is highly valued in many societies, mainly because it serves to protect and promote the well-being of most of the society's members. In rehabilitation, the system strips the criminal of his prior socialization of criminal behavior, including the techniques of committing a crime and the specific motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes. Criminal behavior is learned behavior and so can be unlearned.
The first step towards rehabilitation is the choice of milieu. That is the type of interactions the deviant has with the people around him in custody. Usually, that is determined after psychological and sociological screenings are performed on the criminal. The second step is diagnosis, a continual process influenced by feedback from the individual's behavior. The next stage is treatment, which is dependent on the diagnosis. Whether it is treating an addiction or redefining the values of a person, the treatment is what socializes the criminal back to societal norms.
References
Conley, Dalton. You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking like a Sociologist. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.
Ferguson, Susan J., ed. Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002. Print.
Kennedy, Daniel B., and August Kerber. Resocialization, an American Experiment. New York: Behavioral Publications, 1973. Print.
Sociological terminology
Social influence
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Improvisation | Improvisation, often shortened to improv, is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. The origin of the word itself is in the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation.
Skills and techniques
The skills of improvisation can apply to many different abilities or forms of communication and expression across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines. For example, improvisation can make a significant contribution in music, dance, cooking, presenting a speech, sales, personal or romantic relationships, sports, flower arranging, martial arts, psychotherapy, and much more.
Techniques of improvisation are widely used in training for performing arts or entertainment; for example, music, theatre and dance. To "extemporize" or "ad lib" is basically the same as improvising. Colloquial terms such as "playing by ear", "take it as it comes", and "making it up as [one] goes along" are all used to describe improvisation.
The simple act of speaking requires a good deal of improvisation because the mind is addressing its own thought and creating its unrehearsed delivery in words, sounds and gestures, forming unpredictable statements that further feed the thought process (the performer as the listener), creating an enriched process that is not unlike instantaneous composition with a given set or repertoire of elements.
Where the improvisation is intended to solve a problem on a temporary basis, the "proper" solution being unavailable at the time, it may be known as a "stop-gap". This applies to the field of engineering. Another improvisational, group problem-solving technique being used in organizations of all kinds is brainstorming, in which any and all ideas that a group member may have are permitted and encouraged to be expressed, regardless of actual practicality. As in all improvisation, the process of brainstorming opens up the minds of the people involved to new, unexpected and possibly useful ideas. The colloquial term for this is "thinking outside the box."
Arts and entertainment
Performing arts
Improvisation can be thought of as an "on the spot" or "off the cuff" spontaneous moment of sudden inventiveness that can just come to mind, body and spirit as an inspiration. Viola Spolin created theater games as a method of training improvisational acting. Her son, Paul Sills popularized improvisational theater, or IMPROV, by using Spolin's techniques to train The Second City in Chicago, the first totally improvisational theater company in the US. However, Improvisation in any life or art form can occur more often if it is practiced as a way of encouraging creative behavior. That practice includes learning to use one's intuition, as well as learning a technical understanding of the necessary skills and concerns within the domain in which one is improvising. This can be when an individual or group is acting, dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, talking, creating artworks, problem-solving, or reacting in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or new ways to act.
Improvisation was originally rarely used on dramatic television. A major exception was the situation comedy Mork & Mindy where star Robin Williams was allotted specific sections in each episode where he was allowed to perform freely.
Music
Musical improvisation is usually defined as the spontaneous performance of music without previous preparation or any written notes. In other words, the art of improvisation can be understood as composing music "on the fly". There have been experiments by Charles Limb, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, that show the brain activity during musical improvisation. Limb showed increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, which is an area associated with an increase in self-expression. Further, there was decreased activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, which is an area associated with self-monitoring. This change in activity is thought to reduce the inhibitions that normally prevent individuals from taking risks and improvising.
Improvisation can take place as a solo performance, or interdependently in an ensemble with other players. When done well, it often elicits gratifying emotional responses from the audience. One notable improvisational pianist is Franz Liszt. The origins of Liszt's improvisation in an earlier tradition of playing variations on a theme were mastered and epitomized by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Notable improvisational musicians from the modern era include Keith Jarrett, an improvisational jazz pianist and multi-instrumentalist who has performed many improvised concerts all over the world; W. A. Mathieu a.k.a. William Allaudin Mathieu, the musical director for The Second City in Chicago, the first ongoing improvisational theatre troupe in the United States, and later musical director for another improv theatre, The Committee, an offshoot of The Second City in San Francisco; Derek Bailey, an improvisational guitarist and writer of Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice; Evan Parker; British saxophone player, the iconnical pianists Fred van Hove (Be) and Misha Mengelberg (NL) and more recently the Belgian Seppe Gebruers who improvise with two pianos tuned a quartertone apart.
Improvised freestyle rap is commonly practiced as a part of rappers' creative processes, as a "finished product" for release on recordings (when the improvisation is judged good enough), as a spiritual event, as a means of verbal combat in battle rap, and, simply, for fun. As mentioned above, studies have suggested that improvisation allows a musician to relax the control filters in their mind during this exercise. It often incorporates insults similar to those in the African-American game The Dozens, and complex rhythmic and sometimes melodic forms comparable to those heard in jazz improvisation.
In the realm of silent film music, there are a small number of musicians whose work has been recognized as exceptional by critics, scholars and audiences alike; these include Neil Brand and John Sweeney, among others who are all performers at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy. Their performances must match the style and pacing of those films which they accompany and the knowledge of a wide range of musical styles is required, as well as the stamina to play for films which occasionally run more than three hours, without a pause.
Theatre
Improvisation, in theatre, is the playing of dramatic scenes without written dialogue and with minimal or no predetermined dramatic activity. The method has been used for different purposes in theatrical history.
Comedy
Improvisational comedy is a theatre art performed throughout the world and has had an on-again, off-again status throughout history.
Some of the more famous improv theatres and training centers in the world include: i.O. (formerly ImprovOlympic) in Chicago and Los Angeles, The Second City in Chicago and Toronto, The Players Workshop in Chicago, National Comedy Theatre in San Diego, New York and Phoenix, Upright Citizens Brigade, the Peoples Improv Theater, the Magnet Theater in New York, The Groundlings in Los Angeles, BATS Improv (Bay Area Theatre Sports) in San Francisco, Wing-It Productions in Seattle, Philly Improv Theater in Philadelphia, Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis, ComedySportz in Milwaukee, Theatresports in Calgary and Improv Comedy Copenhagen.
There are also many well known university improv teams, including Theatre Strike Force at the University of Florida, Gigglepants at the University of Texas at Austin, and Erasable Inc. at the University of Maryland. Improvisation found a home at universities. The origins of the Second City was the Compass Players, an offshoot of theatre programs at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. Later, once improv had been established as an art form, improv groups sprung up on college campuses, starting in the 1980s where crowds were easy to find and teams could perform frequently. Now an improv group is a common staple of college extra curricular activities.
Notable pioneers in the field of improvisation, comedic or otherwise, include Mike Myers, Neil Mullarkey, Paul Merton, Stephen Fry, John Sessions, Josie Lawrence, Viola Spolin, Paul Sills, David Shepherd, Del Close, Josephine Forsberg, Gary Austin, Martin de Maat, and Keith Johnstone. Notable performers include: Paul Merton, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Robert Townsend, Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, Ross Noble, Eddie Izzard, Tony Slattery, Mike McShane, Sandi Toksvig, Wayne Brady, Jonathan Winters, T. J. Jagodowski, Robin Williams, Conan O'Brien and David Pasquesi.
Dance
Dance improvisation as a choreographic tool: Improvisation is used as a choreographic tool in dance composition. Experimenting with the concepts of shape, space, time, and energy while moving without inhibition or cognitive thinking can create unique and innovative movement designs, spatial configuration, dynamics, and unpredictable rhythms. Improvisation without inhibition allows the choreographer to connect to their deepest creative self, which in turn clears the way for pure invention. This cognitive inhibition is similar to the inhibition described by Limb for musical improvisation, which can be found in the music section above.
Contact improvisation: a form developed in 1973, that is now practiced around the world. Contact improvisation originated from the movement studies of Steve Paxton in the 1970s and developed through the continued exploration of the Judson Dance Theater. It is a dance form based on weight sharing, partnering, playing with weight, exploring negative space and unpredictable outcomes.
Sculpture
Sculpture often relies on the enlargement of a small model or maquette to create the final work in a chosen material. Where the material is plastic such as clay, a working structure or armature often needs to be built to allow the pre-determined design to be realized. Alan Thornhill's method for working with clay abandons the maquette, seeing it as ultimately deadening to creativity. Without the restrictions of the armature, a clay matrix of elements allows that when recognizable forms start to emerge, they can be essentially disregarded by turning the work, allowing for infinite possibility and the chance for the unforeseen to emerge more powerfully at a later stage.
Moving from adding and taking away to purely reductive working, the architectural considerations of turning the work are eased considerably but continued removal of material through the rejection of forms deemed too obvious can mean one ends up with nothing. Former pupil Jon Edgar uses Thornhill's method as a creative extension to direct carving in stone and wood.
Film
The director Mike Leigh uses lengthy improvisations developed over a period of weeks to build characters and story lines for his films. He starts with some sketch ideas of how he thinks things might develop but does not reveal all his intentions with the cast who discover their fate and act out their responses as their destinies are gradually revealed, including significant aspects of their lives which will not subsequently be shown onscreen. The final filming draws on dialogue and actions that have been recorded during the improvisation period.
Writing
Improvisational writing is an exercise that imposes limitations on a writer such as a time limit, word limit, a specific topic, or rules on what can be written. This forces the writer to work within stream of consciousness and write without judgment of the work they produce. This technique is used for a variety of reasons, such as to bypass writer's block, improve creativity, strengthen one's writing instinct and enhance one's flexibility in writing.
Some improvisational writing is collaborative, focusing on an almost dadaist form of collaborative fiction. This can take a variety of forms, from as basic as passing a notebook around a circle of writers with each writing a sentence, to coded environments that focus on collaborative novel-writing, like OtherSpace.
Science and technology
Engineering
Improvisation in engineering is to solve a problem with the tools and materials immediately at hand. Examples of such improvisation was the re-engineering of carbon dioxide scrubbers with the materials on hand during the Apollo 13 space mission, or the use of a knife in place of a screwdriver to turn a screw.
Engineering improvisations may be needed because of emergencies, embargo, obsolescence of a product and the loss of manufacturer support, or just a lack of funding appropriate for a better solution. Users of motor vehicles in parts of Africa develop improvised solutions where it is not feasible to obtain manufacturer-approved spare parts.
The popular television program MacGyver used as its gimmick a hero who could solve almost any problem with jury rigged devices from everyday materials, a Swiss Army knife and some duct tape.
Artificial intelligence
Notes
References
Abbot, John. 2009. Improvisation in Rehearsal. Nick Hern Books. .
Abbot, John. 2007. The Improvisation Book. Nick Hern Books. .
Harrigan, Pat. 2002. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. MIT Press. .
Johnston, Chris. 2006. The Improvisation Game: Discovering the Secrets of Spontaneous Performance. Nick Hern Books. .
Madson, Patricia Ryan. 2005. Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up. Bell Tower. .
External links
Critical studies in improvisation
Easy piano improvisation
Engineering concepts
Cinematic techniques
Music genres
Poetic devices
Sculpture techniques
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Subsets and Splits