Employing three methods of assessing meaning, this book demonstrates that the thousands of human identities in English coalesce into groups that are recognizable as role sets in the contemporary social institutions of economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, education, medicine, sport, and arts. After establishing a theoretical and a methodological framework for his empirical work, David Heise presents the results obtained when meanings are assessed via dictionary definitions, collocates, and word associations. A close comparison of the results reveals that similar (...) outcomes are obtained through each of these three different approaches of defining meaning. The final chapter summarizes the study, considers the benefits and limitations of studying society via language, and applies the results to describing how individuals operate social institutions via their daily social interactions. Aspects of this book will be of interest to social psychologists, sociologists, and linguists. (shrink)

One way to recast the problem of cultural explanation in historical inquiry is to distinguish two conceptualizations involving culture: cultural meanings as contents of signification that inform meaningful courses of action in historically unfolding circumstances; and cultural structures as institutionalized patterns of social life that may be elaborated in more than one concrete construction of meaning. This distinction helps to suggest how explanation can operate in accounting for cultural processes of meaning-formation, as well as (...) in other ways that transcend specific meanings, yet are nonetheless cultural. Examples of historical explanation involving each construct are offered, and their potential examined. (shrink)

Sociology has largely followed Durkheim’s lead in ignoring the question: why do people die by suicide? This negation prioritizes a positivist, structuralist approach and stymies sociology’s contribution by closing off a wide range of tools sociologists might employ. An interpretivist turn in suicide studies accompanied by the growing adoption of qualitative methodology has opened up an array of opportunities to produce insights lost in a Durkheimian approach, but has yet to confront their own weaknesses. This paper shows we need not (...) abandon either tradition, advocating for a third path that integrates the strengths of both approaches. (shrink)

Between the end of World War I and the immediate post World War II period, there were almost a hundred journals and multi-authored volumes that appeared in the German speaking world with the word “Aufbau” in their titles. Practically none existed before the end of the First World War, and only a handful remained after 1947. Put into a histogram, the journals fall into three spikes: the largest burst between 1919 and 1927, a middle peak between 1934 and 1937, and (...) a final surge between 1945 and 1947. (shrink)

Culture is acknowledged to be a critical element in the construction of an individual's identity; however, in today's increasingly multicultural environments, the influence of culture is no longer straightforward. It is now important to explore cultural identity clarity—the extent to which beliefs about identity that arise from one's cultural group membership are clearly and confidently understood. We describe a novel theoretical model to explain why having a clear and confident understanding of one's cultural identity is important for (...) psychological well-being, as it clarifies one's understanding of personal identity. We propose that a clear cultural identity clarifies one's personal existence, by providing a clear normative template, reducing personal uncertainty, providing an individual with a sense of continuity, and buffering an individual against the fear of death. We discuss the implications of this model within our complex cultural worlds. (shrink)

To date, the primary focus of research in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the strategic implications of CSR for corporations and less on an evaluation of CSR from a wider political, economic and social perspective. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by critically engaging with marketing campaigns of so-called ‘ethical’ bottled water. We especially focus on a major CSR strategy of a range of different companies that promise to provide drinking water for (...) (what they name as) ‘poor African people’ by way of Western consumers purchasing bottled water. Following Fairclough's approach, we unfold a three-step critical discourse analysis of the marketing campaigns of 10 such ‘ethical’ brands. Our results show that bottled water companies try to influence consumers' tastes through the management of the cultural meaning of bottled water, producing a more ‘ethical’ and ‘socially responsible’ perception of their products/brands. Theoretically, we base our analysis on McCracken's model of the cultural meaning of consumer goods, which, we argue, offers a critical perspective of the recent emergence of CSR and business ethics initiatives. We discuss how these marketing campaigns can be framed as historical struggles associated with neo-liberal ideology and hegemony. Our analysis demonstrates how such CSR strategies are part of a general process of the reproduction of capitalist modes of accumulation and legitimation through the usage of cultural categories. (shrink)

In his highly influential "The Interpretation of Cultures," anthropologist Clifford Geertz argues that the study of culture ought to be "not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning." I argue that the two need not be opposed. The best way of making sense of the social scientific practice of looking at meaning is to see interpretivists as looking at typical mental reactions that people in a given culture have to certain (...) acts and artifacts. I argue that scientific theories of the mental—rather than minimalist—theories are needed for this practice to be successful. (shrink)

This volume offers new insights into food and culture. Food habits, preferences, and taboos are partially regulated by ecological and material factors - in other words, all food systems are structured and given particular functioning mechanisms by specific societies and cultures, either according to totemic, sacrificial, hygienic-rationalist, aesthetic, or other symbolic logics. This provides much “food for thought”. The famous expression has never been so appropriate: not only do cultures develop unique practices for the production, treatment and consumption of food, (...) but such practices inevitably end up affecting food-related aspects and spheres that are generally perceived as objectively and materially defined. This book explores such dynamics drawing on various theoretical approaches and analytical methodologies, thus enhancing the cultural reflection on food and, at the same time, helping us see how the study of food itself can help us understand better what we call “culture”. It will be of interest to anthropologists, philosophers, semioticians and historians of food. (shrink)

In my paper I investigate a particular class of objects, i.e. the so called “cultural” objects. I argue that all cultural objects are social objects, but not all social objects are cultural. Social objects are observer relative as cultural objects too, but cultural objects show an intrinsic dependence to social groups and their cultures which does not obtain in the case of social objects. The investigation is concerned with concrete cultural objects mainly and its (...) conclusion is that a concrete social object can be characterized as “cultural” if the intentional actions, which produced the object at issue, imply the presence of a cultural meaning. The notion of meaning is conceived phenomenologically as a species that is instantiated in intentional contents. A cultural meaning is a meaning which is instantiated in the intentional contents of a single social group. (shrink)

Within this paper, we adopt a qualitative process approach to explore how ethical judgments are influenced by spatio-cultural meanings applied to social entrepreneurship in the context of Mozambique. We analyse how such ethical judgments emerged using data gathered over a 4 year period in Maputo. Our findings illustrate three modes used to inform ethical judgments: embracing, rejecting and integrating. These describe how ethical judgments transpire as participants evaluate social entrepreneurship drawing upon related global normative meanings and those embedded within (...) the local context. This analysis offers a critical contribution regarding how ethical judgments regarding social entrepreneurship evolve from negotiation and interaction within a context of multiple spatio-cultural meanings. (shrink)

This essay concerns itself with the Lawyer cartoon, a thematic subgenre of the “The New Yorker Magazine” cartoon, which focuses on the legal profession in the US context. An examination of the cultural meaning of this phenomenon is carried out on the strength of ethnography of communication, which discloses the cartoon as a cultural, social and rhetorical artifact. Among the findings of this study are the structural components, functions, and the rules of configuring the Lawyer cartoon toward (...) it becoming a matter of “risibility” as well as a matter of cultural symbolism. By presenting the attorney as an abnormal character with excessive and hypocritical characteristics, the Lawyer cartoon points to the ascriptions of a disrupted self, making the profession appear as fundamentally inauthentic. (shrink)

In this multi-disciplinary volume, comprising the work of several established scholars from different countries, central concepts associated with the work of the Bakhtin Circle are interrogated in relation to intellectual history, language theory and an understanding of new media. The book will prove an important resource for those interested in the ideas of the Bakhtin Circle, but also for those attempting to develop a coherent theoretical approach to language in use and problems of meaning production in new media.

In this multi-disciplinary volume, comprising the work of several established scholars from different countries, central concepts associated with the work of the Bakhtin Circle are interrogated in relation to intellectual history, language theory and an understanding of new media. The book will prove an important resource for those interested in the ideas of the Bakhtin Circle, but also for those attempting to develop a coherent theoretical approach to language in use and problems of meaning production in new media.

Cultures, institutions, and social roles powerfully shape affective experience. Four types of social affect—cultural sentiments, characteristic emotions, structural emotions, and consequent emotions—characterize relations between culture, social structure, and individual affective experience within social interactions. This article briefly reviews findings from contemporary research traditions about these forms of affect and finishes with simulations comparing predictions about social emotions across cultures. The results of that simulation study illustrate how we might use data and tools from affect control theory to investigate differences (...) in basic cultural sentiments, as well as predictions about the core types of social emotions—those associated with identities, those associated with structural relationships, and those evoked by a social event. (shrink)

A characteristic feature of Wagnerian and post-Wagnerian opera is the tendency to link scenes with numerous and often surprisingly lengthy orchestral interludes, frequently performed with the curtain closed. Often taken for granted or treated as a filler by audiences and critics, these interludes can take on very prominent roles, representing dream sequences, journeys and sexual encounters, and in some cases becoming a highlight of the opera. Christopher Morris investigates the implications of these important but strangely overlooked passages. Combining close readings (...) of individual musical texts with an investigation of the critical discourse surrounding the operas, Morris shows how the interludes shed light not only on the representational and narrative capacities of the orchestra, but also on the supposed 'absolute' realm of instrumental music, a concept to which many critics appealed when they associated the interludes with 'purely musical' and 'symphonic' qualities. (shrink)

Medical semiotics, as a branch of general semiotics, has never really gained a foothold in either semiotics itself or medical science, despite the fact that the discipline of semiotics traces its roots to the medical domain in the ancient world and especially to Hippocrates. With several key exceptions, such as Jakob von Uexküll in 1909 and in the 1990s with Thomas A. Sebeok, there is no evidence that medical semiotics is a significant and growing area of research either within semiotics (...) or medical practice. The purpose of this book is to revive interest in this field examining the historical and epistemological principles that would make it highly relevant today in the global village where conceptions of disease and health are in constant flux. The book is written it in a non-technical way-that is, no assumptions are made on the part of the reader of technical semiotics. Our hope is that this book will bring out the importance of semiotics to the practice of medicine. It can be considered to be a textbook in the field of medical semiotics, constituting to the best of our knowledge the first of its kind. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, Page 54-56, July 2012.

Benhabib recasts the Derridean idea of `iteration' in democratic terms. While adhering to the original idea that both the fundamental terms of political consociation and the identity of the people itself is `radically' open, Benhabib argues that deliberative norms do and should frame the process of reiteration. For the deliberative democrat, the democratic constitution is not a would-be barrier to iterability (which we are told cannot be contained anyway); it is rather a communicative or discursive space in which the hitherto (...) suppressed or not yet present voice of other people finds its way and expands the terms of meaning giving and hence reason giving. The democratic constitution enables iteration; it is one side of a dialectic that relies upon, balances and, in some sense, makes the most of people power. Immigrants, in the final analysis, are the latest group to proclaim their presence in the sphere of constitutional interpretation, and thereby recalibrate the interpretive frame. And when they make their presence known in this way they have truly become a part of the `people'. When, however, they make their presence known in ways that undermine constitutional self-understanding, instead of engaging it, they are `not us'. Benhabib is hesitant to add this last bit, as she is hesitant to admit how much the constitutional identity of a people `rift with otherness' is reliant upon the historical referent and the generative/steering power of the right sort of constitutional court. (shrink)

"Clearly argued and captivatingly developed through subtle analyses of ethnographic materials...[this book] will revitalize cultural anthropology."--Fredrik Barth.

Machine generated contents note: Preface v -- CRITIQUE -- 1. Culture and Semantics 1 -- 2. What is 'Cartesian' in Linguistics? 8 -- 3. Computer, Brain and Grammatical Theory 22 -- DYNAMICAL SEMANTICS -- 4. From Discrete Signs to Dynamic Semantic Continuum 37 -- 5. Catastrophe Theoretic Semantics: -- Towards a Physics of Meaning 50 -- 6. Ontological and Cognitive Bases of karaka Theory 60 -- 7. 'Force Dynamics' as a Dynamical Sem-antics Model 72 -- METAPHOR -- 8. Body, (...) Space and Metaphorical-Cultural Worlds 85 -- 9. Metaphors in Grammar 103 -- SEMIOTICS -- 10. Dynamics in Nar-rative Structures 123 -- 11. -Perspectives in the Semiotics of Objects 139 -- 12. The Semantics of 'Nukespeak' 149 -- POST-STRUCTURALISM I POSTMODERNISM -- 13. Language, Power, and Plurality 155 -- 14. On Difference(s) 160 -- 15. Dialogics, or the Dynamics of Intersubjectivity 170 -- 16. Writing, hifinity, and Dialogicality 178 -- 17. Lacan, Derrida and the Vicissitudes of the 'Sign' 185. (shrink)

This essay introduces, for theological consideration, some recent work in the field of cultural evolutionary theory, specifically the kin‐influence hypothesis. This theory holds that, following the beginnings of industrialization and economic growth, a nation's fertility rate commences a decline, which is further abetted by the consequent and increasing imbalance in the relative influence of kin versus nonkin influences on individuals in favor of the latter. It is further proposed that this process is itself a major independent factor in the (...) emergence of many of the features of what is called modernity, among which is that of secularization. Extending further this work, I argue that, given the historic alignment of family and religious values in Christian nations, a loss of religious belief and practice is, at least in part, the spill over effect of the opposing influence of values emerging from ever more dominant nonfamily social interaction. I conclude with some reflections on possible theological implications. (shrink)

Expanding the scope of existential discourse beyond the Western tradition, this book engages Asian philosophies to reassess vital questions of life's purpose, death's imminence, and our capacity for living meaningfully in conditions of uncertainty. Inspired by European existentialism in theory, the book explores concrete techniques for existential practice via the philosophies of East Asia. The investigation begins with the provocative existential writings of twentieth-century Korean Buddhist nun Kim Iryop, who asserts that meditative concentration conducts a potent energy outward throughout the (...) entire karmic network, enabling the radical transformation of our shared existential conditions. Understanding her claim requires a study of East Asian traditions more broadly. Considering practices as diverse as Song-dynasty Chinese views on mental cultivation, Buddhist merit-making ceremonies, the ritual memorization and recitation of texts, and Yijing divination, the book concludes by advocating a speculative turn. This 'speculative existentialism' counters the suspicion toward metaphysics characteristic of twentieth-century European existential thought and, at the same time, advances a program for action. It is not a how-to guide for living, but rather a philosophical methodology that takes seriously the power of mental cultivation to transform the meaning of the life that we share. (shrink)

Mastering how to convey meanings using language is perhaps the main challenge facing any language learner. However, satisfactory accounts of how this is achieved, and even of what it is for a linguistic item to have meaning, are hard to come by. Nick Chater was one of the pioneers involved in the early development of one of the most successful methodologies within the cognitive science of language for discovering meaning: distributional semantics. In this article, we review this approach (...) and discuss its successes and shortcomings in capturing semantic phenomena. In particular, we discuss what we dub the “distributional paradox:” how can models that do not implement essential dimensions of human semantic processing, such as sensorimotor grounding, capture so many meaning-related phenomena? We conclude by providing a preliminary answer, arguing that distributional models capture the statistical scaffolding of human language acquisition that allows for communication, which, in line with Nick Chater's more recent ideas, has been shaped by the features of human cognition on the timescale of cultural evolution. (shrink)

The article inquires into the uneasiness of sociological systems theory about culture. Culture alternatively is called the solution to the problem of double contingency (Parsons) and removed from this solution (Luhmann). It is shown that meaning is the more basic term whose description reveals a form rule of social systems which is only patterned, yet not understood by culture. Culture is a memory and control device of society. It may be conceived of as providing the distinction of correct versus (...) incorrect behaviour. But who decides on the correctness or incorrectness of this distinction? Sociological thinking takes off where the cultural and the social are distinguished. (shrink)

The existing variants of the classification of sciences differentiate and correlate the types of cognitive practices on various grounds. At the same time, the attention of epistemologists is usually concentrated on the instrumental logical and methodological functions of the proposed classifications, which guide scientists in the holistic cognitive space of rational cognition. As for the sociocultural dimensions of scientific and cognitive activity, they mostly correlate with the typological features of research practices only slightly. Meanwhile, science as a whole is undergoing (...) significant changes today, affecting, among other things, the status and methodological functions of its socio-cultural parameters, which significantly change the configuration of the cognitive space of scientific and cognitive activity. The article attempts to demonstrate the features of the problematization of contemporary science’s philosophical and methodological foundations. When discussing these issues, it is fundamentally important to consider how a scientist realizes his methodological tools and the socio-cultural status of scientific and cognitive activity. According to the author, these problematics are stepping into the center of today’s philosophical and methodological reflection on science, forcing us to take a fresh look at the meaning of science as a holistic cognitive phenomenon, accordingly, the typological features of its cognitive practices. (shrink)

Upon its recent publication in Portuguese, Paulo Freire’s newest book became an instant success. This English translation is sure to meet with similar acclaim. In Teachers as Cultural Workers, Freire speaks directly to teachers about the lessons learned from a lifetime of experience as an educator and social theorist. No other book so cogently explains the implications for classroom practice of Freire’s latest ideas and the pathbreaking theories found in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and other treatises.This book challenges all (...) who teach to reflect critically on the meaning of the act of teaching as well as the meaning of learning. Freire shows why a teacher’s success depends on a permanent commitment to learning and training, as part of an ongoing appraisal of classroom practice. By observing the curiosity of students and the manner through which students develop strategies for learning, the teacher is helped in discovering doubts, successes, and the teacher’s mistakes. When teachers open themselves to recognize the different roads students take in order to learn, they will become involved in a continual reconstruction of their own paths of curiosity, opening the doors to habits of learning that will benefit everyone in the classroom. (shrink)

Context: Although the relationship between communication and culture has received significant attention among communication scholars over the past thirty or more years, there is still no satisfactory explanation as to how these two are related and how culture evolves in communication. It forces the author to turn to Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, which is one of the main hypotheses of how social systems emerge. Problem: Unfortunately, Luhmann’s concept of meaning is too weak to explain the autopoiesis of communication. (...) In looking for a solution, the author suggests that it is necessary to distinguish between personal sense structures and socio-cultural meanings and to introduce the concept of shared meaning to the systems-theoretical approach. The paper conceptualises “meaning” as a phenomenon that evolves in communication and defines “culture” as a pattern of structurally related meanings. Findings: (1) According to Luhmann, social systems do not consist of static objects, but of dynamic operations, and for a social system to emerge, its elements – communications – must be connected to one another. The author argues that culture equips the momentary elements of the social system – communications – with the capacity for connection, and makes the social system operationally closed, self-referential, and autopoietic. (2) The problem of adaptation does not lose its importance if we understand cognition as a “self-founding activity” of operationally closed systems but transforms into a question of whether the “reality” construed by the media favours or restricts the coping of the system in the ever changing environment. (3) From the perspective of adaptation of the social system to its internal and external environments, an important condition of the continuous process of creation of shared knowledge to which individuals orientate themselves in their activities is the existence of variations. (shrink)

The memory wave in the humanities has contributed to the impressive revival of cultural history, but the success of memory studies has not been accompanied by significant conceptual and methodological advances in the research of collective memory processes. Most studies on memory focus on the representation of specific events within particular chronological, geographical, and media settings without reflecting on the audiences of the representations in question. As a result, the wealth of new insights into past and present historical cultures (...) cannot be linked conclusively to specific social collectives and their historical consciousness. This methodological problem is even enhanced by the metaphorical use of psychological and neurological terminology, which misrepresents the social dynamics of collective memory as an effect and extension of individual, autobiographical memory. Some of these shortcomings can be addressed through the extensive contextualization of specific strategies of representation, which links facts of representation with facts of reception. As a result, the history of collective memory would be recast as a complex process of cultural production and consumption that acknowledges the persistence of cultural traditions as well as the ingenuity of memory makers and the subversive interests of memory consumers. The negotiations among these three different historical agents create the rules of engagement in the competitive arena of memory politics, and the reconstruction of these negotiations helps us distinguish among the abundance of failed collective memory initiatives on the one hand and the few cases of successful collective memory construction on the other. For this purpose, collective memory studies should adopt the methods of communication and media studies, especially with regard to media reception, and continue to use a wide range of interpretive tools from traditional historiography to poststructural approaches. From the perspective of collective memory studies, these two traditions are closely related and mutually beneficial, rather than mutually exclusive, ways of analyzing historical cultures. (shrink)

Production of Presence is a comprehensive version of the thinking of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, one of the most consistently original literary scholars writing today. It offers a personalized account of some of the central theoretical movements in literary studies and in the humanities over the past thirty years, together with an equally personal view of a possible future. Based on this assessment of the past and the future of literary studies and the humanities, the book develops the provocative thesis that, (...) through their exclusive dedication to interpretation, i.e. to the reconstruction and attribution of meaning, the humanities have become incapable of addressing a dimension in all cultural phenomena that is as important as the dimension of meaning. Interpretation alone cannot do justice to the dimension of "presence," a dimension in which cultural phenomena and cultural events become tangible and have an impact on our senses and our bodies. Production of Presence is a passionate plea for a rethinking and a reshaping of the intellectual practice within the humanities. (shrink)

The scholarship on meaningful work has approached the topic mostly from the perspective of the subjective experience of the individual worker. This has led the literature to under-theorize, if not outright ignore, the cultural and normative dimension of meaningful work. In particular, it has obscured that a person’s ability to find meaning in her life in general, and her work in particular, is typically anchored and dependent on shared institutions and cultural aspirations. Reflecting on the future of (...) work, particularly on the dangers posed by the threat of technological unemployment, helps us recognize this cultural and normative dimension of meaningful work. I argue that a world with few work opportunities is a world devoid of a core structuring ideal around which our society has organized itself and, as such, will strain our ability to make sense of what it means to find life meaningful. To make this case I show that work operates as a central organizing _telos_ around which our contemporary lives gravitate. Work touches everyone and everything, defining the rhythms of our days and weeks and providing a center of gravity around which our lives are structured. Work constitutes a central dimension of human flourishing. Through work we provide for our material needs, develop our skills and virtues, build community, and contribute to the common good. As such, work constitutes a central organizing ideal in contemporary Western societies, a fact has significant normative force and plays an important role in our finding work meaningful. (shrink)

Hermeneutics has had a pervasive influence on contemporary philosophy, social and cultural theory, literary criticism, and aesthetics. In this book one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers provides hermeneutics with a fresh relevance and a substantive account of its philosophical meaning for science, ethics, religion, and art. Vattimo argues for a reading of hermeneutics that radicalises it according to what the author calls its 'nihilistic vocation', a term referring to the interpretive character of truth and taken from Nietzsche's statement (...) that there are, in the modern period, no facts, only interpretations. Modernity, for Vattimo, is conceived as the advent of nihilism, and the central question of the book is to ask what it means to take this nihilistic vocation seriously. This involves not simply accepting the current status of hermeneutics, but evaluating why it appears when, and where, it does. (shrink)