Este artículo analiza la defensa de la explicación funcional que propuso G. A. Cohen en su reformulación de las principales tesis del materialismo histórico y propone una perspectiva alternativa. Cohen planteó una versión legaliforme de las explicaciones funcionales que aprovechaba las características disposicionales de algunos enunciados típicos de las ciencias sociales. En cambio, este artículo defiende una interpretación de las explicaciones funcionales en ciencias sociales como enunciados de identidad propios de los contextos extensionalmente vagos "aunque no directamente intensionales" característicos tanto (...) de las explicaciones cotidianas como de la sociología popular. This essay analyzes the functional explanation¿s defence that G. A. Cohen advanced on the occasion of his updating of the main thesis of the historical materialism theory and suggests and alternative. Cohen put forward a law-like version of the functional explanation based on the dispositional features of some typical social science's statements. This essay, on the contrary, advances a way for interpreting functional explanations as identity assertions in the extensionally vague ¿but no immediately intensional¿ contexts typical both of naive daily explanations and folk sociology. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is the analysis of a specific cultural and political tension, through two decisive concepts: imagocracy and imagomaquia. Our aim is to define the political battlefield in the arena of audiovisual communication. In the case of Latin America, we have identified two significant moments, in which the popular audiovisual strategies had crucial importance. Our material of research has been both the New Latin American Cinema and the sociology of the decolonial image. We have studied them (...) in depth in order to define the effectiveness of popular audiovisual strategies as nuclei of creation and aesthetic-political resistance, which opposes the hegemonic audiovisual order. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo propone una presentación del Hip Hop en Chile, comprendido como un movimiento plural que puede ser pensado en términos de tácticas y estrategias de resistencia. Para ello se comienza por una caracterización general de esta práctica considerando sus diversos componentes -música, danza y grafiti- seguida de una descripción de sus orígenes históricos y de su contexto social de emergencia asociado a la segregación y a la estigmatización urbanas. Luego, a partir de la revisión de diversas investigaciones provenientes (...) de la historia y de la sociología se aborda su desarrollo en nuestro país, lo que permite indagar sus singularidades y su poder de contestación en nuestra historia reciente. Posteriormente se trata la cuestión del como un arte popular teniendo en cuenta diversas dimensiones en las que se expresa la capacidad creativa de sus autores y de su comunidad de públicos. Por último se aborda el potencial político del Hip Hop explorando sus posibilidades para ser comprendido como un arte de resistencia que opera tácticamente. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the functional explanation’s defence that G. A. Cohen advanced on the occasion of his updating of the main thesis of the historical materialism theory and suggests and alternative. Cohen put forward a law-like version of the functional explanation based on the dispositional features of some typical social science’s statements. This essay, on the contrary, advances a way for interpreting functional explanations as identity assertions in the extensionally vague –but no immediately intensional– contexts typical both of naive daily (...) explanations and folk sociology. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente artículo es analizar los presupuestos del escritor, crítico y ensayista español Juan Mas y Pi (1878-1916) sobre la cuestión social del arte. Para ello, me serviré del texto “Arte social”, publicado en 1906 en la revista Germen. Revista popular de sociología, dirigida por Alejandro Sux. Abordaré cuál es el origen, la esencia y la función del arte para que obra, artista y experiencia estética sirvan a la causa del proceso de perfeccionamiento de la Humanidad (...) hacia un futuro libre de cualquier tipo de opresión y sufrimiento. (shrink)

O artigo trata basicamente da romaria e dos santuários populares católicos. Nascido de uma palestra feita a reitores de santuários católicos da América Latina, o artigo enfoca também o discipulado cristão como essencial no acolhimento aos romeiros. Sua perspectiva, porém, é a das ciências da religião e não a da teologia. A abordagem leva em conta as teorias sociológicas e psicoantropológicas hoje usadas na leitura do fenômeno das romarias nas religiões em geral e no cristianismo em especial. Após um rápido (...) olhar sobre o sentido do discipulado na teologia e na Bíblia, o autor enfoca mais especificamente a abordagem psicoantropológica hoje em uso na sociologia dos santuários e das romarias. Finalizando, tece algumas considerações sobre a pastoral dos santuários e a necessidade de inserir o acolhimento religioso dos romeiros num contexto marcado pelo chamado turismo religioso. Palavras-chave: Santuários católicos; Pastoral das romarias; Discipulado; Psicologia da religião; Turismo religioso. ABSTRACT This article focuses on a discussion about Christian discipleship in the pastoral context of popular sanctuaries of the Catholic Church in Latin America. It is a reflection presented during the Latin American Congress of Catholic Sanctuaries in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2005. It considers different questions involved in the discussion, from the viewpoint of modern psycho-anthropology of pilgrimages and sanctuaries. After a short biblical-theological explanation of the meaning of Christian discipleship in theology and in the Bible, the article attempts to show what modern Brazilian and English-speaking experts in Anthropology and Pastoral Theology think about pilgrimages both in Christian and in non-Christian religions. Finally, it discusses the sanctuaries’ pastoral and the need to insert a religious welcome to pilgrims in the context of religious tourism. Key words: Catholic sanctuaries; Pastoral of pilgrimages; Discipleship; Psychology of Religion; Religious tourism. (shrink)

Música, filosofia e formação cultural - ensaios reúne as contribuições de renomados intelectuais interessados no estudo do significado e da aplicação da música nos processos formativos. Desloca o foco epistemológico da filosofia orientada pelo olhar para uma perspectiva que ressalta o ouvir. Discute as bases éticas e estéticas da educação, com destaque para o conceito de formação cultural, e analisa os múltiplos modos de compreender a experiência formativa da música, desde o clássico até o popular. É um livro que, (...) além de indicar as referências básicas para uma crítica da cultura do nosso tempo, também pode ser usado como material didático na formação de professores em diversas áreas do conhecimento, tais como a arte, a filosofia, a história, a sociologia e a pedagogia. (shrink)

En la interfaz entre la historia intelectual y la sociología de la educación, el artículo aborda los usos de Antonio Gramsci efectuados por la argentina Justa Ezpeleta y la mexicana Elsie Rockwell en los años 70 y 80 en el marco de la estructuración de una etnográfica educativa crítica desde el Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas (DIE), Distrito Federal (México). Durante los años 60/70, en un contexto signado por la radicalización política y teórica, se dirimió la formación académica de Rockwell (...) y Ezpeleta. Tal contexto les permitió un acercamiento creativo al paradigma crítico y a innovadoras experiencias educativas. Ante la irrupción del golpe cívico militar de 1976 en Argentina, Ezpeleta buscará refugio en el Distrito Federal y encontrará en el DIE su lugar de trabajo. Rockwell trabajaba en la institución desde 1973, comprometida en la elaboración y seguimiento de libros de textos. Será el DIE el espacio de encuentro entre Ezpeleta y Rockwell, donde desplegarán una singular línea de investigación: la etnografía educativa crítica. Si bien esta contaba con antecedentes, las autoras establecieron una perspectiva original. Entre sus referentes teóricos, sobresalió el pensamiento de Gramsci, de amplia circulación política y académica durante los 70 y 80 en México. El artículo considera que, en la construcción de la etnografía educativa, los escritos gramscianos fueron empleados en cuatro niveles para: (a) fundamentar la perspectiva epistemológica; (b) dilucidar la historicidad del vínculo entre Estado, sociedad civil e institución escolar; (c) analizar las presencias cotidianas de las clases subalternas en la escuela; (d) cimentar un proyecto político educativo basado en la autonomía y el protagonismo popular. Si bien la recepción de Gramsci en México durante los años 70 y 80 está siendo crecientemente indagada, el plano educativo constituye una vacancia. El artículo expone resultados producidos a través de estrategias y técnicas metodológicas de corte cualitativo. (shrink)

El verdadero alcance y contenido de lo inconsciente en las CienciasHumanas debería ser establecido en referencia a su relación conceptual con lapsicología popular que moldea a la forma estándar de explicación allí en juego.Un estudio de dicha relación muestra que los científicos de las Ciencias Humanasdeberían apelar al inconsciente solo cuando el lenguaje de lo consciente lesfalla, esto es, especialmente cuando encuentran un conflicto entre la autocomprensiónde las personas y sus acciones. Este estudio muestra también que loscientíficos de las (...) Ciencias Humanas deberían adoptar un concepto más ampliode lo inconsciente que aquel desarrollado por Freud, es decir, un concepto queesté libre de la concepción freudiana ahistórica de los instintos y su énfasisahistórico en las experiencias sexuales de la niñez. Lo inconsciente, entendidode esta manera, tiene una relación ambigua con las más recientes vertienteslingüísticas y narrativas del Psicoanálisis. (shrink)

In a recent Target Article Naomi Scheinerman (2023a) has offered an important and compelling call to institutionalize popular participation for heritable genome engineering through the inclusion of...

Al centro della riflessione della filosofia e delle scienze sociali, il concetto di cultura ha assunto uno spettro di significati difficilmente riassumibile in una definizione che non sia multidimensionale. Numerose sono le province di significato in cui tale concetto ricorre riflessivamente portando in primo piano ordini di realtà e punti di vista analitici differenziati. Oltre all’identità multiforme le analisi della cultura presentano sul piano storico un contesto di genesi prettamente moderno la cui rilevanza è crescente. Accanto alla coltivazione dello “spirito”, (...) come erudizione e raffinatezza personale, saranno le scienze storiche e l’antropologia, tra l’inizio e la fine dell’‘800, a dischiudere la nuova conoscenza verso quella “tela di ragno” di rappresentazioni, costumi e disposizioni di cui gli esseri umani sono, al contempo, artefici e prodotto. Il presente volume sistematizza le complesse riflessioni di Jürgen Habermas sulle forme di sapere “implicite” ed “esplicite” alla base dei processi di comprensione e di apprendimento: il linguaggio simbolico e grammaticale, il senso comune, le immagini del mondo (la mitologia, le religioni e la metafisica), le sfere di valore specialistiche (le scienze e le tecniche, le morali e il diritto, l’estetica e le arti), i loro prodotti e le procedure, ma anche le competenze cognitive, sociali ed espressive necessarie per “maneggiare” tali argomenti. Si tratta di una ricostruzione che, all’interno di un “programma di ricerca” che Habermas recupera dai classici del pensiero sociologico, lascia emergere la riproduzione culturale come una sfera analiticamente distinta della società ma interdipendente con i processi di integrazione sociale e di socializzazione. (shrink)

El presente artículo hace a una reflexión sobre Kant y su énfasis en el apriorismo moral, sobre todo en cuanto se refiere al concepto de deber en la pura razón. Dicho concepto juega un papel fundamental como criterio de valor de la acción moral; una acción es moral en tanto sea hecha por deber y nada más que por deber. ¿Qué es el deber y dónde se fundamenta?, es de lo que se va a tratar el presente texto; igualmente nos (...) vamos a encontrar con el análisis y las características del imperativo categórico, junto con otras ideas morales, abordadas, eso sí, desde la perspectiva del apriorismo. (shrink)

The media, perhaps more than any other slice of culture, influence what we think and talk about, what we take to be important, what we worry about. And this was especially true when news of Dolly hit the airwaves and newstands. Most Americans received training in the ethics of cloning before they knew what cloning was. Media coverage fixed the content and outline of the public moral debate, both revealing and creating the dominant public worries about cloning humans. The primary (...) characterization of cloning as an ethical issue centers around three connected concerns: the loss of human uniqueness and individuality, the pathological motivations of a cloner, and the fear of out‐of‐control scientists. (shrink)

In the biological realm, a complete explanation of a trait seems to include an explanation in terms of function. It is natural to ask of some trait, "What is its function?" or "What purpose in the organism does the particular trait serve?" or "What is the goal of its activity?" There are several views concerning the appropriate definition of function for biological matters. Two popular views of function with respect to living things are Cummins' organizational account and the Griffiths/Godfrey-Smith (...) modern history account. Whereas Cummins argues that a trait functions so as to contribute to the general organization of some organism's present structure, Griffiths, and Godfrey-Smith argue that a trait functions because of its fitness with respect to the organism's recent evolutionary history. In this paper, I show how these accounts can be made compatible and compliment one another. Given that structure, organization, operational flexibility, function, and evolutionary history are all factors to be considered in an organism's makeup, we should expect that the traits of an organism function the way they do because such traits presently contribute to the overall organization of the organism (Cummins) as well as were selected for in the organism's species' recent ancestry (Griffiths/Godfrey-Smith). (shrink)

The text provides an introduction to analyses of the social exclusion of mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders. The aim is to highlight and discuss several stories from the increasing number of printed accounts by mothers describing their daily struggles with disability and social judgment. The discourses of exclusion concerning this social group are a hihgly interesting research topic due to its multidimensionality and stereotypes ingrained in society.

Torture Porn is a term that has generated a great deal of controversy during the last decade, critics utilizing the term to dismiss contemporary popular horror cinema as obscene and morally depraved. Arguing primarily in defense of torture-themed horror films, this book seeks to offer a critical overview and examination of the Torture Porn phenomenon, discussing the generic contexts in which it is situated, scrutinizing press responses to the sub-genre, and offering narrative analyses of the sub-genre’s central films; including (...) the highly popular Saw franchise, the Hostel movies, and recent revamped versions of slasher movies such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as the multitude of independent direct-to-DVD films that have been influenced by these theatrically successful films. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta resultados parciais de pesquisas desenvolvidas no Laboratório de Ensino de Sociologia Florestan Fernandes da UFRJ e faz uma análise comparativa de três livros didáticos de Sociologia para o Ensino Médio no que diz respeito a alguns temas ditos “clássicos” das Ciências Sociais, a saber: Trabalho, Desigualdades Sociais, Movimentos Sociais e Violência/Criminalidade. Para tal, foram mobilizados conceitos do campo da sociologia da educação, que auxiliam na compreensão das estratégias pedagógicas adotadas nos livros. Foram analisados os livros didáticos publicados, (...) em 2010, pelas seguintes editoras: Saraiva, Editora do Brasil/FGV e Imperial Novo Milênio. A análise centrou-se nos conteúdos dedicados à esfera do trabalho, à construção social das desigualdades, às ações de movimentos sociais e aos fenômenos configurados como atos criminosos e/ou violentos. Portanto, este texto identifica quais temas, teorias e conceitos foram mobilizados e quais foram as propostas pedagógicas e conceituais privilegiadas. (shrink)

Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan. Janet R. Goodwin. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 1994. vii, 181 pp. US$27.

This essay is part of a dossier on Cristina Lafont's book Democracy without Shortcuts.

Trying to reduce the divide between culture and science, this article follows the producer of popular records, as an interface between music and its market. Like the innovator when he does not obey scientific, technical, and commercial reasons in succession, but reshapes them all together through a double task of giving its form to the product and the interesting people within it, the producer represents the public to the artist and the music to the media. First in a local (...) scale, then in larger and larger ones, alone with the singer, in the studio, and into the media, this sociology of the intermediary shows the producer experimentally organizing, as in a laboratory, a complete production-consumption cycle. Success is then not the mysterious leap to the public, but the last extension of an equation into which the public has been incorporated in many forms from the very beginning. (shrink)

This article aims to problematize, through the theoretical contributions of the post-colonial studies, the catholic church’s colonization project towards the Amapaense Amazon’s popular catholicism - such as the Myth of Cobra Grande - constituted as a project evolved around eurocentric and judeo-christian assumptions to the detriment of afro-amerindian cultural, identity and religious expressions, of catholic communities in the urban and rural areas of the brazilian Amazon. The amazonian population develops strategies of resistance and re-existence in order to maintain their (...) religious traditions around festa dos santos, pilgrimages, festivities, rosaries, quermesses, and other activities as forms of origins establishment or origins return for the foundation of a narrative identity.. (shrink)

The world of charlatans is a world of constantly shifting borders and redefinitions, a world of crossed lines and pushed boundaries. Can one even speak of “the world” of charlatans in the singular, when the examples we are given to read in this volume reveal such great diversity that they seem to defeat any attempt to define common traits, as Roy Porter tried to do in his time? Certainly, commercial interests and the lure of a quick and easy profit seem (...) to have motivated some charlatans. Certainly, the universal effects of the nostrum or therapeutic procedures were often put forward as a commercial argument. Certainly, many had an itinerant career; but this was not always the case. In fact, these traits are not shared, and the main reason is probably that, aside from a very particular context in early modern Italy, the qualification of charlatan was not claimed by the actors themselves, but was attributed to them by others, be they contemporaries or later historians. These features are therefore only common if we understand them as stigmata1 attributed to charlatans by those who wish to distinguish themselves from them or to draw a line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. (shrink)

This essay wants to provide a preliminary introduction to, and initial contextualization of the sermons of the seventeenth-century Capuchin preacher Geminianus von Mainz. To my knowledge, his literary production has never been a subject of exhaustive scholarship, even though it has been portrayed by some as a typical example of Bavarian baroque preaching from the later seventeenth century.1 More recently, his metaphorical approach to marriage has been commented upon in passing by Ulrike Strasser and Merry Wiesner-Hanks,2 whereas several culinary remarks (...) in his sermons drew the attention of the late German gastrosopher Christoph Wagner, as can be read in the chapter on 'Barocke... (shrink)

To explore how cultural beliefs are reflected in different popular views of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for human leukocyte antigen match (popularly known as “savior siblings”), we compare the reception and interpretations, in Germany and Israel, of the novel/film My Sister’s Keeper. Qualitative analysis of reviews, commentaries and posts is used to classify and compare normative assessments of PGD for HLA and how they reproduce, negotiate or oppose the national policy and its underlying cultural and ethical premises. Four major themes (...) emanated from the comparison: loss of self-determination and autonomy; loss of dignity through instrumentalization; eugenics and euthanasia; and saving life. In both countries, most commentaries represented a dominant position, with a few negotiated positions. We also highlight the decoding of a relatively less explored bioethical aspect of My Sister’s Keeper’s narrative, namely the meaning of euthanasia. We conclude by discussing how the findings relate to attempts of providing cultural explanations for the regulation of HLA-PGD. (shrink)

The squatting movement is a social movement that seeks to use unoccupied land or temporarily or permanently abandoned buildings as farmland, housing, meeting places, or centers for social and cultural purposes. Its main motivation is to denounce and at the same time respond to the economic difficulties that activists believe exist to realize the right to housing. Much of what we know about this movement comes from the informational and journalistic literature generated by actors that are close or even belong (...) to the movement. However, there is also a significant diversity of knowledge and scientific evidence on the squatters’ movement that is being produced by academia and that is worth knowing and grouping together. With the aim of defining and understanding how the squatters’ movement is constituted and organized, and how it acts, this research analyzes what the scientific literature affirms about it. Through qualitative research based on the systematic literature review method, information was sought in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The initial universe of 262 articles was finally reduced to a sample of 32 articles. These have been analyzed by means of a categorized classification content analysis. The results obtained allow us to establish the state of the art on the squatting movement, placing special emphasis on its dynamics of resistance, its process of political subjectivation and its mechanisms of action and self-management. The study suggests that the movement is understood based on collective actions with a political role of resistance to neoliberalism and the inequalities it generates, and of response to the basic and social needs of the communities through self-management.Systematic review registration[doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7179670], identifier [7179670]. (shrink)

The Bible in the Middle Ages, much like the Bible today, consisted for the laity not of a set of texts within a canon but of those stories which, partly because of their liturgical significance and partly because of their picturesque and memorable qualities, formed a provisional “Bible” in the popular imagination. Even relatively devout and educated moderns may be surprised by what is, and what is not, biblical. The medieval popular Bible took shape within an encyclopedic tradition (...) largely responsible for the variety of materials now associated with the Bible. Prior to and even after full-scale Reformation translations, biblical material was disseminated in the vernaculars through sermons, homilies, commentaries, universal histories, picture Bibles, the drama, and a large corpus of biblical paraphrases. Each of those literary forms owes debts to the others, but a significant influence on them all, and especially those produced in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century France and England, is Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica. (shrink)

Introduction: Time travel and the mechanics of narrative -- Macrological fictions: evolutionary utopia and time travel (1887-1905) -- Historical interval I: the first time travel story -- Relativity, psychology, paradox: Wertenbaker to Heinlein (1923-1941) -- Historical interval II: three phases of time travel--the time machine -- The big time: multiple worlds, narrative viewpoint, and superspace -- Paradox and paratext: picturing narrative theory -- Theoretical interval: the primacy of the visual in time travel narrative -- Viewpoint-over-histories: narrative conservation in Star Trek (...) -- Oedipus multiplex, or, the subject as a time travel film: Back to the future -- Conclusion: The last time travel story. (shrink)