Anthropological Discourse Research Articles

КОНЦЕПТ «ПРИРОДЫ ЧЕЛОВЕКА» КАК АКСИОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ ПРИНЦИП

In the philosophy of the 20th century, the idea of the absence of nature in man was established, due to which the concept of «human nature» became a rudiment in anthropological knowledge, and man himself began to be comprehended as «unsupported». In the era of the «biotechnological revolution», this concept turns out to be inconvenient for the transgressive game of man with his own limits. However, the problematization of a person in modern anthropological discourse can occur in many respects precisely through questioning the human nature. In the era of developed biotechnologies, for the purposes of human ecology, modern anthropology should not so much deny as assert the nature of man, since the concept of «human nature» indicates an ontological framework that preserves the authenticity of man, ensuring the continuity of all his historical forms. In contrast to the interpretation of the concept of human nature as opposed to the social essence (as a base physical, material, biological, vital part of human being), it is heuristically significant to elevate it to a socially significant axiological principle, filling it with value content by raising the status of the human nature. This is especially important due to the fact that this concept is substantively included in ethical, social and humanitarian expertise of biotechnological projects. Without the axiological development of this concept, bioethical and ecological discourses will lose strength and persuasiveness. A person is always incomplete, multidimensional, multifaceted, therefore there cannot be a single essential idea of a person capable of becoming the cementing foundation of anthropological knowledge, as the first generation of «philosophical anthropology» representatives hoped for. Still, man is one anthropological type with a single nature. As a result of the study, a hypothesis has been put forward that it is the reanimation of the concept of «human nature» that will give unity to anthropological knowledge and become its «ideological core».

ROMANTIC HUMAN STUDY: PECULIARITIES OF PERSONALITY PHILOSOPHY IN THE LITERATURE OF THE 1820-1830-IES.

Purpose. The purpose of the study is to show the connection of romanticism with the anthropological doctrine that goes back to Hegelianism and Kantianism, and at the same time – with the concepts of the future, structuralism and postmodernism. Theoretical basis. The man is a central figure of the Romantic literary, therefore it makes sense to single out romantic human anthropological doctrine and the image of man associated with a specific historical and cultural era called the "epoch of romanticism"; to show that many romantic philosophical positions remained relevant to the basic foundations of contemporary anthropological research and coincide with it in analytical and critical thinking about a man, a person, his historical and evolutionary fate. Originality. The romantic worldview determined the specifics of anthropological discourse, both logical and illogical, remaining symbols and attaching, as for example, a real historical anecdote, a popular history, a philosophical thought, a myth, a famous literary episode and the arts multiplied by creative inspiration and imagination. This tendency determined the fragmentation of thinking and the scientific image of man as a dual being, nevertheless, presented and described in all the variety of relations with the world and with himself, that allows us to call this area of thought "the romantic human science". Conclusions. Structural analysis of numerous romantic texts allows us to draw the following conclusion: with mythopoetic imagery and anthropological thought about a man, romantic writers introduced the reader to any wisdom, to philosophical understanding of their human essence, to past and modern teachings, in a way processed antique, medieval and enlightening views, in which an important place was given to reflections on the place of man in nature, society, and history. Correlating the well-known statements about a person as a descendant of the "old Adam", "person", "personality", "soul", with the modern idea of historical and social development, about the evolution of the consciousness of a person who revealed himself as an individual in modern times, with scientific and aesthetic views, the writers of the first half of the XIX century gave romantic thought anthropological meaning and, in fact, laid the foundations of historical, social, psychological, cultural and psychoanalytic anthropology.

HUMAN SITUATION AND MODERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL DISCOURSE

The paper proposes the author's vision of a person's situation and a version of building a modern anthro-pological discourse in this situation. Within the framework of this discourse, concepts such as event ontol-ogy, anthropological navigation, life trajectory, anthropoid cartoid, etc. are introduced. It is proposed to consider the role of the dictionary of this discourse not as a system of definitions and terms, but as a map of landmarks and regulators. In this regard, the way of conceptual work is changing in the direction of building concept-guidelines. Within the framework of anthropological navigation, it is proposed to con-sider the types and genres of anthropological practitioners, such as the practices of taking care of oneself, anthropological practices of mapping personality, life trajectories and anthropoid cartoids. The modern human situation through the eyes of this discourse is seen as a situation of ontological disorientation, in which a person loses his basic guidelines, the norm to be. In this regard, the author proposes to consider the key task - the renormalization of a person, his own restoration of the norm to be in new conditions.

Ar baigėsi posocializmas Lietuvoje? Antropologija ir posocializmo transformacijų etnografija

Has Post-Socialism Ended in Lithuania? The Anthropology and Ethnography of Post-Socialist Transformations The main aim of the paper is to overview ethnographic research on post-socialist transformations in Lithuania by contextualising it within the broader framework of the field of anthropology of post-socialism. The author refers to numerous discussions in the field on the validity of the use of the term post-socialism long after the collapse of the Soviet system (Sampson 1999; Humphrey 2002; Műller 2019, etc), and discusses whether and how selected ethnographies on social cultural transformations in Lithuania after the 1990s and later use the term postsocialism, and how the period is defined conceptually and chronologically. The first part of the paper introduces discussions in anthropology on challenges in defining the post-socialist region and the chronology of post-socialism (Humphrey 2002; Buyandelgeriyn 2008; Frederiksen, Knudsen 2015; Műller 2019; Нильсен 2004, etc), as well as reflections on issues of the representation and unequal relations between the West and the East in studies of post-socialist European countries (Thelen 2011; Buchowski 2012; Cervinkova 2012; Klumbytė, Sharafutdinova 2013b; Frederiksen, Knudsen 2015, etc). These critical studies indicate that ethnographies of socialist and post-socialist East Central Europe constructed it as the ‘other’, different to the western part of the region (Thelen 2011; Buchowski 2012; Cervinkova 2012; Klumbytė, Sharafutdinova 2013b; Frederiksen, Knudsen 2015; Műller 2019; etc), and that the term post-socialist/post-socialism refers to these unequal relations between the West and the East (Cervinkova 2012; Frederiksen, Knudsen 2015; Műller 2019; etc). However, disregarding certain conceptual challenges, it is agreed that the ethnographies of social cultural transformations in post-socialist European countries are unique and important, due to their methodological approach (long-term fieldwork), and focus on people’s everyday lives and the emphasis on the interrelations of cultural, social and economic processes (Burawoy, Verdery 1999; Hann 2002; Hőrschelmann, Stenning 2008, etc).

“THE BLACK SEA” AS THE MODEL OF INTERCULTURALCOMMUNICATION IN THE FOCUS OF CONTEMPORARY BULGARIAN ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Regional ethno-cultural investigations, including those of the Black Sea coast, are among the priority tasks in the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum – BAS, that is caused in the first place by the problem of the ethno-cultural identity preservation under conditions of the transformational processes in contemporary Europe. The regional research carried out on the whole territory of the country, now has become the traditional for the Bulgarian ethnology. These investigations are bound up with the methodological broadening of the scientific analysis and with the Bulgarian experience in the practical activity in the sphere of intangible cultural heritage. The anthropological approach turned to be one of the important factors to promote the complex and interdisciplinary development of Bulgarian ethnology. Idea of anthropological analysis of the Black Sea coast countries emphasizes the urgency of the regional research as a “single whole”. In this model the “sea” means not the boundary, but the unit and the common environment for the contact, interchange, cooperation, cultural dialogue according to the European aspirations of the modern anthropological discourse. At the same time that is the concrete ethnological material of the local tradition that becomes the basis for the general conclusions concerning cultural identity in a whole. The international scientific conference “Littoral – Sea – Europe. Models of the Intercultural Communication” held in 2005, showed the continuity of the ethnic and cultural tradition of the region, observed its fast development and advanced a number of problems of the anthropological research both the Black Sea coast as a whole, and its towns separately – Pomorie, Varna, Nesebr, Sozopol and others. Owing to the Institute activity the local centre on preservation of the intangible cultural heritage was opened in the village of Bulgari (district Burgas). At the same time the ethno-cultural tradition of the town Pomorie, that is well-known by its cultural and historic monuments, became the topic of the interdisciplinary international scientific research project led by Prof. Mila Santova, D. Sc., corresponding member BAS. The results of this project, in which also participated the scientific workers from the M.T. Rylsky Institute of Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, were presented in a number of many-typed investigations on the problems of interethnic ties and cultural connections, urban practice and everyday life of the community, that has its specific beliefs, symbols and traditional notions, i.e. those cultural-identify peculiarities that mark the typology of the inter-cultural communication of the region.

TIME, (COM)PASSION, AND ETHICAL SELF‐FORMATION IN EVANGELICAL HUMANITARIANISM

AbstractThis article examines narratives, images, and stories that give insight to everyday experimentation and ethical self‐formation. I use the case of World Vision and its early leaders to unpack genealogies of American evangelical humanitarianism. Rather than seeking to identify American evangelicalism’s normative ethical stance, I aim to expand the discussion in anthropology of ethics on ethical self‐formation through examining the tensions, reflections, and processes of becoming among evangelical humanitarians. In doing so, I examine two focal areas of ethical self‐formation among early World Vision leaders. The first is oscillation between and mixing of passion and compassion frameworks in the American evangelical imagination. Second, I identify a range of temporal frames that evangelicals draw on to make sense of and formulate ethical responses to human needs encountered abroad.

Grasping Terroir while Teaching Online: Resituating the “Field” in Pedagogies of the Global

AbstractFraming the global in U.S. undergraduate education has significantly entailed “field” experiences. How have such activities prepared students to understand the interaction of daily life with larger institutions, structures, and processes? How to incorporate attention to the contradictions and untenable translations of a locale and its global entanglements into pedagogical responses to a pandemic that has significantly halted physical mobility and personal contact? This article takes up questions of how a certain conceptualization of ethnography could inform efforts to design new pedagogies for global studies. Building off a recent discussion in anthropology, I argue that the concept of ethnographic “sensibility” provides a productive entry point to discovering and articulating insights into the forms and dynamics of a population and place as shaped by interactions with other populations and places in time and space. I draw from my own experiences with the pre-pandemic piloting of an online course in media ethnography. I highlight examples of student work that point in one direction for how to engage students of global studies in profound field experiences, perhaps even when accessed digitally. This article employs the articulation of entry points for global research for the crafting of entry points for pedagogy.

Intelligent Origins of European Globalism: Early Stoicism and Ciceron

The origin of socio-philosophical ideas about universal unity in the tradition of Stoicism and the writings of Cicero in the context of the cultural and historical conditions of the Roman intellectual reception of the ideas of cosmopolitanism of the early Stoics is considered. Performed the analysis of the continuity and development of the concept of “primary inclination” in the picture of the emergence of society and its structures developed by thinkers. The work uses the general scientific inductive method of ascending from the particular to the general, which allows a heuristic approach to the analysis of the intellectual practice of constructing a philosophical picture of the world of ancient authors. Authors used historical analysis of ideas, aimed at revealing the specific cultural context of their origin and development in space and time. The authors reveal the specifics of the stoic representation of the manifestations of the original, nature-like solidarity in the historical and philosophical discourse of ancient authors. The key provisions of the doctrine of the early Stoics and Cicero cosmopolis are analyzed. When considering the cultural and historical specificity of the indicated elements of the intellectual tradition, attention is drawn to the dependence of the Roman speaker views as a social philosopher on the political teachings of ancient authors. The article considers in a new way of he cultural and historical formation of ideas about universal unity in ancient anthropological discourse. The work is based on the analysis of the reception of the stoic idea of “primary inclination” in the writings of Cicero.

Le film de recherche comme modalité de production d’un discours scientifique en anthropologie de la santé

Dans le cadre d’une recherche socio-anthropologique portant sur les usages médicamenteux des personnes âgées polymédiquées en Suisse, une anthropologue et une réalisatrice élaborent un film de recherche interrogeant le statut scientifique qu’il est possible d’attribuer aux films de recherche et engagent une réflexivité à deux voix sur les divers défis épistémologiques, techniques et déontologiques rencontrés. Cette démarche leur permet d’interroger l’apport d’une production filmique de recherche au champ anthropologique. La mise en présence des données audiovisuelles donne à voir le terrain dans toute son épaisseur, et permet également aux acteurs de l’étude de développer une nouvelle mise en récit, qui montre leur expertise. Elle est particulièrement significative pour l’analyse anthropologique dont la réflexion se façonne, lors de la réalisation de terrains, grâce à la mobilisation de l’intuition et de l’imagination ethnographique du/de la chercheur.e et ouvre l’échange entre pairs.

Ethnological Collections in Selected South African Museums - Past Issues and Current Challenges

The paper examines the state of ethnological collections in two post-apartheid South African museums, with a specific focus on cataloguing, and is based, inter alia, on an appraisal of anthropological discourses that informed the collections. A discussion of the artefacts’ background is of importance in establishing their origins, motives for their presence in collections and the current state of these collections. Presently, such information is difficult to establish since persons who have knowledge regarding the makers, donors and collectors of artefacts are no longer part of the museums’ establishment. Evidently, curators face a huge challenge in cataloguing such materials with only patchy information available.In South Africa many ethnological collections of artefacts produced by Africans are 'owned' by heritage institutions, but the care expanded on the objects consists mainly in placing them in storeroom facilities where they are distant from custodians, devoid of identifying material, and insufficiently researched. I contend that the lacklustre manner of assessing items of indigenous material culture in museums of ethnography, and the accompanying decontextualization, are irreconcilable with their original socio-cultural and environmental significance, their meanings and technological trends. The question is what to do with museum collections of rare indigenous material culture, created in the colonial and apartheid era but which, unfortunately, are left without relevant information?

Alfred Russel Wallace, antropólogo: contribuciones a la antropología física

La figura de Alfred Russel Wallace dentro de la antropología ha sido escasamente reconocida dentro de la historia de la disciplina. Un punto importante es ubicar al autor dentro de las discusiones antropológicas de la época victoriana, desde su interés temprano como naturalista por historizar a los seres humanos, hasta su labor institucional como el primer presidente de un departamento de antropología en Inglaterra. En ese contexto, el objetivo del trabajo es presentar la visión de Wallace respecto a la antropología física, a partir de su obra antropológica, que incluye referencias al origen de las razas humanas en términos naturalistas, al desarrollo de características físicas distintivas de los seres humanos o a la relación evolutiva entre primates. Con esto, se amplía la perspectiva sobre el desarrollo de la antropología física en el siglo XIX, al abrir el abanico a autores que contribuyeron de manera importante a su desarrollo.

A Convegerence between Anthropology and Literature: How Reading, Writing, and Ethnography Intertwine

This text examines the convergent and double-sided relationship between anthropology as an ethnological study, which of necessity uses literary language - and writing itself as a subject for ethnography. Cultural Reader-response theory shows that every text involves some participation on the reader’s part and is not a solitary unchanging object. This response will itself be a function of social and cultural relations. At the same time, cultural and social life, studied by anthropologists, only becomes explicable through language and the results of ethnographic fieldwork are always, therefore, mediated by linguistic forms. The development of literary anthropology gained momentum in the 1980s but had already germinated in the pioneering work of Levi-Strauss whose work on kinship structures in the 1940s and his study of myth turned the attention of anthropologists towards the important and neglected dimension of language. Since then it has been recognised that an anthropologist’s work is diminished if theoretical and linguistic aspects are unaddressed. and the realm of socio-anthropology has been enriched. Disciplinary and genre distinctions have become very fluid in the past few decades and many university departmental studies now blend literary criticism with culture studies, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, folk discourses, and hermeneutics. While a standard definition of one of any two terms may be possible, it may not always be practical. Therefore, the definition of these two terms—anthropology and literature—needs to be updated from time to time to reflect ongoing developments and the advancements taking place in various fields. In particular, it is evident that coinciding with the linguistic turn’ in English literature studies, the discourse of anthropology has become permeable. A broad ‘literary anthropology’ can become possible as a science only if it maintains a dialogue between ideas, actions, and texts. The results and conclusions of this study substantiate the inseparable and interdependent relationship between two traditional approaches to investigating man as a social being.

The Historic Importance of the Koala in Aboriginal Society in New South Wales, Australia: An Exploration of the Archival Record

AbstractThe principal aim of this study is to provide a detailed examination of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archival records that relate to New South Wales Aboriginal peoples' associations with koalas and gain a greater understanding of the utilitarian and symbolic significance of koalas for Aboriginal communities as recorded by colonists during the early period of colonization. Anthropological discussions about the role and significance of koalas in Australian Aboriginal society have been limited, some sources are unreliable and interpretation is at times divisive. Many scholars have previously highlighted how using only historical sources as its reference point it is difficult to discern with great specificity that Aboriginal peoples in other regions of New South Wales commonly ate the koala and used its skin. Through a critique of historical sources, we demonstrate that the ethno-historical evidence is inconclusive as to whether they were an integral food source for much of the time period covered by this paper in the area now called the state of New South Wales. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the extent of their use varied across regions and between tribal groups and was likely to have been traditionally associated with lore specific to certain cultural groups, and may have involved dreaming stories, and gendered roles in hunting and resource use, and other aspects of spiritual belief systems.

The Historic Importance of the Koala in Aboriginal Society in New South Wales, Australia: An Exploration of the Archival Record

Abstract The principal aim of this study is to provide a detailed examination of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archival records that relate to New South Wales Aboriginal peoples' associations with koalas and gain a greater understanding of the utilitarian and symbolic significance of koalas for Aboriginal communities as recorded by colonists during the early period of colonization. Anthropological discussions about the role and significance of koalas in Australian Aboriginal society have been limited, some sources are unreliable and interpretation is at times divisive. Many scholars have previously highlighted how using only historical sources as its reference point it is difficult to discern with great specificity that Aboriginal peoples in other regions of New South Wales commonly ate the koala and used its skin. Through a critique of historical sources, we demonstrate that the ethno-historical evidence is inconclusive as to whether they were an integral food source for much of the time period covered by this paper in the area now called the state of New South Wales. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the extent of their use varied across regions and between tribal groups and was likely to have been traditionally associated with lore specific to certain cultural groups, and may have involved dreaming stories, and gendered roles in hunting and resource use, and other aspects of spiritual belief systems.

Ritual, Sex and the Body: Heterodox Ritual Practices at Pilgrimage Sites in Central Java

This article compares three pilgrimage sites in Central Java known for heterodox ritual practices. These practices include sexual activities between partners who are not married to each other (ritual seks). Since the sexual partners meet each other as strangers, they ignore the possible differences of rank and status between them and encounter each other as equals. These practices are part of a ritual repertoire that is constitutive of a current within Islam for which the controversial category abangan has established itself in anthropological discourse. The fact that these ritual practices have been enjoying an unprecedented boom in the context of local pilgrimages since the 1980s sheds a different light on the widely held thesis of a decline in this social category. Rather, this boom makes it clear that the Islamisation of Indonesia is not a linear process, but is ambivalent and contradictory.

The Night-Side of Zangskar: Spirits, Landscape, and the Uncanny

Anthropological discussions of place and landscape have tended to be dominated by a focus on the Heideggerian concept of “dwelling”, with an emphasis on values of wisdom, belonging and connectedness. This approach privileges descriptions of knowledge and harmony over those of uncertainty and fear, with the effect of obscuring the less positive associations of landscape. In this article, drawing on fieldwork in the predominantly Buddhist valley of Zangskar in the western Indian Himalaya, I will suggest that local stories of encounters with spirits instead demonstrate a sense of the “uncanny”: a disorienting mingling of the familiar and the strange that emerges from the limitations of ordinary human knowledge and perception. The Zangskari landscape encompasses hidden places and villages of semi-human beings, and when night falls it takes on another aspect: in encounters with spirits and the “hidden people”, boundaries are dissolved and the categories of the strange and the familiar are collapsed. These beings take on almost-human forms and project both an ambiguous familiarity and a basic otherness, revealed in the darkness, that stands behind the appearances of day.

Learning patterns of tourist movement and photography from geotagged photos at archaeological heritage sites in Cuzco, Peru

The popularity of media sharing platforms in recent decades has provided an abundance of open source data that remains underutilized by heritage scholars. By pairing geotagged internet photographs with machine learning and computer vision algorithms, we build upon the current theoretical discourse of anthropology associated with visuality and heritage tourism to identify travel patterns across a known archaeological heritage circuit, and quantify visual culture and experiences in Cuzco, Peru. Leveraging large-scale in-the-wild tourist photos, our goals are to (1) understand how the intensification of tourism intersects with heritage regulations and social media, aiding in the articulation of travel patterns across Cuzco's heritage landscape; and to (2) assess how aesthetic preferences and visuality become entangled with the rapidly evolving expectations of tourists, whose travel narratives are curated on social media and grounded in historic site representations.

Anthropological discourse of orthodoxy in the context of existential uncertainty of modern human being

Anthropological discourse of orthodoxy in the context of existential uncertainty of modern human being

Pensando a través de la sonoridad y la escucha del pueblo huave: cosmología, rito y vida social

<p>Mi objetivo es analizar el modo en que los huaves de San Mateo del Mar establecen un tipo de socialidad con los santos católicos y los <em>mombasüik</em> (ancestros deificados homologados a los santos), mediante la sonoridad producida por dos grupos de especialistas rituales en la celebración religiosa del Corpus Christi. Los grupos son los <em>montsünd naab</em> (los que tocan los tambores) y los <em>monlüy kawüy</em> (los que corren a caballo). Los primeros se expresan sirviéndose de una flauta de carrizo, un par de tambores y varios caparazones de tortuga percutidos con cuernos de venado; los segundos emitiendo silbos, gritos y haciendo ruido con dos <em>skil</em> (baterías de 13 cencerros amarrados a una correa de cuero). Mi aproximación es etnográfica y los resultados de la investigación permiten plantear que la socialidad mencionada tiene implicaciones ecológicas, económicas y político-ontológicas, pues realizando la sonoridad en cuestión los huaves buscan ganarse las dádivas energéticas que dispensan los santos y los <em>mombasüik</em>, al tiempo que refrendan la relación trascendental que los alianza. La originalidad del escrito radica en pensar a una sociedad por medio del análisis de aquello que habilita la realización de ciertas expresiones sonoro-musicales en un periodo ritual. Con ello se contribuye a la discusión antropológica y etnomusicológica actual sobre el tópico de las relaciones inter-específicas (humanos, no-humanos) mediante expresiones estéticas entre los pueblos originarios de México. </p><div> </div>

Familial Intimacy and the ‘Thing’ between Us

During the government-imposed contact restrictions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, older adults feared that they may no longer be able to experience physical contact with family members. They were, however, given hope by a ‘cuddle curtain’, a device that promised to enable familial intimacy while blocking the exposure of older bodies to the coronavirus. Our research team traced how one such artefact was used in nursing homes in Switzerland. Here, we discuss its cultural biography to explore notions of intimacy by relating discussions about the curtain to anthropological discussions about entanglement and detachment. We contrast positive associations between the curtain and familial intimacy with regulations surrounding body fluid barriers in sex work, in order to relate the ‘thing’ to the larger context within which it circulates.