Anthropological Reflections Research Articles

Direitos Humanos e suas circulações extra-legais: algumas reflexões antropológicas

A partir de reflexões antropológicas sobre os Direitos Humanos, abordo três questões que animaram minha participação no Workshop Global Phenomena and Social Sciences realizado na Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3, em 4 de fevereiro de 2016. 1) Como leis e profissionais do direito têm se posicionado frente a movimentos e fluxos cada vez mais intensos de pessoas e bens? 2) Podemos dizer que tais movimentos e fluxos estão fora de controle? 3) É possível legislar a respeito do que transita e é fluido? Entre as conclusões, destaco que categorias e instituições político-jurídico-clássicas, como Povo, Estado, Nação e Indivíduo estão aquém de questões, agentes e agências coletivos contemporâneos, cuja dinâmica de poder circula basicamente em rede. Acrescento que a antropologia, aberta a diálogos interdisciplinares e à percepção e ao entendimento desses sujeitos coletivos, pode potencializar uma ética baseada nos Direitos Humanos e alargar horizontes cognitivos.

PROVOCAÇÕES PÓS-HUMANISTAS À TEOLOGIA CRISTÃ

O artigo visa discutir algumas provocações pós-humanistas à Teologia cristã, considerada em sua vertente mais progressista. Nesse sentido, desconsidera as posições fundamentalistas de determinados segmentos do Cristianismo e da Teologia cristã, fortemente marcados pelo dualismo. Parte do pressuposto de que, mesmo considerando suas melhores reflexões antropológicas, a Teologia Cristã ainda assim se sente interpelada e desafiada pelas propostas pós-humanistas. Apresenta o pós-humanismo em suas vertentes crítica e especulativa, destacando seus principais pressupostos e possibilidades. Finalmente, propõe três provocações pós-humanistas à Teologia cristã, quais sejam: a questão da integralidade do ser humano; a questão da promoção da vida e a questão da mudança comportamental.

Development as Crossing: An Anthropological Approach

This article proposes an anthropological reflection about development, in the philosophical sense of the term. Contemporary philosophers seem to be far from the question of development, which is an essential question for the societies of our time. It is therefore urgent to enunciate a theory of development, anthropological reflection that lies beyond economic and political theories on development. It is necessary to think about development, in its link with humanity or the essence of the human, by leading it to the element of its truth, namely the individual well-being, which escapes all attempts at control, probability and econometrics. This article proposes a new paradigm of development calls for a fundamental reflection, based on the analysis of human consciousness. We examine human consciousness, to understand its foundations about crossing, in a discourse with a universal aim.

La enseñanza de lenguas no maternas en la era de las migraciones: la importancia de las biografías lingüísticas

Aunque el concepto de ‘identidad’ ha estado en el centro del debate sobre el aprendizaje de una L2, su disociación de la capacidad de decisión de los sujetos (‘agentividad’) tiene el efecto de simplificar aquella en exceso y permite una conceptualización no problemática del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la L2. A partir de datos obtenidos de cuestionarios administrados a inmigrantes adultos procedentes de Rumanía, Marruecos, Guinea Ecuatorial y otros países del Africa subsahariana que viven en Madrid, se sugiere que el concepto de ‘agentividad’ es crucial en cualquier reflexión antropológica sobre el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua ya que subyace a la identidad y la motivación, está mediado por lo que Schiffman (2006) denomina ‘cultura lingüística’ y, además, está íntimamente asociado a la alteridad.

Kłopoty z „rasą” – przypadek Ludwika Krzywickiego

The article presents the transformations of Ludwik Krzywicki’s views on race. First, based on the biographical and intellectual context, an important place of anthropological reflection of the author of Ludy [Peoples] is pointed out. Krzywicki, aware of the threats coming from the young discipline, perceived it, however, as the chance for the development of science and society. Further in the article, the problems of researchers with ambiguous value judgments about race appearing in the anthropological works of the Polish Marxist are discussed and compared with the difficulties of Krzywicki himself, who from the very beginning of dealing with ethnographic research tried to systematize the reflection on the subject. The fuzzy scope of meaning, ideological burdens, arbitrariness, relativity, and conventionality of the concept of race ultimately led the author to reject the problematic category but also contributed to the development of quantitative and qualitative sociological analysis in his later studies.

An exceptional justice system in the Central African Republic. Legal and anthropological reflections on the criminalisation of witchcraft

En Centrafrique, face a la penalisation de la sorcellerie, la rencontre entre des magistrats et des anthropologues a permis d’inaugurer des espaces d’echange inedits, mais a aussi mis en lumiere des differends qui ont marque les tentatives de collaboration. Au cœur de ces debats disciplinaires et epistemologiques, l’articulation du traitement judiciaire de la sorcellerie avec des rhetoriques de valorisation identitaire a ete frequemment observee, dans des salles d’audience comme dans des lieux de formation. A travers leurs interventions politiques et economiques, certains acteurs internationaux dans le pays (institutions specialisees, ONG, experts et consultants) ont contribue non seulement a ces debats mais aussi, parfois, pour des raisons que cet article s’efforce d’eclairer, au raffermissement des lois repressives antisorcellerie. Les auteurs s’arretent, en particulier, sur l’instrumentalisation de ces differentes perspectives professionnelles lors des procedures judiciaires et, au prealable, lors des enquetes policieres a Bangui et dans l’interieur du pays. Un retour sur des documents d’archive permet, dans la deuxieme partie de l’article, de montrer la profondeur historique des malentendus autour de la repression de la sorcellerie et la maniere dont ceux-ci ont pu servir, depuis l’epoque coloniale, la reproduction instrumentale de differentes formes de repression et de brutalite.

Response: Postexceptionalist Puritanism: Rocking the Foundations

Response: Postexceptionalist Puritanism: Rocking the Foundations

Marriage \u201csharia style\u201d: everyday practices of Islamic morality in England

The growing visibility of Islam in the public spaces of Western societies is often interpreted in the media as a sign of Muslim radicalisation. This article questions this postulate by examining the flourishing Muslim marriage industry in the UK. It argues that these ‘halal’ services, increasingly popular among the young generation of British Muslims, reflect the semantic shifting of categories away from the repertoire of Islamic jurisprudence to cultural and identity labels visible in public space. Informed by long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the British field of Islamic law, this article examines a Muslim speed-dating event, which took place in central London in 2013. It investigates how Islamic morality is maintained and negotiated in everyday social interactions rather than cultivated via discipline and the pursuit of virtuous dispositions. Using Goffman’s “frame analysis” and his interpretation of the social as a space of “performances” as well as recent anthropological reflections on “ordinary ethics” (Lambek) and “everyday Islam” (Schielke, Osella and Soares), it examines the potential for such practices to define the contours of a new public culture where difference is celebrated as a form of distinction.

Imagination as Power of the Soul

The Romanian reader of philosophy knows Pascal in general through his anthropological reflections, of which the most famous is the one that gives man the status of a thinking reed. The French philosophers Gerard Bras and Jean-Pierre Clero bring to attention an important contribution of Pascal's philosophy to the development of European modernity, the problem of imagination figures, raised by authors at the level of Pascalian philosophical doctrine.

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) experiences: an ethnographic approach to their expression on the Internet forums.

This contribution aims at describing the experiences of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) as discussed on Internet forums. Since the 2000s, increasing attention has been paid to health practices associated with the use of the Internet, whether by medical professionals, public authorities or researchers in the social sciences. We know that Internet is used by patients with Parkinson's disease, in order to discuss about their lived experiences. This contribution will present how these Internet users address the specific theme of DBS. We will examine how their use and the information sharing associated to it participate in the "shaping" of the lived experience of deep cerebral stimulation. This contribution will be introduced by an analysis of the state-of-the-art in sociological and anthropological international research on the topic of "Internet health". On the basis of this analysis, it will propose a framework to describe and understand the various uses of the web that are made to give an account of the experience of stimulation. The existence of collective mobilizations in Parkinson's disease, an old Internet experience and media oppositions concerning certain antiparkinsonian drugs, are conditions which push us to question these themes concerning DBS. This paper is a description, for the first time, of roles played by the users of these Internet forums and the different online activities produced about DBS subject. In an ethnographic perspective, we had to imagine that we were an Internet user seeking patient experiences with this surgical procedure to understand these interactions about DBS. The main goal of this contribution is to describe the attention paid by users for medical information about DBS in the identity and self-help process. The interest of such an approach is to open an anthropological reflection on the place and the role of the medical representations in the testimonies of experience of the disease or the treatments.

On Walking and Thinking: Two Walks across the Page

On Walking and Thinking: Two Walks across the Page

Planificación familiar natural

Family planning through natural means is the result of previous ethical and anthropological reflection. Deprived of this foundation, one easily falls prey to widespread errors regarding its inefficacy, its scarce demand and the difficulty of its learning and utilization. Neither would it be possible here to ignore the moral dimensión of this human act.

Антропологічний вимір освіти у творчій спадщині провідників української педагогіки

The article generalizes the main anthropological positions in the views on the educational process, which are disclosed in the creative heritage of Ukrainian pedagogues-guides K. Ushinsky, A. Makarenko and V. Sukhomlinsky. K. Ushinsky drew attention to the problems of human cognition, the analysis of anthropological, physical, psychological factors of education, the position of man as a part of nature, the need for activity, labor, physical activity. His ideas have not lost their value in the present and should be taken into account in the current conditions of the development of the Ukrainian state and the affirmation of national values. The main features of Makarenko pedagogy should be considered: the dialectical combination and separation of teaching methods from the methodology of education; the unity of education and training of children, the unity of education and life of children, the combination of studying the basic sciences in a secondary school with productive labor; a full-fledged team as a necessary condition for the most complete development of abilities and personality freedoms, a well thought-out system of measures focused on the formation of conscious discipline, new sections of theoretical pedagogy such as pedagogical technology, pedagogical logic, the theory of perspectives, the theory of style and tone of education, the theory of parallel pedagogical action, pedagogy of collective education, which enriches pedagogical anthropology and proves the leadership format of his activity. Sources of pedagogical creativity of V. Sukhomlynsky were classical humanistic heritage, folk pedagogy, advanced pedagogical experience, and the principles of its pedagogical system should be considered development of the ideal of cultural desires of the child (needs in labor, in the creation of goodness, beauty); creating for her “joy of being” and the atmosphere of childhood success, the predominance of positive experiences over negative – the existential conditions that correspond to the nature of the person who learns. It was established that scientists tried to determine the subject of pedagogy and the essence of education; considerable attention was paid to the educational work of the collective as a spiritual environment; the question of the correlation of biological and social. It is proved that the creativity of the outstanding teachers is filled with the views of democracy, humanism, patriotism in the upbringing of the younger generation, focused on the future and better in man, which confirms the leadership format of their activities. Keywords: leadership, anthropologism, humanism, patriotism, dialecticism, synergetics, empathy, anthropological reflection.

La antropología de Cornelio Fabro

Cornelio Fabro’s rich anthropological reflections are not as well known as his ritings and essays on Saint Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard and atheism. His research on perception and freedom aims to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the existential unity of the human person. In this article, we develop the key concepts of Fabro’s thought on freedom, which are based primarily upon his university lectures and other unpublished manuscripts.

AFTERWORD Places, migration and sustainability: anthropological reflections on mining and movement

AbstractBased on ethnographic research around the Misima and Lihir gold mines in Papua New Guinea, this Afterword provides anthropological reflections on the main themes of the articles in this issue. Endorsing the call for interdisciplinary research on mining, I present instantiations of the varying meanings of place, migration and sustainability. I describe variations in perceptions of place between different sites and these are also subject to change over time. The commoditization of land and engagement with capitalism profoundly alter knowledge and understanding of place and ideals of development. Migration occurs at different rates over the life of the mine but has a lasting effect on the stability of the community and its economic sustainability. Mining companies often resort to simplistic and inadequate solutions to the environmental and social problems created by their projects.

Lost in Translation: Anthropological Reflections on Cancer Survivorship in Primary Care

Abstract In 2006, the Institute of Medicine released a report detailing how cancer survivors in the United States were “lost in transition” from specialty to primary care. Here, I address a different problem: that of being “lost in translation.” Interviews with cancer survivors in community-based primary care practices across the United States revealed a fundamental disconnect between survivorship rhetoric and patients' perspectives on what was clinically, emotionally, and physically relevant to them. In reflecting on this disconnect, I ask how anthropologists can negotiate top-down stakeholder interests with ground-level understandings in biomedical research settings, where clinicians and biomedical scientists often dictate the terms of research. I argue that anthropology has a valuable role to play in teasing out the complexities of clinical and identity categories in biomedical research.

Anthropology of Tourism: Researching Interactions between Hosts and Guests

AbstractThis study focuses on the theoretical analysis of social interaction and relationship between guests and hosts from the perspective of anthropology of tourism. In the 1960s and 1970s, attention was paid predominantly to anthropological reflection of negative socio-cultural impacts of tourism on host communities. However, towards the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s the research focus began to shift towards an analysis and interpretation of the influence of commodification on the perceptions of identity and authenticity of the host culture, while the positive aspects of tourism began to be recognized as well. This study aims to present an overview of the basic approaches within the anthropology of tourism to social interaction between guests and hosts. The objective of the study is to provide a summary of miscellaneous approaches to and views on this issue.

Antropologia niepełnosprawności: narodziny, schyłek i odrodzenie paradygmatu

Firstly, the paper reconstructs the core stages of the anthropological reflection on the disabled human being condition. Each stage shows certain strengths but, at the same time, limitations, since, according to the thesis advocated by the author, the humankind has still not achieved an appropriate quality of the disabled and enabled individuals coexistence. Secondly, the paper examines modern philosophical anthropologies which could empower such a coexistence. Herder and Gehlen’s approach seems to offer a more adequate contribution than Kant’s (and scholastic) anthropology. The revival of the paradigm is only thinkable due to the overall transvaluation of disability-related axiologies and the postconventionalisation of the disability-related norms.

Social anthropology and transnational studies in Latin America: introduction

The article analyzes the change of perspectives and narratives about national borders, the circulation of people and the political definitions of the limits of the National State in the social sciences since the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, to the most recent outcomes of the international geopolitics. The place occupied by the transnational perspective of migration is questioned, inquiring its role in the formation of critical anthropological reflections that, in the last two decades, have allowed a re-oxygenation of the classical categories of analysis in the social sciences. The discussion also sediments the questioning about the possible outcomes of this anthropological reflection in a context of profound international political changes regarding human mobility.

PEOPLE IN CONTEXT: ANTHROPOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS IN A ‘POST‐TRUTH’ WORLD

Anthropology TodayVolume 34, Issue 1 p. 21-21 Conferences PEOPLE IN CONTEXT: ANTHROPOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS IN A ‘POST-TRUTH’ WORLD Luca Lo Scavo, Luca Lo Scavo luca.loscavo@gmail.com Leiden UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Luca Lo Scavo, Luca Lo Scavo luca.loscavo@gmail.com Leiden UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 February 2018 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12409AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume34, Issue1February 2018Pages 21-21 RelatedInformation