Cultural Presuppositions Research Articles

The Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick by Lizette Larson-Miller

book reviews 611 juridic institute of incardination of any meaning. In other words, in as much as all rights and obligations on the part of the institute and of the individual cease with definitive dismissal, any bond between the two exists only on the abstract level, without any substantive content. But this issue remains disputed and does not detract from the value of the author’s work. Robert J. Kaslyn, S.J. School of Canon Law Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. THE SACRAMENT OF ANOINTING OF THE SICK by Lizette Larson-Miller. Lex Orandi Series. John D. Laurence, S.J., General Editor . Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2005. Lizette Larson-Miller’s carefully written book on the anointing of the sick takes the post-Vatican II rite as its source for elucidating the theological and pastoral significance of this sacrament. That is precisely the task assigned all the authors of the books in the Lex Orandi Series as stated in the preface to the series by its editor, John D. Laurence. When Prosper of Aquitane referred to the “lex orandi” in the solemn prayers of Good Friday to make his case against the semi-Pelagians, he was not concerned to produce a theology of the Good Friday liturgy, but rather to highlight the human need for divine grace identified in its orations. Prosper knew that the words and actions of liturgy produced insight about theological truths even beyond the meaning of the particular rite in which they may be found. Larson-Miller also knows that the Church’s liturgical tradition reaches beyond itself to establish theological truths that are not narrowly liturgical. This book shows how the reformed rite of anointing not only generates a lucid picture of the meaning of the sacrament but also serves as a source for a theological understanding of human suffering , sin, dependence upon God and community, the Paschal Mystery, ecclesiology , pastoral care, and more. The “lex orandi,” in this more expansive sense, is the project of this book. The first chapter establishes the rite of anointing within the context of the new ritual’s overall program of pastoral care for the sick and dying so that the second chapter can take on the task of studying the heart of this ministry found in the sacramental anointing. This analysis gives rise to a third chapter on the theological issues and questions the author finds in the new rite. A final chapter brings the insights of the liturgy to bear on the cultural circumstances, both general and ecclesial, that shape the way we think about sickness and dying. These “theological questions” and these “insights” come both from the rite and from modern human experience . Thus, the author places modern culture and liturgical tradition in dialogue. Some of the issues raised here include the debate about the necessity of presbyteral ministry in the rite of anointing, the ability of the anointing to effect the forgiveness of sins, the question of physical healing, the effect of the sacrament on those who are at the point of death, and the ecclesial nature of the sacrament. The cultural presuppositions about human suffering, its apparent futility, and the relationship between sickness and sin likewise are raised. These are very big questions, bound to generate far-reaching discussions and expansive theologizing. The very fact that they are raised is evidence of the author’s knowledge of the tradition and familiarity with both the cultural climate and pastoral ministry . It is impossible for a book of this size to resolve all these issues but Larson-Miller raises them in a way that will encourage readers to seek further insight from our liturgical tradition and theology. Some readers will be disappointed to find here many more questions than answers. This, however, may well be one of the great contributions of this book destined to be read in upper level undergraduate or master’slevel theology courses. It raises unavoidable questions in a way that will inevitably stir discussion. In the hands of a knowledgeable instructor, Larson-Miller’s book will provide opportunities for the discussion of historical details, comparative liturgy, and the fundamentals of sacramental theology with a group of students now ready to recognize...

Unfinished Work

The cyborg that Donna Haraway appropriated in ‘Manifesto for Cyborgs’ as a metaphor for political action and theoretical inquiry has ceased to have the potency it did 20 years ago. While Haraway has turned from a central focus on technoculture to companion species, much important cultural work remains to be done, especially in networked and programmable media. Problems with the cyborg as a metaphor include the implication that the liberal humanist subject, however problematized by its hybridization with cybernetic mechanism, continues as a singular entity operating with localized agency. In a word, the cyborg is not networked enough to encompass the emergent possibilities associated with the Internet and the world-wide web and other phenomena of the contemporary digital era. Instead I propose the idea of the cognisphere. As operational concept and suggestive metaphor, the cognisphere recognizes that networked and programmable media are not only more pervasive than ever before in human history but also more cognitively powerful. It is closely associated with what many researchers regard as a major insight: the idea that the physical world is fundamentally computational. While these scientists regard computation as a physical process, the cultural critic is apt to see it as an over-determined metaphor. The binary choice between seeing the computational universe as a literal description of the physical world and reading it as an over-determined metaphor misses a crucial aspect of contemporary cultural dynamics: the interaction between means and metaphor, technology and cultural presupposition. Taking this dynamic into account leads to a more complete understanding summed up in the aphorism, ‘What we make and what (we think) we are co-evolve together.’

Comparative Sociology of Law: Legal Fields, Legal Scholarships, and Social Sciences in Europe and the United States

This article attempts to gain a better understanding of the sociology(ies) of law in a comparative perspective through a structural and comparative explanation of the American and the French legal fields. It is argued that comparative sociology of law will not be able to explain the difference among countries, scholars, movements, and schools of thought in short, it will not be able to compare—as long as it avoids the analysis of some social and cultural presuppositions related to the context in which these differences take place. It focuses mainly on two of these presuppositions. First, legal fields, with their history, their internal structure, and their power relations, and second the type of relation between the legal field and the state. The empirical examination provided in this article explicitly seeks to offer insights for the reconstruction of Bourdieu's structural theory of the legal field.

What Really Matters

What Really Matters Meredith B. McGuire (bio) In his 1985 study of popular religious expression in early 20th century Italian Harlem, Robert Orsi observed that Italian Americans made a distinction between "religion" and "church," with religion referring to "what really matters" in their lives.1 I welcome this new book, because Orsi compellingly demonstrates why all scholars of religion ought to examine carefully our implicit assumptions about what is "religion" and to refocus on "what really matters" in the practice and experience of the people whose religions we purport to understand. I hope that sociologists of religion, in particular, will consider Robert Orsi's critical challenge, because our field has been blind to "what really matters" in people's religious lives. Especially in the United States, sociology has too narrowly focused on religious organizations and groups (researching, for example, membership and participation rates), assuming that church affiliation somehow represents the "religion" of persons involved in that organization. When sociology has considered the religions of individuals, our discipline has typically focused on individual participation in those religious organizations and their activities, as well as measures of individual affirmation or non-affirmation beliefs of church-prescribed beliefs and values. Orsi amply demonstrates the seriousness of the mistakes we make when we over-emphasize "belief" as the core of religion. If we want to study "what really matters" in people's religious lives, scholars of religion need a whole different understanding of what we call "religion." Robert Orsi applies a critical historical perspective to the social construction of knowledge and thought produced by our scholarly disciplines studying religion. He argues that both our methodologies and our theories are deeply influenced by modernist assumptions, inherited from our 18th and 19th century scholarly progenitors, such that researchers cannot recognize many people's religious expressions as "religion." This modernist bias results, not only in the failure to comprehend people's religions, but also in the uncritical use of moralizing dichotomous conceptual distinctions, embedded in our very definitions of religion and religiosity. Orsi asserts, "The mother of all religious dichotomies—us/them—has regularly been constituted as a moral distinction—good/bad religion" (183). When scholars researching religion uncritically [End Page 107] accept such dichotomies and the definitional boundaries they substantiate, not only do we fail to comprehend people's religions, but also we contribute to the prejudices and antagonisms used to justify both subtle and overt violence toward the religious Other. Historians can offer a valuable corrective perspective, reminding scholars who study religion that conceptual categories (e.g., sacred vs. profane, religion vs. magic) are themselves the result of long periods of contestation, the results of which have been profoundly shaped by power and domination. Anthropologists, likewise, expose the narrow, Western cultural presuppositions embedded in our scholarly concepts.2 In my opinion, it is difficult to distinguish the modernist bias (amply unmasked by Orsi) in our scholarly concepts from the protestant bias, especially in the conceptual framework of the sociology of religion. By "protestant" I mean constellation of ideas that gained currency in the Reformation era, influencing Catholic, as well as Protestant, notions of religious belonging and the boundaries delineating acceptable/unacceptable belief and practice. A good example is the notion that people as individuals (rather than as families or tribes) make voluntary choices of their religious "belief-system" (understood as a coherent creedal package, promulgated by a specific religious organization). Another example is the concept of religious commitment as bonds with an identifiable religious group whose members are religiously qualified individuals, as judged by "right" moral standards and "correct" beliefs. Historically "Protestant," such ideas are now embedded in many scholars' conceptual frameworks.3 We need to expose such biases in our conceptual tools and find ways to move beyond the narrow image of religion to which they have constricted us. These ideas are, themselves, social products of a long period of conflict and contestation—between and among Catholics and Protestants alike—that some historians call the "long Reformation," roughly 1300 to 1700 CE. Historian Edward Muir has argued that this "long Reformation" resulted in an enormous shift in perspective in Western Christianity: previously, the boundaries of encouraged (as well as minimally acceptable...

CULTURAL CAPSULES AND READING TEXTS: TRIGGERS TO CROSS-CULTURAL LANGUAGE AWARENESS

The use of English in the international setting is based on cultural presuppositions about the kinds of language performance that are appropriate or specific situations. Culture capsules are useful teaching techniques to teach English, as learners would be able to bring in their own cultural insights into learning the pragmatics of English through the various combinations of word choice, prosodic and paralinguistic features. This paper will provide examples of capsules which focus on a range of speech acts (greetings, directives, requests, etc) and demonstrate how they can be used as a stimulus to cross-cultural language awareness.

Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault by Philipp W. Rosemann (review)

1?6ARTHURIANA device? Or, as is suggested, a negative way ofresponding to conditions in the world (the 'uninventive' mind)? Can we not give the author ofthis play more credit than this? This play, shot through as it is relentlessly with details ofsocial and economic relations, offers much more to the audience than an allegory that leads to a mind that can readily grasp 'divine nature in created reality' (151). Ifthis was all the Master had in mind then what is the audience supposed to think about the state ofworld affairs at play's opening, not to mention in Yorkshire? Purdon's analysis of the plays is here at cross-purposes with his claim that he wants the Wakefield Master to take his place alongside Chaucer and as a precursor to early modern English public theater. To do this, and I think it worth doing, he would need to attend more closely and sensitively to the Masters dramatic art as one not of 'conservative' purpose as a therapeutic experience of learning what amounts to proper Christian behaviour, but rather that spiritual iniquity and social inequality are inextricably linked in human being in the world. What theWakefield Master offers in his drama is an appeal to his audience's experience ofthe world and its many injustices and demands upon them for faith, perseverance, skill and character (in the Greek sense of ethos) through the promise of Christ's message of salvation through brotherly love and the rejection ofmodes ofbeing that ignore or attack this. BRAD GREENBURG Northeastern Illinois University Philipp w. rosemann, Understanding Scholastic Thought with Foucault. The New Middle Ages. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 256. isbn: 0-312-21713-7. $65. A recent and widely recognized trend which has come to be named the 'New Medievalism' combines sophisticated awareness of methodological theory with meticulous attention to historical detail in examining selected aspects of medieval culture, society, and institutions. Rosemann applies the post-structuralist theory of history developed by Michel Foucault to a survey ofscholastic intellectual history as an attempt to show how significant new insights are to be gained from the application ofa postmodern approach in the study ofmedieval intellectual history. He prefaces his work with a definition ofthe New Medievalism and a survey of its roots in the work of M.-D. Chenu and Fernand Van Steenburgen, then makes a brief review of some of the scholarly work in which a new approach to medieval studies can be observed. Examples include Alain de Liberas Penser au Moyen Age, new trends in the study ofJohn Scottus Eriugena, and the series Studia Artistarum founded by Olga Weijers and Louis Holtz. Rosemann notes the decline of Neoscholasticism and a general waning of interest in medieval sources after the Second Vatican Council, but urges a re-appropriation ofscholastic thought through recognition ofits affinities to the theoretical bases ofpostmodern thought. The book is divided into a series ofsix 'Studies' beginningwith a basic introduction to Foucault's philosophy of history, and its foundations in Nietsche's Die Geburt der Tragödieausdem Geiste derMusik. Special attention is given to Foucault's concept REVIEWS107 of the 'historical a prions' which are, in Rosemann's words, 'the set of cultural (economic, social, political, philosophical) presuppositions' (p. 37) that govern any given culture's experience ofits realities. Foucault's 'archaeological analysis,' therefore, can be applied to establishing the historical a priori ofthe middle ages, and then to analysing its intellectual practices, or the activities that Foucault defined as the culture's 'rules of formation.' In the second study, Rosemann compares the great medievalists De Wulf, Grabmann, and R. W. Southern on the doctrinal tradition ofthe Middle Ages, before applying a Foucauldian analysis to the tensions between Greek and Christian thought which characterized the patristic and medieval periods. Turning in the third study to the intellectual practices ofthe Middle Ages, Rosemann juxtaposes the techniques and technology of medieval writing with high Gothic architecture, the institutional structures of the universities, and the reading techniques ofscholasticism, thereby bringing to light the surprising interconnections that make up a new and distinctive set ofhigh medieval cultural a priori. Six black and white plate illustrations are included to support his presentation...

Ethnosyntax: Explorations in Grammar and Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Ethnosyntax: Explorations in grammar and culture ed. by N. J. Enfield Agustinus Gianto Ethnosyntax: Explorations in grammar and culture. Ed. by N. J. Enfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix, 325. ISBN 0199249067. $72 (Hb). The twelve papers in this book look at how far culture can account for language variation, how culture and grammar connect to each other, and what influence one has over the other. The introductory essay by N. J. Enfield (3–30) in Part 1 gives an overview of the development of ethnosyntax and the methodological issues involved. In this connection, Anthony V. N. Diller and Wilaiwan Khanittanan (31–51) show that all syntactic inquiries are likely to be determined by the analyst’s cultural presuppositions about the language. As highlighted by Cliff Goddard (52–73), ethnosyntactic research can legitimately be conceived in a ‘narrow’ sense (culture-related meanings as encoded in the morphosyntax) or in a ‘broad’ sense (further relations between culture and syntax). John Newman (74–95) presents the narrow perspective when he establishes that ‘give’ constructions in Maori, Nahuatl, and Zulu exhibit no obvious correlates outside the grammatical systems they are part of. The papers in Part 2 deal with the relations between culture, semantics, and grammar. As shown by Wallace Chafe (99–109), the male-oriented culture of early North Iroquoian reflected in the gender morphology persists until the present even if male dominance is no longer the case. Andrew Paley (110–37) focuses on rules for gender assignment for inanimate objects in informal Tasmanian English: he for portable things about which the speaker is emotionally indifferent, and she otherwise. Plants, animals, and male genitals are considered masculine while other objects are feminine. Ronald W. Langacker (138–61) shows some common grammaticalization paths in English and Mixtec locative constructions. According to Anna Wierzbicka (162–203), English let reflects these possible meanings: permission, noninterruption, apparent indifference, nonprevention, tolerance, shared information, cooperative dialogue, interaction, thinking, and an offer to perform a service, with let’s proposing joint action as opposed to let us, which expresses authority. [End Page 171] Part 3 is devoted to culture, pragmatics, and grammaticalization. Kate Burridge (207–30) explains that the loss of the subjunctive of wishful thinking, wotte, in Pennsylvania German (Standard German wollte) and its subsequent development into a lexical verb meaning ‘to wish’ is due to the influence of the basic Anabaptist worldview, that is, separateness, nonconformity, humility, and simplicity. She also claims that the development of zehle ‘to count’ as future marker is consistent with the strong Anabaptist belief that future things lie exclusively in God’s will. N. J. Enfield (231–58) attempts to show how Lao’s ideas about the proper bodily postures in doing certain activities weighs considerably on the productivity of certain serialization-involving verbs describing such postures. Alan Rumsey’s paper (259–86) discusses some aspects of social life which are reflected in Ku Waru (New Guinea) existential clauses, the use of 1st and 2nd singular and dual pronouns, and oratorical style. Finally, Jane Simpson (287–307) suggests that some syntactic constructions in Walpiri grammaticalize some commonly held assumptions and expectations that provide some common ground upon which people usually start a conversation. Agustinus Gianto Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

Editorial

Editorial Estelle R. Jorgensen Among the areas of particular concern to music education philosophers are matters having to do with what music teachers should do in their classrooms, studios, rehearsal spaces, and all the other places in which they teach. Their instruction-where theory meets practice, the desirable meets the possible, and teacher meets student-comprises the kernel of music education. Instructional meeting places and times frame the ways in which received wisdom and practices from the past can be transmitted and transformed and where teachers and their students can actively engage the subject matter, relate with one another, and together undergo the process of music teaching and learning. Sometimes, learning is less directed and more informal so that music instruction occurs as a byproduct of other activities or ancillary to them. Whether formally planned or informally generated, all the situations in which musical instruction takes place are of special interest to policy makers in music education since it is here that ideas are actualized and the work of music education is carried on. Planning what is to be learned, organizing and engaging in this instruction, whether vocal or instrumental, solo or ensemble, in various places around the world, requires careful and critical reflection. Practical decisions flow from, illustrate, and express assumptions about what the aims and methods of formal education ought to be. Plans and programs are necessarily situated in particular contexts. By interrogating them, it is possible to see how they also instance wider underlying social and cultural presuppositions. And examining these plans and programs allows one to ask whether "what is" ought to be. Some may regard the practical things that teachers do as of lesser value than formulating or engaging with abstract ideas. They may see these practical issues [End Page 99] as somehow less worthy of the philosopher's notice, a species of applied philosophy rather than philosophy itself. This bias is regrettable. Rather, in attending to issues related to musical and music educational practice, our writers dignify the importance of practical matters concerning music curriculum and instruction. By bringing to bear various philosophical perspectives on these issues, they offer ways to integrate theory and practice and illustrate the benefits that can flow from a philosophical focus on the practical things music teachers do. Such a focus affords the opportunity to critically unpack not only the activities themselves but the assumptions in which they are grounded. Philosophers are also in a position to suggest alternative ways of thinking about practical matters that open different avenues for thinking and doing and guiding practice into the future. June Boyce-Tillman's essay leads off this issue with an ecological view of music education that offers a broad perspective on musical experience and its interconnectedness with other aspects of life and ways of thinking and doing. In criticizing what she sees as the "subjugation" of certain forms of knowledge in the West, she offers a broad, pluralistic, and holistic perspective on music education that is more interconnected with other subjects in the school curriculum and humane in its undertaking than traditional approaches to music instruction. Anthony Palmer points to the many shared aspects of consciousness and humanity, examines the present global context of today's music education, and takes stock of the responsibilities that devolve on those who prepare teachers and the importance of music in general education. He suggests the sorts of education that might broaden the outlook of teachers and proposes ways in which music in general education can be fostered. Masafumi Ogawa reflects critically on the situation of music teacher education in Japan, several crucial problems and the fundamental issues that generate them, and offers a restatement of the rationale for school music education that could remedy these problems and offer a better alternative for future practice. As such, his essay offers a case of how critical thinking about music education might be carried on in other places in the world. In focusing on musical "know how," Stephen Davies reflects on to the nature of the musician's knowledge, the challenges of verbal and analytical explanations of performances, the practical seepage from telling to showing how to perform, and the centrality of making music rather...

Motivations of Catholic Missionaries Working with Australian Aborigines

Objective: To investigate the cultural and theological presuppositions that have influenced the attitudes of Catholic missionaries towards Australian Indigenous people.Methods: Analysis of missiona...

Love’s Coming (Out)

In The Threshold of the Visible World (1996), Kaja Silverman advances a subtle, ethical, post-Lacanian account of what constitutes “the active gift of love” and how this might be expressed on the screen. She argues for an orientation of subject to love object which is not merely an alternative to romantic passion, but an account of how identification of the loving subject and love object “might function in a way that results in neither the triumph of self-sameness, nor craven submission to an exteriorised but essentialized ideal” (p. 79). In a move particularly relevant to our focus in this paper, she goes on to suggest that a gift of love so constituted entails an escape from conformity with culturally dictated ideals and thence a capacity “to put ourselves in a positive identificatory relation to bodies which we have been taught to abhor and repudiate” (Ibid.). Two lesbian/gay teen films of the late 1990s—Lukas Moodysson’s Fucking Amal (1998; also known as Show Me Love) and Simon Shore’s Get Real (1999)—offer an illuminating contrast in the ways they deal with the possibility of the gift of love in the conflictual contexts of teenage gay and lesbian love and sexuality and of small-town spaces. Space solicits desire, but the sexual frisson that is evoked through encounters in various spaces depicted as offering excitement, risk, and bodily pleasures seems limited in three ways. First, the progression from desire to love is severely circumscribed by cultural presuppositions about the physical and social attributes of appropriate love objects. This is particularly evident in the Hollywood teen film, with its recurrent male and female Cinderella roles. Second, the desire represented is predominantly heterosexual, so the appropriate love object is further specified by the assumption of heteronormativity. Finally, there is a persistent attribution of space to woman and time to man—as early as the late eighteenth century William Blake had written, “Space is a woman” (in Bal, 1988, p.169)—and although this has been questioned by feminist thinkers (see Irigaray 1987) it still pervades filmic imagery. As Sue Best (1995, pp.182-3) notes, the bounded spaces that people inhabit—“the nation, regions, cities and the home”—often rely on feminine metaphor to describe their attributes, contours, architecture; in the case of the romantic ‘home’, its enclosures suggest a warm, uterine space and maternal care. In a related sense, the open spaces of the countryside, the city streets and solitary travel have connoted a masculine space and prerogative. Traditionally, man moves through these spaces with a sense of temporal purpose, while woman bides her time in bounded domestic space. In Fucking Amal, the film’s preoccupation with enclosed spaces, and especially the domestic spaces of home and school, on the one hand generates an intense mood of claustrophobia and on the other communicates the terrifying aloneness of the young person abjected by the “in”-crowd. A measure of the inanity of the teenage boys of this small Swedish community is the unexamined misogyny of their spatial thinking, as when, for example, Jessica’s boyfriend Markus asserts that boys are interested in and understand technology, like cell phones, and that girls are instead good at things like

Cultural Presuppositions and Misreadings

Of the many factors that may lead to misreadings in translation, cultural presuppositions merit special attention from translators because they can substantially and systematically affect their interpretation of facts and events in the source text without their even knowing it. This paper attempts to pinpoint the relationship between cultural presuppositions and translational misreadings. The author considers major elements in the four subsystems of culture and examines how these elements help breed presuppositions that inadvertently affect the translator's decoding of the original message.

Translating <i>The Waste Land</i>: Literal accuracy, poetic fidelity and cross-cultural communication

The author of this article published an Afrikaans translation of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land in 1992. This article is a personal contemplation and evaluation of the process of literary translation as experienced in the particular case, referring to aspects of translation theory where relevant. It discusses the unremitting balancing act that literary translation requires, where the translator has to pose the need for as close a literal translation as possible against the need to render, again as faithfully as possible, the comprehensive poetic effect of the work, as regards, for example, stylistic features, emotive force and symbolic significance. Through all of this runs the thread of (a sometimes unconscious) transculturation of the work, partly the result of the desire on the part of the translator to communicate the impact of the poem as successfully as possible to a specific audience with a specific cultural identity and cultural presuppositions. Sometimes the inescapable interpretative nature of literary translation could be attributable to the cultural identity of the translator himself and sometimes it could be the result of the innate cultural dimensions or temper of the recipient language. The problems encountered, solutions arrived at and transcultural evolution effected are illustrated from the (original and translated) texts.

Analyzing Multiplicity: A Postmodern Perspective on Some Current Psychoanalytic Theories of Subjectivity

Tensions between modernism and postmodernism in psychoanalytic theory and practice are evident in the allegedly “postmodern” view of subjectivity as not unified but plural. Suggesting that a thoroughgoing postmodern clinical practice does not exist at present, I distinguish between U. S. and European models of the postmodern multiple subject and between modern and postmodern varieties of pluralism in the current psychoanalytic theorization of subjectivity in this country, proposing that all such pluralist theories are in fact mixed models. I argue that these theories do not reflect objective, essential traits of selfhood but are complexly shaped by the cultural presuppositions and intrapsychic needs of the analyst; hence attempts to theorize subjectivity with reference to science (including developmental schemas) are problematic. Because a thoroughgoing postmodern pluralism cannot accommodate such concepts as agency and authenticity or a coherent narrative of the treatment process, clinical psychoanalysis, at least at present, inevitably includes major elements of the modernist approach, in which subjectivity is seen as unified. At this time of paradigm shift between modernism and postmodernism, therefore, it is important that pluralists decenter from their theories and respect the continuing influence of modernism on psychoanalytic theory and practice.

“All Torment, Trouble, Wonder, and Amazement Inhabits Here”: The Vicissitudes of Technology in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

At its best, popular culture provides our society with opportunities to impose a narrative form on our cultural presuppositions and anxieties. It allows its creators and its audience an imaginative space to explore issues central to society's self-conception by reaffirming our cultural biases or illustrating alternatives to cultural presuppositions. In the latter mode, it can propose societal critiques within a safe, that is, non-political, environment and allow its audience a chance to engage in thought experiments. As a result, the audience can come to recognize forgotten possibilities for change and action as well as develop a better understanding of the social attitudes and forces that limit our conception of what the world can be and what role the individual can play. One pervasive set of social attitudes involves our understanding of and relation to technology. With the advent of modern technology and all of its revolutionary consequences, a philosophical critique of technology came into being. One particular theme prominent in that philosophical tradition is the notion of a society. On this view, technology and the social relations it requires have shaped our society in ways that are less than apparent and have restricted the scope of our imagination in ways that circumscribe the way we view our available actions. In this paper, I argue that several central themes in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer can be understood best against the background of philosophical discussions concerning technology and that by reflecting on the themes in the show we can understand more clearly the sources of our social relations as they are conditioned by technology. In brief, my thesis is that the fantasy world inhabited by Buffy Summers, the eponymous heroine of the show, is the world we inhabit, but that vividly renders that world so we can better understand our own. Two quotations should provide us with an approach to thinking about technology in this context. The first passage is from Adorno's Theses Against Occultism. Written in 1947, it remains a very succinct and useful work that neatly expresses some main themes of his thought, but also speaks to the still current cultural obsession with the occult: Panic breaks once again, after millennia of enlightenment, over a humanity whose control of nature as control of men far exceeds in horror anything men ever had to fear from nature. (128) The second passage is from Donald Phillip Verene's recent work, Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge: Instinctively, the person knows that the idea of the hero is anathema to the society. There can never be true working together, because the individual, if he is not to be nothing, must cling to his cause-which is always the particular mineness he can work out in relation to the particular thing. (159) These two passages provide the parameters for the discussion below. First, the Adorno passage suggests that fear is a motif for understanding today's society. The control of nature and the control of others is so horrific that it is hard for us even to see it. Instead, we experience some vague panic that misses the underlying causes of these methods of control. If Adorno is right, it is worth considering how the horror about which he speaks is manifested in society and a consideration of a prototypical horror show should provide us with a good sample case. The Verene passage speaks to the consequences of a society: an exclusive sense of individual entitlement, the demand to treat others as to an individual end, and a lack of authentic heroes. All of these consequences relate to the way in which technology and its attendant way of looking at the world have restricted the stage on which we can act. For the purposes of this paper, then, I want to stipulate that we live in a technological society, as Jacques Ellul and others have argued; a world in which the use of machines is paramount and in which the one best means is constantly sought (Verene 141-91). …

Social Categorization and Stereotyping: A Functional Perspective

Social categorization and stereotyping are discussed as normal perceptual processes upon which perceivers rely for an adequate understanding of everyday social events. Social categorization and stereotyping are treated as strongly linked. It will be argued that in many situations social categorizations are used because perceivers expect the categories involved to differ in important respects. Thus, spontaneous social category selection is guided by the content of the perceiver's stereotypes. It is further argued that stereotype activation and application are largely governed by functional principles based on, for instance, the perceiver's task or goals, the usefulness of the stereotype in a situation, and individual differences in stereotypic beliefs. Subsequently, the functional determinants of stereotype content are discussed. In the final section of this paper, we pay attention to some of the mechanisms that operate in information selection, perception, and memory in the service of the preservation of stereotypes. What is it then, I pressed her further, that goes on between normal people, from which she feels herself excluded? It has to do, she has inferred, with an implicit knowledge of social conventions and codes, of cultural presuppositions of every sort. This implicit knowledge, which every normal person accumulates and generates throughout life on the basis of experience and encounters with others, Temple seems to be largely devoid of (Sacks, 1995, p. 270).

Does gender affect business ‘performance’? A study of microbusinesses in business services in the UK

There is a dearth of studies that have examined the issue of the impact of gender on business performance. Three problems are evident in this earlier work:(1) the need to expose theoretical assumptions; (2) the adequacy of methodologies adopted; and (3) apparent equivocal results. A theme running through much of this work is whether the concept of ‘performance’ is itself gendered. This paper confines itself to addressing three research questions in respect of the impact of gender of business owner on business performance. The field data comprise a sample of 104 microbusinesses in business services in two locations-Newcastle upon Tyne and Milton Keynes, in the UK. The results show (1) no significant difference between the performance of the businesses of sole male and sole female owners, (2) clear evidence of the underperformance of spouse-owned businesses, (3) no support for the hypothesis that women have an ‘integrated approach’ to their business and personal lives (in contrast to men), and (4) evidence that cultural presuppositions about gender roles were most clearly demonstrated in the spouse-owned businesses.

Some Ritual Idioms of Gender in British Television Advertising

The focus of this article is on portrayals of men and women in UK TV adverts, especially those for chocolate and related products. These ads were selected because they typically portray people engaged in a limited range of activities, and this permits more systematic comparison between them. Analysis focuses on forms of portrayal distinctive to either gender. Emphasis is placed on two findings – the portrayal of women as detachable from their local environments, and of men as foolish and incompetent. It is argued that these patterns are characteristic of TV ads more generally, and that they have possible connections with general cultural presuppositions concerning men and women.

SALVADOR AMONG THE WORLD MISSION CONFERENCES OF THIS CENTURY

International Review of MissionVolume 86, Issue 340-341 p. 19-26 SALVADOR AMONG THE WORLD MISSION CONFERENCES OF THIS CENTURY Jacques Matthey, Jacques Matthey Jacques Matthey, from Switzerland, is general secretary of the Missionary Department of the Protestant Churches in French-speaking Switzerland, located in Lausanne.Search for more papers by this author Jacques Matthey, Jacques Matthey Jacques Matthey, from Switzerland, is general secretary of the Missionary Department of the Protestant Churches in French-speaking Switzerland, located in Lausanne.Search for more papers by this author First published: 25 March 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.1997.tb00005.x AboutPDF 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 onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume86, Issue340-341January‐April 1997Pages 19-26 RelatedInformation

Editorial: Applied Linguistics and Education

Editorial Applied Linguistics and Education This special issue of ial arrives at a time increasingly appearing cogether on the front page of newspapers. when language and education are The recent fer- politically, interactionally, vor over Ebonics in the state of California, and the multiple interpretations of the Oakland school board's policy suggest how and sociolinguistically complicated today's classrooms can be. Recognizing the lay- ering of issues involved in educational research, today's classroom researchers necessarily look beyond the statistical demographics of educational in detail to failure. To understand the Oakland school board's policy decision, as well as ongoing debate over bilingual education, researchers must look both the language practices that go on inside the classroom, and the kinds of language practices stu- dents bring with them to the classroom. This twofold attention to contextualized language use both in and out of school is one of the most important contributions applied linguistics can bring to educational research. Working in this area, authors in this volume of ial deal with both the minute structuring of language in the class- room, as well as with the linguistic habits and presuppositions students and teach- classroom talk interactionally pat- ers bring to the classroom from other realms. illustrated in 1979, is As Hugh Mehan terned and rule-governed. Since Mehan 's seminal work many other analysts of is classroom discourse have noticed that school-based knowledge organized in ways which some produces social students, but not others, can access. Instead of functioning as the leveling device imagined by strata Dewey (1943), public education more often re- of the larger society. In this volume, both of the interviews and two of the articles address the room can skills, is illuminate this process. way close attention to discourse in the The article by Dennis Lynch and Sharon class- Hilles illustrates precisely how a teacher's goal to teach apparently neutral academic embedded in institutionalized practices so that the classroom simulta- neously socializes students into norms, sometimes unpleasant ones, typical of so- ciety at large. This article also suggests, however, that there ity in is a potential flexibil- the necessarily scripted classroom practice. This flexibility can lead to either the reproduction or the change of societally scripted roles. This recognition of the cultural presuppositions behind an apparently neu- tral curriculum can also be seen in current research in literacy. Recent work in multiple literacies (see, for example, Street, 1993, and the chapters within) con- ceptualize classroom activity as only one among many kinds of literacy, the con- in the struction of a particular type of knowledge. Discourse patterns classroom literacies. can be an important resource for researchers as they identify these multiple Issues in Applied Linguistics ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. 7 © Regents of the University of California No. 2

Disrupted Boundaries: New Reproductive Technologies and the Language of Anxiety and Expectation

In this Comment, we elaborate upon Mulkay's discussion of the rhetorics of hope and fear in the UK debate over research on human embryos, by focusing on the narrative strategies and cultural presuppositions that allow certain technological developments to be (re)presented as `hopeful' or `fearsome'. We argue that boundary talk and its associated vocabularies of purity and pollution provide Mulkay's rhetorics with a semantic construction kit. They are the means through which `hope' and `fear', as rhetorical effects, are achieved. Finally, we discuss the wider significance that could be attributed to these discursive moves - that is, as pointers to how the relationship of a culture to its technologies is constituted.