Founding Figures Research Articles

Approaching Transcultural Communication: Interview With Muniz Sodré

Professor Emeritus Muniz Sodré discusses his contributions to the formation of the communication field in Brazil, of which he is one of the founding figures. The interview, conducted by Otávio Daros, unpacks some of the main arguments of his newly translated book The Science of the Commons: A Note on Communication (2019). Among the key concepts is mediatization, defined by him as the structural articulation of the media with social organizations and institutions. The Brazilian theorist also discusses the challenges for an education committed to “deracialization” and decolonization.

Agricultural productivism, cosmopolitan plant-breeding, and the severed roots of agroecological thought

ABSTRACT This article provides a historical account of the emergence of crop ecology, a precursor of modern agroecology, in the twentieth century. It focuses on the transnational career of agronomist Ioannis Papadakis, a founding figure in this scientific discipline, while contextualizing his work as part of broader state-led projects of agricultural modernization in Europe and Latin America. This study has two implications concerning the history of agroecology. First, that agricultural productivism and a cosmopolitan outlook on plant breeding, often considered to be at odds with agroecology’s principles, were in fact necessary elements for the emergence of crop ecology, and therefore of agroecological thought more generally. Second, we argue that the excesses of the Green Revolution, against which agroecology reacted in the last decades of the twentieth century, did not just stem from a disregard for the agricultural knowledge of indigenous peasants. They also resulted from the marginalization of intellectual dispositions that had taken shape in peripheral areas within the global geography of scientific production. A third implication, specific to the history of Greek agriculture, is that the claim that interwar Greece’s rural economy failed to substantially develop needs to be nuanced when the priorities of Greek agronomists are taken into consideration.

How not to become a founding figure

The views recently put forward by Fukuyama and Huntington showed that the academic world may once again be ready to think in large patterns of the rise and fall of civilisations. However, long before that, the Buddhologist Trevor Ling put forward a theoretical position regarding the rise and fall of civilisations and the vestigial survival of dead civilisations as ‘religions’. More recently, Naomi Goldenberg put forward a superficially similar, but, on deeper inspection, quite a different point of view on the power relationship between state institutions and the ‘vestigial states’ that contest the state’s monopoly on power and are known to us as religions. This article explored the differences and possible synergies between these two standpoints.Contribution: This article pleads for much attention to be paid to less well-known theories of religion and demonstrates with reference to the theories of Trevor Ling and Naomi Goldenberg how a virtual conversation between older and more contemporary theorists can open up new theoretical and methodological avenues for understanding religion.

Autoanalysis, with particular reflections on sociology

This article aims to contribute to a sociology of knowledge via an autoanalysis of a marginalised member of the British upper-middle class, who moved first from the South to the North of England and then from England to Scottish society as an immigrant: a ‘stranger who stayed’. Written in the first person, Bridget Fowler’s reflections move between different religious and political worlds, focusing especially on her reception of conflicting sociological theories and her own development through these. Influenced by five exceptionally learned and lucid sociologists – John Rex, Herminio Martins, Raymond Williams, Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Lovell – she has spent her sociological career contributing to the demystification of power in various forms. In particular she has focused on the significance of secular culture – notably literature – in creating hegemonic domination. She has also analysed the role of symbolic revolutions in social transformation, avoiding in this respect falling either into idealism or simplistic class reductionism. Arguing that sociological theory still needs to teach Marx, Weber and Durkheim, these founding figures should not be seen as creating – in social scientific terms – a unified architectural construction, but should be read with and against one another; further, they need also to be combined with other, more contemporary, influences. Finally whilst noting the existential salience of movements around identity – nation, gender, sexuality and disability – she argues that the discipline must continue to reach out ‘beyond the fragments’, to address social totalities more broadly, including wider issues of social space and structures of power.

Panopticon, Inc.: Jeremy Bentham, contract management, and (neo)liberal penality

This essay revisits Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, perhaps the foundational figure of the study of the prison, to recover a dimension of the project wholly omitted in Michel Foucault’s canonical reading in Discipline and Punish. Nowhere does Foucault mention Bentham’s insistence that the prison be run by a private contractor. With Bentham's penal theory characteristically derived from his account of human psychology, the contract and private profit are essential to the functioning of the Panopticon, because they align the jailer's duty with their self-interest. Bentham built profit and market imperatives into the fabric of the Panopticon, always envisioned as a place of economic production. The contract-Panopticon and its political economy are vital antecedents to the neoliberal penality theorized by Loïc Wacquant and Bernard E. Harcourt, even as they problematize the statism inherited from Foucault and the chronological implications of the prefix “neo.” Bentham was only the theorist of a marketization of governance pervasive in his own time and ever since, raising the question of whether punishment has ever been a purely state function.

The context and subtext of Ignác Goldziher’s memorial lecture on Ármin Vámbéry

AbstractThis article analyzes Ignác Goldziher’s portrayal of Ármin Vámbéry in his memorial lecture of 1915. Goldziher positioned Vámbéry, his teacher, as a Jewish Hungarian nationalist Orientalist and a foundational figure to Hungarology. Through this portrayal Goldziher opened the door to the notion that he, too, was like Vámbéry, a nationalist Hungarian Orientalist, despite the fact that his own work did not contribute to Hungarology, and did not display nationalist and patriotic tendencies as did Vámbéry’s. Goldziher’s portrayal of Vámbéry, thus, is a part of Jewish apologetics that emerged as a response to growing anti-Semitism during the early twentieth century.

Preface: The Duty of Criticism

Preface: The Duty of Criticism

Inheriting Mary Ainsworth and the Strange Situation: Questions of Legacy, Authority, and Methodology for Contemporary Developmental Attachment Researchers

Mary Ainsworth’s legacy continues to shape the social and developmental sciences well after her death. The Ainsworth Strange Situation Procedure has, for decades, not only provided the underpinning methodology of attachment research, but also the frame of reference for theory. This has produced conditions where, as in psychoanalysis, debates about the future of the paradigm also entail a struggle to claim and negotiate the legacy of a founding figure. To date, historians have only looked at attachment research up to the 1980s. Interviews with 15 leading contemporary attachment researchers revealed Ainsworth’s importance to later research, but also laid bare the challenges of claiming her inheritance in responding to the current challenges facing this area of research.

Jaroslav Bařinka: Reflections on Czechoslovak-Korean Cold-War Encounters

Jaroslav Bařinka, the leading Czech scholar of Korean Studies, founding figure of Korean Studies in Czechoslovakia, and among the longest-serving Czech diplomats operating in both Koreas, died at the age of 89 years on 3 October 2020. Bařinka had made invaluable contributions introducing Korean traditional culture, archeology and literature to non-Korean audiences based on his extensive travels in the Koreas, Japan and China. He served as an interpreter and Second Secretary at the Czechoslovak embassy in Pyongyang starting in 1955 and as late as 1976. He was the first civilian Czech to visit ROK back in 1970, returning during the 1988 Olympics and in 1991 as Czechoslovakia’s – and in 1993 Czech Republic’s – first charge d'affaires to Seoul. He was notorious for his meticulous note-taking, sharp eyes and sound technical mind. To the moment of his death he could talk at length about metallurgical deposits across Czechia and North Korea, and their extraction and chemical properties – or about Confucian writings and architecture. This article recounts Bařinka’s experiences from his long career in Korean scholarship, interpretation and diplomacy, with the aim to shed light on Czechoslovak–Korean political relations, scholarly and cultural exchange, and physical encounters. It is a record of conversations based on fifteen long interviews with Bařinka taking place between October 16, 2014 and August 13, 2019. The substantive content and style follow Bařinka’s presentation as closely as possible, and errors, omissions and biases are not carefully flagged, with the aim to accurately reflect Bařinka’s own narrative. In instances where editorial intervention is possible, references to sources of additional information and corroborations of Bařinka’s account are separated clearly from Bařinka’s own account.

Alchemy in an age of disclosure: the case of an Arabic Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise and its Syriac Christian “translator”

Abstract This article examines a little-known and unstudied alchemical treatise, The Epistle on Alchemy (al-Risāla fī l-ṣināʿa) attributed to Aristotle, purportedly translated from Syriac into Arabic by the Nestorian bishop ʿAbdīshōʿ bar Brīkhā (d. 1318). In particular, I investigate the Epistle’s discourse on the concealment and revelation of alchemical knowledge. Like other occult sciences, alchemy was characterised by a marked concern for secrecy and frequently employed codes, or Decknamen, when discussing the “Noble Art.” Yet the author of the Epistle consciously avoids such conventions, choosing instead to disclose its mysteries in an open and accessible manner, while making clear that secrecy would otherwise be necessary were the reader deemed unworthy. By engaging with scholarship in Islamic and Jewish occult science and esotericism, I show that the author of the Epistle navigates the boundaries between concealment and disclosure by framing his treatise as a private exchange between two foundational figures of philosophy and kingship: Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Based on a study of the Epistle’s sources and genre, I consider it possible that the work was not a translation of any Syriac original but a composition by ʿAbdīshōʿ himself and a product of the Arabic-speaking, Islamicate environment in which he lived.

Scandinavian creation theology—A constellation open to a variety of interpretations

AbstractThis text is a general introduction to Scandinavian creation theology, both from a historical and systematic point of view. The concept is connected to a loose network of theologians that emerged during the second part of the 20th century in the aftermath of the breakdown of the grand liberal paradigm, and as a critique against dominant anti‐liberal approaches in Protestant theology. In this article, Scandinavian creation theology is conceived as a “constellation” of three major “founding figures”—K. E. Løgstrup (1905–1981), Regin Prenter (1907–1990), and Gustaf Wingren (1910–2000)—who elaborated on a reconfiguration of Reformation theology by a “mediation” of Luther's theology inspired by the important Danish theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1882). Using the doctrine of creation as horizon of understanding for the Christian faith, an original affirmation of ordinary life shared by all human beings is taken as a theological starting point, instead of attempting to isolate something distinctively Christian. Inspired by Irenaeus’ concept “recapitulatio,” it is claimed that becoming a Christian means nothing less—and nothing more—than becoming human again. Finally, despite the fact that this theological approach was developed in a declining monolithic Lutheran majority‐culture, it is being argued that the ongoing transformation associated with an emerging post‐Constantinian era is something that makes Scandinavian creation theology increasingly relevant and important today.

Knight Moves: Russifying Quantitative Literary Studies

Computational approaches to literary studies have tended to fetishize Russian Formalism. The evolving canon of Digital Humanities scholarship shows persistent leanings on Formalism and the theoretical movements that emerged in its wake, including Prague School structuralism, discourse analysis, and semiotics. Twenty-first-century scholars relive the evolutions, embattled stances, and fraught histories of modern literary theory and its founding figures, whom they claim as their predecessors – from historical poetics to the social turn of discourse analysis. As scholars working in Digital Humanities and Russian literary studies, we attempt to examine the suggestive continuities between Russian literary theory and computational literary analysis. Focusing on the posited link between discourse analysis and topic modelling, we offer a case study of topic modeling using the full run of the academic journal Slavic Review. We briefly review the process of topic modeling for literary analysis, consider some insights from topic modeling Slavic Review and, for comparison, briefly consider two other prominent journals in the field – Slavic and East European Journal and Russian Review.

Pasundan People's Party in Pasundan Countries 1947-1950

This research entitled "The Gait of Pasundan People's Party in Pasundan State from 1947-1950". The main problem in this research is to get to know "How was the gait of the Pasundan people's party in the Pasundan state from 1947-1950?". The method used in this research is the historical method. Based on the results of this research, it can be explained about the background of the formation of the Pasundan People's Party, the role of the founding figures of the Pasundan People's Party and the actions of the Pasundan People's Party in the Pasundan State government. The author concluded that the formation of Patai Rakyat Pasundan was motivated by Suria Kartalegawa's desire to lead West Java and was assisted by the Dutch who also wanted to form a Federal State in Indonesia. Suria Kartalegawa as a founding figure played an important role in the formation of the Pasundan People's Party which later declared the Pasundan State. The activities of the Pasundan People's Party in the government of the Pasundan State which divided into two, the first one is the Pasundan State declared by Suria Kartalegawa and second one is the Pasundan State as a result of the West Java Conference. Suria Kartalegawa's version of the Pasundan State did not last long due to the lack of support from several elements of society, both from figures or the West Java community itself and was considered a counter-revolutionary movement. Then the Pasundan version of the West Java Conference led by Wiranatakusumah V produced three West Java conferences, in this period Suria Kartalegawa and his Pasundan People's Party were more active in the Pasundan State Parliament with stand more in the opposition side. The Pasundan People's Party fainted and disbanded itself following the disbandment of the Pasudan State in 1950 and the arrest of Suria Kartalegawa, and then West Java again became part of the Republic of Indonesia.

KH Ahmad Dahlan's the values of peace in the novel entitled Sang Pencerah: A hermeneutics study

Adolescence violence is a problem that often occurs and is of concern to many parties. This condition can have an impact on various aspects, including subjective well-being, a sense of security and comfort at school, students' poor perceptions of the school climate, to the decline in student academic achievement. The problem of adolescent violence requires solutions to minimize it, one of which is through internalizing the values of peace. One of the figures who teaches the values of peace is KH Ahmad Dahlan, as the founding figure of Muhammadiyah in Indonesia. This study aims to identify the values of peace through KH Ahmad Dahlan's life experiences, as stated in the novel entitled Sang Pencerah. This study uses a qualitative approach with a hermeneutic type. The results showed that the values of peace according to the perspective of KH Ahmad Dahlan includes (a) achieving life goals freely and responsibly, (b) humbly, (c) seeking the truth, and not following habits considered right, (d) studying the fact with tolerance, and (e) sacrificing for the people (compassion). The values of peace according to the perspective of KH Ahmad Dahlan should be a reference for developing a model of guidance or counseling to help students develop a peace-loving character to create a culture of peace in their environment.

Infrastructural politics amidst the coils of control

ABSTRACT From contaminated water pipes to social media manipulation to sinking cities, infrastructures increasingly appear at the heart of cultural, political, and environmental crises. As a technique of governance, infrastructures delegate control to systems and disperse power into the environment. This special issue argues that engaging with infrastructural politics requires new tactics and modes of analysis which take seriously the politics of articulation, everyday life, and meaning. The introductory essay situates the project of infrastructural politics within the critical and cross-disciplinary literature on infrastructure and the political tradition of Cultural Studies. We identify distinctive features of infrastructural politics, organized around the concepts of scale, formalization, and imaginary, that set forth the common concerns of the issue and raise questions for future research. Following this discussion, we introduce the essays of the issue, spanning topics that include emergency dispatch, automated music mastering, open pit coal mines, homeless encampments, police body cameras, and sand. Throughout, the issue is animated by a commitment shared among founding figures of Cultural Studies, activists, and abolitionists: the capacity to critically engage infrastructure in order to improve the lived conditions of culture.

Gender, kinship and relatedness in fifteenth-century Tibet: The biography of Chokyi Dronma (1422–1455) through anthropological eyes

ABSTRACT A 15th century Tibetan biography offers a rare glimpse into the life of the Tibetan princess Chokyi Dronma (1422–1455), who experienced marriage, childbirth, the death of her daughter and eventually became a Buddhist nun and a famous spiritual master. Recognised as an emanation of the Buddhist deity Dorje Phagmo, she became the founding figure of Tibet’s most famous female reincarnation line. Written close to the events by one of her fellow monks and rich in daily life details, this account offers an ideal opportunity to explore gender and kinship practices among Tibetan rural elites of the time. It also gives a rare insight into the hurdles that women faced when they decided to challenge social and cultural conventions to pursue spiritual aims. An anthropologically informed study of this manuscript offers a unique opportunity to explore kinship terminology and practices as well as particular instances of kinship politics at a time in which marriage alliances were essential for the relationships among Tibet's regional polities. It also offers useful insights into kinship networks that underpinned patronage practices, highlighting the often mis-recognised importance of women (including their role in printing projects). Finally, it enables the exploration of Tibetan spiritual kinship and reincarnation contributing to wider debates in the anthropology of kinship and relatedness. Substances and spiritual principles appear to be symbolic fields connecting past and present – they constitute the backdrop for practical negotiation not only in Chokyi Dronma’s biography but also in many other historical sources and ethnographic cases.

Role of Statues in the Artistic Commemoration of African Political Leaders: Analysis of 20 Selected National Statues in African Countries

Artistic commemoration of leaders and other iconic personalities has been in existence for centuries. Statues in particular have been used as a fitting avenue for the commemoration of political leaders and other luminaries in many fields. The premise upon which statues are made is that the subjects featured initiated and attained, in their lifetimes, concrete achievements that significantly impacted upon the lives of their fellow human beings. Other criteria for commemoration include proven integrity, dedication and selflessness in the service of the country and citizens. Statues as an integral part of public art have often generated substantial controversy on various fronts in many countries. Some of these gravitate around issues such as disputed likeness, queries about the fundamental achievements cited of the subject, at times open protests on the actions, character and integrity of the subject as well as the location of the statues. Other areas of contention include the implication of the presence of statues upon the political psyche of the country and their long-time impact on history, the youth and posterity. This paper examines the extent to which African countries have embraced this mode of artistic rendition to commemorate African political leaders in a way that is commensurate to their achievements. It is outside the scope of this paper to delve into the intricate web of back-and-forth arguments about the ‘concreteness’ of the legacies of the featured leaders who are mainly founding political figures of the respective countries. The paper, however, analyses the artistic essence of the selected statues in terms of their visual impact and whether they are indeed useful in articulating the legacies of the subjects and further, whether they ultimately bear ‘enduring visual value’ that spurs conversation and insight into these legacies. Statues must, at the very least, spur debate and conversation into the legacy of the featured subject. It becomes a form of constant interrogation as history itself takes its course; controversy is not necessarily a negative occurrence since it forms part of this discourse. The concept of immortalization, which is what initiators of statues often hope for is much harder to achieve and difficult to define. The paper examines 20 statues of African political leaders in different African Countries.

An Exemplary Gay Scientist and Mentor: Martin Gouterman (1931-2020).

Martin Gouterman (1931-2020) was one of the foundational figures of modern porphyrin science. After completing his Ph.D. at The University of Chicago in 1958, he joined Harvard, where he developed his eponymous four-orbital model. In 1966, he moved to the University of Washington Seattle (UW). Here he came out as gay and helped set up Seattle's first gay rights group, the Dorian Society. At UW, Gouterman accomplished an "optical taxonomy" of the major classes of porphyrin derivatives and pioneered pressure-sensitive paints based on phosphorescent platinum porphyrins to map the partial pressure of oxygen on airplane wings. Revered by his students and co-workers for his brilliant yet gentle advising, Gouterman remains a beacon for a more humane and inclusive scientific enterprise.

An Exemplary Gay Scientist and Mentor: Martin Gouterman (1931–2020)

AbstractMartin Gouterman (1931–2020) was one of the foundational figures of modern porphyrin science. After completing his Ph.D. at The University of Chicago in 1958, he joined Harvard, where he developed his eponymous four‐orbital model. In 1966, he moved to the University of Washington Seattle (UW). Here he came out as gay and helped set up Seattle's first gay rights group, the Dorian Society. At UW, Gouterman accomplished an “optical taxonomy” of the major classes of porphyrin derivatives and pioneered pressure‐sensitive paints based on phosphorescent platinum porphyrins to map the partial pressure of oxygen on airplane wings. Revered by his students and co‐workers for his brilliant yet gentle advising, Gouterman remains a beacon for a more humane and inclusive scientific enterprise.

Helena Ignez, an Incendiary Monster of Brazilian Cinema

Patrícia Mourão de Andrade offers an impassioned portrait of the actress and filmmaker Helena Ignez, a foundational figure in Brazilian filmmaking of the 1960s and 1970s. Long ignored by a national historiography blinded by its own patriarchal distortions, Ignez has only gained recognition in the last fifteen years for her contributions to Brazilian cinema. Moving behind the camera for the first time in 2005, Ignez has created a body of work that brings the anarchic spirit of the Cinema Marginal movement of the late 1960s to Brazilian cinema of the 2000s. This article offers a comprehensive survey and assessment of Ignez’s career, from her first film, O pátio (1959), directed by Glauber Rocha, who became her first husband, to her memorable performances of the 1960s, to her years of political exile, to her recent, late renaissance.