Symbolic Complexity Research Articles

The construction of Dominican state power and symbolisms of violence*

Maurice Bloch has argued that, under certain circumstances, aspects of a particular cosmology can become an idiom for expressing and justifying the necessity of using bodily violence in relationships of domination and subordination. This article seeks to develop this key idea with the aid of historically and ethnographically specific material from the Dominican Republic. The author attempts to show that both hegemonic Dominican nationalist imagery and hegemonic Dominican masculinity imagery contain certain ‐ different ‐ ideas about conquest. These ideas have supplied idioms for the legitimation and exacerbation of state violence and terror. The article also argues that symbolic and social complexes familiar to anthropologists under the labels of ‘religion’, ‘nationalism’, and ‘gender’, can furnish idioms for the legitimation of the illegitimate. We should not primarily conceptualize and study forms of political violence as phenomena outside a daily and ritually constructed reality of a particular kind, but, on the contrary, as practices and meanings which belong to a cultural, social, and political logic.

Rank and symbolic complexity

AbstractWe investigate the relation between the complexity function of a sequence, that is the number p(n) of its factors of length n, and the rank of the associated dynamical system, that is the number of Rokhlin towers required to approximate it. We prove that if the rank is one, then lim , but give examples with lim for any prescribed function G with G (n) = 0(an) for every a > 1. We give exact computations for examples of the ‘staircase’ type, which are strongly mixing systems with quadratic complexity. Conversely, for minimal sequences, if p(n) < an + b for some a ≥ 1, the rank is at most 2[a], with bounded strings of spacers, and the system is generated by a finite number of substitutions.

Le littoral, espace de médiations - Cultes des monts Sengen, Asama, Aomine et systèmes de représentations chez les gens de mer de la côte orientale de la péninsule de Kii

The first part of the survey deals with the festival in honor of the sea- and mountain-god Sengen in three small harbors of Mie prefecture. Hōza and Isozaki are fishing harbors but Azena is a place where women-divers collect shells and sea-weeds. Even today, in this region, the eastern coastal range of Kii peninsula, these festivals share much in common: purification rites, formulation, the communities' banquets and festivities open to all, and the worship of Sengen. The main worship takes place on heights devoted to Sengen where ornate bonden poles are planted. At the same time, these sacred heights play the role of sea-marks helping the sailors and of a kind of relay or replica of the Japanese sacred mountains. The worship practiced there goes back to archaic marine religious traditions but has been very conspicuously influenced by the kō pilgrims' sodalities which have been controlled by the mountain-ascetics of Shugendō for a long period. Taboos of Shugendō as women prohibiting could have been found somewhat compatible with sea-societies haunted by the fear of defilements. These special features of the cult of Sengen, unified by the Shugendō of Mount Fuji, of which Sengen is the God, and confined to a clearly defined coastal area, pose the wider problem of the convergence of maritime and mountain religious spheres. In order to better appreciate the influence exerted by the assimilation of sea-related worship by a unifying mountain-worship and of the following partial occlusion of what constitutes the specificity of the sea-faring peoples, the second part of the survey is extended to cover two famous mountain-temples of the hinterland of the eastern Kii seaside. The first is the oku no in of the Kongōshōji on Mount Asama in the Ise country. Its takemairi is a local cult for the dead which can be seen as a duplicate of funerary practices related to a marine netherworld still ongoing during the New Year period on the not so distant beaches of the Kii seaside. The second is the Shōfukuji of Mount Aomine in the Shima country. Two tales about its foundation are extant. Both can be understood as referring to the relocation of a sea-deity (Ōsatsu Kannon) who was transformed into a mountain-deity. Her brilliance shines far away on the sea and she is still venerated by the sea-faring people spanning the whole of Japan's Pacific coast. This attempt to relocate the worship of Sengen inside the history of the systems of representation of the sea-faring people is only an element of a survey which should cover all the coastal regions and which could also focus on a complex of symbols as suggestive as Mount Fuji itself We can observe a paradigm shift in a seaside which is first seen as a departure point toward a netherworld beyond the sea or as a refuge for gods or men from the outside world, and then is considered to be a line of reefs and heights being the forefront of the land (riku) used for mountain worship. This shift shows a process of "sedentarisation" with ideological intent. The coastal populations, heirs of the "nomads of the sea", when redefining their vision of the world, visible and invisible, see the occlusion of their genuine world, the sea. Deciphering the process of occluding the world of the sea gives a new approach to the vision that the Japanese society has of itself and transmits to others, its statements both of identity and of otherness.

Justified lives: morality & narrative in the films of Sam Peckinpah

In first book critically examine each of fourteen feature films Sam Peckinpah directed during his career, Michael Bliss stresses persistent moral structural elements that permeate Peckinpah s work.By examining films in great detail, Bliss makes clear moral framework of temptation redemption which Peckinpah was concerned while revealing director s attention narrative. Bliss shows that each of Peckinpah s protagonists is involved attempting, in words of Ride the High Country s Steve Judd, to enter my house justified.The validity of this systematic method is clearly demonstrated in chapter devoted Wild Bunch. By enumerating doublings triplings of action dialogue found in film, Bliss underscores its symbolic structural complexity. Beginning chapters treating Junior Bonner and Getaway with analyses of their important title sequences, Bliss shows how these frequently disregarded pieces present in miniature major moral narrative concerns of films. In his chapter on Osterman Weekend, Bliss makes apparent Peckinpahs awareness of concern self-reflexive nature of filmmaking itself.Bliss shows that like John Ford, Peckinpah moved from optimism pessimism. The films of director s early period, from Deadly Companions to Cable Hogue, support romantic ideals of adventure camaraderie affirm a potential for goodness in America. In his second group of films, which begins Straw Dogs ends Bring Me Head of Alfredo Garcia, both heroes hope have vanished. It is only in Osterman Weekend that Peckinpah appears finally have renewed his capacity for hope, allowing his career close in a positive way.

Mosiah: The Complex Symbolism and Symbolic Complex of Kingship in the Book of Mormon

Abstract The significance of major scriptural personalities is discussed, contrasting the lessons we can learn from the positive and negative experiences of such individuals with the role models set for us in Christ and little children. Internal textual sources are examined with relation to the composition of the book of Mosiah within the context of a particular literary tradition and style. An argument is advanced that the text employs a "dialectical" style or stylistic device, based on the "law of opposition in all things," which juxtaposes individuals, such as righteous and wicked kings, to illuminate gospel principles. The place of royal treasures, symbolism, and iconography (including objects such as the Liahona and the sword of Laban) are explored from several Old World and Book of Mormon perspectives. Views of ideas such as religious freedom, taxation, and agency and responsibility are contrasted, and duties of parents and kings are compared.

On the computational complexity of modular symbols

Efficient algorithms are obtained for integrating holomorphic differential one-forms along simple geodesic lines on those compact Riemann surfaces which are given as quotients of the upper half-plane by a congruence subgroup $\Gamma$ of ${\text {SL}}(2,\mathbb {Z})$. We may assume that every geodesic line passes through a cusp which is unique up to $\Gamma$-equivalence. The algorithms we construct run in polynomial time in the height of this cusp.

On the Computational Complexity of Modular Symbols

On the Computational Complexity of Modular Symbols

Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols

Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols

Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols. Caroline Walker Bynum , Stevan Harrell , Paula Richman

<i>Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols</i>. Caroline Walker Bynum , Stevan Harrell , Paula Richman

Shaping New Vision: Gender and Values in American Culture. Clarissa W. Atkinson , Constance H. Buchanan , Margaret R. MilesGender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols. Caroline Walker Bynum , Stevan Harrell , Paula Richman

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsShaping New Vision: Gender and Values in American Culture. Clarissa W. Atkinson , Constance H. Buchanan , Margaret R. Miles Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols. Caroline Walker Bynum , Stevan Harrell , Paula Richman Naomi R. GoldenbergNaomi R. Goldenberg Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 15, Number 4Summer, 1990 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/494639 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1990 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

An Effective Day Treatment Model for Young Children with Pervasive Developmental Disorders

Abstract A day treatment program was provided for 31 children (ages 2 through 6) with DSM-III diagnoses of infantile autism or pervasive developmental disorder. The main intervention strategies were use of positively charged affective experiences to aid the development of close interpersonal relationships, use of play in all its interpersonal, cognitive, and structural variety, and a pragmatics-based language therapy model delivered within a highly predictable and carefully structured milieu. Over a 6-month intervention period, subjects demonstrated significant treatment effects in cognition, perceptual/fine motor, social/emotional, and language skills, which were maintained or increased over a 12- to 18-month treatment period. Play skills increased significantly in symbolic complexity, symbolic agency, and symbolic substitutions. Additionally, there was significant reduction of autistic symptomology.

Gender and Religious SymbolismGender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols. Caroline Walker Bynum , Stevan Harrell , Paula Richman

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsGender and Religious Symbolism Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols. Caroline Walker Bynum , Stevan Harrell , Paula Richman Nancy Auer FalkNancy Auer Falk Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 28, Number 1Aug., 1988 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/463138 Copyright 1988 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols

Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols

Stealing the sacred symbols: Biblical interpretation in the peoples temple and the unification church

Perceptions of danger result not only from fear of defilement, but also from competing claims to the ownership of central symbols by forces on the periphery of a society. This article examines two peripheral movements often perceived as dangerous in American society during the 1970s—the Unification Church and the Peoples Temple—by concentrating on their appropriations and interpretations of one central complex of symbols: the Bible. Biblical interpretation is investigated as a strategic attempt to underwrite the legitimacy of acts of appropriation; issues of meaning serve more basic interests in ownership of the power of symbols. Four issues in biblical interpretation are explored. First, in establishing the nature of the text, the Unification Church appropriated the Bible as an open canon requiring closure, while the Peoples Temple claimed it as a closed canon requiring erasure. Second, in appropriating the text's beginning, the Unification Church claimed the primordial garden as a pattern to restore, while the Peoples Temple claimed it as a prison to escape. Third, in appropriating the text's end, both movements claimed to play a central role in the eschatological battle between good and evil, but the Unification Church identified evil in satanic communism, while the Peoples Temple identified it as antichrist capitalism. Finally, both movements can be located as interpretive communities in America of the 1970s. The Unification Church was engaged in a strategic recentering of civil and biblical symbols in order to claim a place in American civil space, while the Peoples Temple was undertaking a strategic decentering of civil and biblical symbols in order to configure an alienation from American society. That conflict of symbols revealed the ambivalence of appropriation and alienation that operates in religion. In this regard, religion may be redefined as the cultural process of stealing back and forth sacred symbols.

: Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols . Caroline Walker Bynum, Steven Harrell, Paula Richman.

: Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols . Caroline Walker Bynum, Steven Harrell, Paula Richman.

Compact numeral representation with combinators

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the combinator representation of numeral systems with logarithmic space complexity of symbols. The principle used is based on the lexicographic ordering of words over a finite alphabet.

An Approach for Enhancing the Symbolic, Communicative, and Interpersonal Functioning of Young Children with Autism or Severe Emotional Handicaps

An intervention approach emphasizing development of symbolic thought, communication, and interpersonal relationships was Implemented with 26 children (ages 2 through 6) who had infantile autism, pervasive developmental disorder, or severe emotional handicaps. The main intervention strategy was the use of play in all its interpersonal, cognitive, and structural variety, imbedded in a reactive language environment. Over a six- to eight-month intervention period, the children demonstrated significant changes in several targeted developmental areas, including cognition, perceptual/fine motor, social/ emotional, and language skills. The cognitive complexity of their play skills increased significantly in areas of symbolic complexity, symbolic agent, and symbolic substitutions. Additionally, significant improvement in the communicative and interpersonal characteristics of their play was found. These changes support the efficacy of this approach with young autistic and severely emotionally handicapped children when the children's needs for high levels of structure, intensity, and consistency are met.

The American Creed in Sociological Theory Exchange, Negotiated Order, Accommodated Individualism, and Contingency

This is an essay in the sociology of knowledge and in the construction of theory. I want to point out the common cultural pattern and the scope and limits in the interpretation and explanation of social interaction, of the emergence and maintenance of social order, of the interrelationship between individuality and sociality, and of the basic patterns of social life of six different theoretical paradigms in American sociology: Parsonian social systems theory, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, conflict theory, dramaturgical theory, and exchange theory. I will do that with the aim of approaching a new synthesis out of the contemporary paradigm pluralism. In order to achieve this goal, I try to locate the specific interpretive and explanatory contributions of the different paradigms in the frame of reference of a theory of action which I construct out of a revision of Parsonian action theory. This procedure allows me to determine precisely what the different theories do and what they do not understand and explain in social action (see figures 1 and 2). I begin with a brief outline of the frame of reference of a comprehensive theory of action (Munch 1981, 1982a, 1982b). Human action takes place in a space of action which can be constructed out of the two fundamental variables of the complexity (number and interdependence) of symbols to which action is oriented and of the contingency (number of alternatives) left open by the symbols for the interpretation and execution of the symbols in action. If we construct a system of coordinates out of the combination of the degree of symbolic complexity and contingency of action, we get four extreme points of the constructed action space and revised AGIL-scheme (see figures 1 and 2):

Artificial intelligence applications on supercomputers

In contrast to many scientific applications that perform computations on fixed-size arrays, symbolic programs process complex data structures represented as lists, sets, and graphs that are allocated and deallocated in a variable pattern during execution. Much of the processing in symbolic computation involves following linked lists by tracing chains of pointers through scattered locations in memory. Execution speeds for single serial processors are therefore limited by the time it takes to make random retrievals of individual words of data from memory.

A recursive free-body approach to computer simulation of human postural dynamics.

A recursive, free-body approach to the estimation of joint torques associated with observed motion in linkage mechanisms has recently been shown to be computationally more efficient than any other known approach to this problem. This paper applies this method to the analysis of human postural dynamics and shows how it can also be used to compute accelerations for specified joint torques. The latter calculation, referred to here as the direct dynamics problem, has until now involved symbolic complexity to such an extent as to generally limit computer simulation studies of postural control to very simple models. The model presented in this paper is both straightforward and general, and removes this obstacle to the investigation of possible neural control mechanisms by means of computer simulation. A computationally oriented linearization procedure for the direct dynamics problem is also included in the paper. Finally, example simulation results and corresponding measured body motions for human subjects are presented to validate the method.