Symbolic Mediation Research Articles

Gotta face ‘em all: Pokémon, Japanese animated characters, and the emergence of playful visual animism

As a result of technological innovations and new cultural practices, the contemporary mediasphere is increasingly populated by digital(ized) faces. The phenomenon is not limited to human faces, but includes a vast universe of fictional animated faces, variously called ‘characters’, ‘mascots’ or ‘kyara’. In Japan, while certainly not new, kyara have been spreading thanks to globalization, digitalization and media-mix strategies. Through the connection between visual design, fictional narratives and socio-cultural consumption, kyara can be considered semiotic figures of in-betweenness, key symbolic mediators in the Japanese mediascape. Their anthropomorphic face design mediates the cultural boundaries between the human and the non-human, the animate and the inanimate, nature and culture. Furthermore, their post-modern narratives mix inspiration from the past and the present, from myths to science fiction. Lastly, they involve an encyclopedic reworking between fiction and reality, mythical references and secularization, between the domains of seriousness and playful make-believe. The article aims to explore the semiotic dimensions of kyara in contemporary Japan, with emphasis on their logic of representation and cultural outcomes. These will be investigated through the analysis of the Pokémon franchise, which will make it possible to describe the emergence of new semiotic patterns of ‘playful visual animism’ in the process of media facialization of everyday life.

“Everything Is in the Lab Book”: Multimodal Writing, Activity, and Genre Analysis of Symbolic Mediation in Medical Physics

Writing and genre scholarship has become increasingly attuned to how various nontextual features of written genres contribute to the kinds of social actions that the genres perform and to the activities that they mediate. Even though scholars have proposed different ways to account for nontextual features of genres, such attempts often remain undertheorized. By bringing together Writing, Activity, and Genre Research, and Multimodal Interaction Analysis, the authors propose a conceptual framework for multimodal activity-based analysis of genres, or Multimodal Writing, Activity, and Genre (MWAG) analysis. Furthermore, by drawing on previous studies of the laboratory notebook (lab book) genre, the article discusses the rhetorical action the genre performs and its role in mediating knowledge construction activities in science. The authors provide an illustrative example of the MWAG analysis of an emergent scientist’s lab book and discuss its contributions to his increasing participation in medical physics. The study contributes to the development of a theoretically informed analytical framework for integrative multimodal and rhetorical genre analysis, while illustrating how the proposed framework can lead to the insights into the sociorhetorical roles multimodal genres play in mediating such activities as knowledge construction and disciplinary enculturation.

Aristotle, Augustine and Ricœur’s Aporetics of Temporality in Context

Questioning Ricœur’s positioning of Aristotle and Augustine as the founders of the two mutually exclusive conceptions of time that dichotomize the Western tradition, this article suggests that what Ricœur describes as the aporetics of temporality is a product of the modern social time regime. Extracting Aristotle and Augustine’s conceptions of time from this modern problem reveals the Aristotelian so-called “naturalist” view of time as one that rather unifies humans and their world through symbolic mediation, while Augustine’s alleged “subjective” conception of time is read rather as expressing the subordination of time to divine transcendence.

Mediação Cultural no contexto Francês trajetória histórica e evolução

In contemporary logics, the concept of mediation gains prominence by its centrality in social interactions and symbolic mediations, becoming understood as an inherent process in all the work of the information professional. In view of this, the goal is to describe the trajectory of cultural mediation in France, observing its emergence, historyand evolution. The study hasa qualitative approach, of descriptive type, adopting the bibliographical research method. At first, cultural mediation was associated with book mediators and museum environments. Currently, its emergence in the French context is associated tocultural and artistic issues between information and culture and public institutions in order to reduce social fractures marked by social exclusion.

ПРОБЛЕМА РЕЛИГИОЗНОГО ЯЗЫКА И РЕАЛИСТИЧЕСКАЯ ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЯ: НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ ГЕТТИНГЕНСКИХ ЛЕКЦИЙ А. РАЙНАХА

The article aims to discover potential of realistic phenomenology for analysis of prayer as the most significant form of religious language. To that end, the prayer thematization in the framework of religious discourse (as exemplified in works of metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh and R. Schaeffler) is compared to theoretical statements of Reinach’s lecture course “Einleitung in die Philosophie”. The study of texts by metropolitan Anthony and Schaeffler on prayer identifies a basic opposition – between a canonic liturgical text and subjective experience of the one who prays, that opposition manifests itself in reasoning of ordinary discussions on the topic and is overpassed in different ways by the religious thinkers. At another point Reinach’s reflections on some regularities of inner experience, concentrating on the example of artistic forms, offer a new approach to the opposition between formalised ritual and personal experience. While analysing a phenomenon of empathy, Reinach concludes that traditional terms of “the one’s own and the stranger’s” applying to experience must be substituted with an opposition between the immediate and the mediated. From such point of view hymnography is comprehended as a form of symbolic mediation of the ideal contents of religious experience, which allows to speak about the “deprivatization” of religious experience as an original contribution of realistic phenomenology to the philosophy of religion.

Between Affects and Norms

Abstract This article seeks to explore the meaning of emotional content in a transnational public sphere, in particular with regard to the concept of solidarity. The main normative question that the author discusses here is how far it is possible – if it’s the case at all – to move beyond the basic structure of nation-linked patriotic feeling to solidarity as a transnational political emotion. He divides his argument into two steps. First, he analyzes how the concept of constitutional patriotism could be reframed around the contours of post-national contexts. He suggests that Hegel’s concept of patriotism as a political disposition can contribute to a transnational framework. In a second step, the author discusses solidarity as a transnational political emotion, arguing that one should have in view both its formative process and its contingencies in order to understand the institutional and symbolic mediation of affective contents of social praxis.

Fragmentação e entrelaçamento em sala de aula: a crítica de uma experiência no estágio de ensino de língua portuguesa

Destinamo-nos, neste artigo, a expor, ainda que minimamente, o tensionamento entre duas práticas de ensino de Língua Portuguesa que permearam a nossa experiência de Estágio de Ensino de Língua Portuguesa e Literatura II, obrigatório para o Curso de Letras-Português, da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC). Nele, defrontamo-nos com um ensino fragmentado e normativo, e, para nossa prática, voltamo-nos ao ensino integral e reflexivo, ancorado à concepção dialógica e sociointeracionista da linguagem e à concepção pedagógica histórico-crítica, presente nas políticas públicas atuais voltadas para educação. Para isso, antes de expormos (crítica e reflexivamente) essa confrontação, revisitamos, brevemente, a história das teorias educacionais e os documentos pedagógicos parametrizadores e as propostas pedagógicas que estão em vigência. Em seguida, sintetizamos concepções com as quais nossa atuação se ancorou: de língua sociointeracionista – gêneros do discurso – (BAKHTIN [VOLOSHINOV], 1995 [1929]; BAKHTIN, 2011 [1979]) e instrumento de mediação simbólica (VIGOTSKY, 1991); de prática pedagógica do ensino de Língua Portuguesa sob quatro eixos – escrita, leitura, gramática e oralidade – (ANTUNES, 2003); e de sujeito ativo no processo de aprendizagem (VIGOTSKY, 1991). Com o tensionamento exposto, concluímos que a reflexão feita, mesmo em sua limitação no que tange ao curto tempo de realização, colabora para as discussões no campo da Linguística Aplicada (LA) que dizem respeito às diferentes práticas de ensino de Língua Portuguesa que concorrem e coocorrem em sala de aula e, por vezes, algumas delas distanciam-se das tendências atuais de ensino, associando-se a aspectos da concepção tradicional e tecnicista.

CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION IN THE TERRITORIES OF THE CARPATHIAN EUROREGION IN THE CONDITIONS OF DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS AND GLOBALIZATION

In the context of globalisation interstate borders in relation to economic relations have acquired a new meaning, which required the creation of a new system of regulation based on the principles of liberalisation, elimination of trade barriers, ensuring free movement of capital. On the one hand, the process of economic globalisation highlights the problems and contradictions remaining at the national level between the regulatory functions of state administrative bodies and the needs of unimpeded development of the Carpathian Euroregion. In this respect, inter-state institutions, as well as the harmonised legal norms underpinning them, prevent attempts to disrupt the competitive environment at the regional level. On the other hand, multilateral organisations are the mechanisms within which representatives of national administrations of the participating countries can negotiate the mutual removal of obstacles at the level of inter-state relations. Determined that, Those "dimensions" of the economy dominated by the "symbolic mediation" of relations - the financial market and consumption driven by consumerism - are most susceptible to globalisation. Much less globalised are commodity production and the labour market. There are theoretical justifications of the necessity of movement of the world community on the way of standardization in the field of economy. They found their adherents in the idea of combination, interpenetration, enrichment of national ways of development of economy not simply adjusting them to the general tendencies through destruction and suppression, but the way of connection on principles of equality, collectivism, preservation of traditional orientation of development. A certain development of theoretical views on the processes of globalisation influence on economic processes of specific countries we find in the works of specialists of the Club of Rome, as well as representatives of many international governmental and non-governmental organisations. They analyse in detail the processes of globalisation themselves and the obstacles that stand in their way. At the same time, external limits - limits arising from the past, and internal limits - limits arising from the future, which give birth to a more dangerous alternative to globalization - the movement of anti-globalization. Thus, it is hardly appropriate to speak of globalisation only as a process of continued growth of mutual trade, investment, increasing interdependence of countries and transcountry territories. Such an understanding of globalisation would be too simplistic and superficial and would not reveal qualitatively new elements of the globalisation process taking into account the manifestations of the specific development of the Carpathian Euroregion.

Mediating imaginaries

The aim of this article is to illustrate how visions of the future—sociotechnical imaginaries— mediate and thus shape sociotechnical practices involving educational robots in a Danish school context. In the analysis I show how imaginaries are manifested both in technological artefacts, teachers’ discourse and in policy documents from political bodies such as the OECD and the Danish Agency for Digitisation (DIGST). To show this manifestation, I apply two concepts: The Science and Technology Studies (STS) concept of ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ as formulated by Sheila Jasanoff (2015) and the concept of ‘mediation’ known from postphenomenological tradition. I develop an analytical framework based on these two concepts and coin a third — ‘symbolic mediation’ — to present and analyse a case study based on an ethnographic field study that included semi-structured interviews conducted in a Danish school setting. The case study shows how the use of the robot NAO—an educational technology—is driven by two related imaginaries that both serve as arguments for implementing and using the robot—the imaginary of the digital future and the imaginary of educational optimization.

IMAGEM E SEUS APORTES AO DESENVOLVIMENTO DO PENSAMENTO E DAS FUNÇÕES MENTAIS NO ENSINO DE GEOGRAFIA

O uso das diferentes linguagens no ensino de Geografia e as investigações vinculadas a essa temática ampliaram-se no Brasil nas últimas décadas. Dentre essas pesquisas, algumas indicam a potencialidade desses recursos na aprendizagem dos alunos mobilizando os processos cognitivos dos sujeitos. Nesta perspectiva apresentamos neste texto uma reflexão sobre a linguagem imagética, pela ótica da teoria histórico-cultural, demonstrando como algumas funções mentais superiores (percepção, a imaginação e a memória) podem ser mobilizadas com o uso dos recursos visuais. Além dos estudos teóricos neste campo do conhecimento, as contribuições desse texto decorrem também da pesquisa de doutoramento em que se constatou a importância da mediação da linguagem imagética, como um recurso didático no ensino de Geografia. Constatamos que as funções mentais podem ser mobilizadas na constituição de um pensamento geográfico, elas estão relacionadas tanto com a utilização das imagens, enquanto representações materiais visuais, bem como a criação de imagens mentais, com a sua (re)constituição ou internalização, condição inúmeras vezes necessária para a aprendizagem geográfica. Palavras-chave Funções mentais superiores, Linguagem imagética, Mediações simbólicas.

Paul Ricœur and Clifford Geertz: The Harmonic Dialogue between Philosophical Hermeneutics and Cultural Anthropology

Human experience has a symbolic structure. By focusing on the symbolism of human action, this essay considers the reciprocal influences and the essential differences between Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics and Clifford Geertz’s cultural anthropology. Through reference to Ricœur’s Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, the section on “Ideology, Utopia, and Politics” in From Text to Action, and Geertz’s 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures, this paper aims at reconstructing the dialogue between these thinkers. I begin with a broad framing of the encounter between Ricœur and Geertz, and then turn to the notion of the symbolic mediation of action, considering it as the shared key concept between these authors. These reflections will lead to an examination of the semiotic conception of culture, opening up the discussion of a nonpejorative dimension of ideology.

Compensatory Role of Symbolic Mediators in Constructing Ethnocultural Identity

The article studies the problems of cultural identity under the conditions of modern global transformations. Approaches of foreign and Russian researchers are analysed presenting both negative and positive assessment of hyperdynamism of modern development in terms of personality formation. The article provides the analysis of the phenomenon of ‘culture historicising’, which reflects the importance of turning to the origins in order to overcome the problem of alienation, loneliness, increasing gap with the past and loss of the continuity of generations. The theory of compensation and the theory of memory are considered herewith as they offer specific cultural forms of history representation and play an important role in the formation and maintenance of the ethnocultural identity

Towards a spectacularly dynamic and pluralist “normal science”: pragmatism, communication, IMP and BtoB marketing research

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to promote the use of pragmatism within industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP), business-to-business (B2B)/network research with its enhanced emphasis on developing adaptable, workable solutions to practical problems. The usability of findings and the study produced means that implications and impact become a natural part of the research process rather than an afterthought concluding a research project. Although the reader might feel that the approach oscillates between viewing pragmatism in its everyday sense (through the use of terminology such as “a pragmatic approach […].,” the intent is to elevate the discussion to one where pragmatism is viewed as a guiding philosophy. Design/methodology/approach It blends literature review and conceptual contemplation and challenges convention by “reading against the grain” (Brown and Wijland, 2018). Findings The authors do this to challenge convention and advocate for pluralism and diversity, theoretical evolution based on empirical evidence and increased sensitivity to the critical role of discourse, semiotics and abduction as a catalyst between theory, method and empirical activities. This conceptual blending portrays “activities” and beliefs as mutually constituted through the symbolic mediation of rhetoric and discourse. Research limitations/implications Existing elements of American pragmatism and discourse are identified as already a tacit constituent of the IMP oeuvre. Combining these approaches more explicitly is advocated as a suitable basis for a potential future “IMP 3” research agenda with significant potentials afforded to IMP and B2B marketing research. Originality/value This paper contributes to the development and dissemination of alternative and critical perspectives in marketing theory. The implication is that activities must usually be justified by actors within communication as believable and this process always involves mixtures of rational and non-rational appeals. Existing elements of American pragmatism and discourse are identified as already a tacit constituent of the IMP oeuvre. Combining these approaches more explicitly is advocated as a suitable basis for a potential future “IMP 3” research agenda with significant potentials afforded to IMP and B2B marketing research.

“Symbolic Mediation” in Alphabetical Processes: Cultural Heritages, Territories and Multiliteracies

The contribution addresses the problem of the relationship between patrimonies, territories, multiliteracies. In it, culture is basically understood as a process of symbolic elaboration of stimuli, objects and cultural experiences that contribute to building the cultural, alphabetic and identity profile of the individual, as well as his personal and social experience. The cultural heritage, as a diversified set of forms, refers to a symbolic universe that must be made accessible to everyone through special mediation tools, which can give continuity and meaning to the experiences of use. The article reflects on how it is possible to construct meanings starting from the symbolic elaboration that the individual puts in place and from the experiences in which he is immersed. The experience of use is in fact an opportunity that must be guaranteed to everyone, since it is the foundation of the interpretative universe that serves to read reality in depth. It is a question here of the importance for the individual of accessing a symbolic universe through which he interprets and relates to the world and the various cultural forms. At a time when literacy processes have widened their boundaries becoming multiple (multilteracies), there is a specific need for a pedagogy of the heritage that knows how to correspond to the emerging alphabetic needs typical of a society in transformation and increasingly technological and which looks to cultural and museum heritage as tools to access the profound meaning that culture expresses.

La identidad habitada : valores de la acción performativa y la palabra para la construcción de la alteridad en contextos educativos.

El objeto del estudio es, primeramente, describir y analizar las aportaciones didácticas de la acción performativa a los procesos relacionales de enseñanza y aprendizaje de docentes y estudiantes de formación profesional y grado de educación infantil. Y posteriormente, realizar una comparación entre las similitudes y diferencias de las respuestas de ambos colectivos con relación a su percepción y valoración de la experiencia compartida. La propuesta artística de la obra de la artista japonesa Chiharu Shiota, basada en el encuentro y la construcción de la identidad a través de espacios y objetos simbólicos, sirve de contexto para diseñar la acción comunitaria. La metodología de investigación utilizada tiene un carácter mixto, de orientación cualitativa a través de análisis cuantitativos y también carácter exploratorio y holístico. Se desarrollaron instrumentos para la investigación consistentes en grupos de discusión de estudiantes y docentes con la finalidad de obtener información sobre los procesos relacionales que tienen lugar en la acción performativa y analizar su aplicabilidad en el ámbito educativo. Posteriormente, mediante entrevistas en grupo y a través de la palabra, se solicitó a todos los participantes que expresaran las vivencias más significativas. Las diferentes escalas de valoración ofrecen como resultado una mejora sensible del ambiente de enseñanza-aprendizaje y de convivencia en ambos colectivos, un favorecimiento de los procesos comunicativos interpersonales basados en la alteridad y la puesta en valor pedagógico de la mediación simbólica de los espacios, los objetos, el cuerpo y la palabra para representar el encuentro en la vida de relación.

Символ как средство ориентировки в личностных задачах: персонологическая перспектива

The role of symbol in culture is in the focus of many works. In this paper, we aim to look at symbol from a personological perspective, that is, to consider it as a means of orientation in the tasks of personality development that is widely used in counseling and psychotherapy. Working with symbols is reflected in psychoanalysis, but it employs methods that are mostly based on interpreting symbols. These methods are founded on the understanding of symbol as a special semiotic unit: a sign with an unusual correlation between the signifier and the signified. Such interpretation is by all means possible and, in a way, productive, however, we would like to explore the model of working with symbol that is based on another understanding of its function. From our perspective, symbol is not the meaning of certain content, but its embodiment. The models of symbolic mediation of orienting activity that we are familiar with tend to describe the outcome of this process as a transition to the fixation of certainty in sign, that is, to the explanation of certain phenomenology. We, on the contrary, suppose that orienting activity, being a specially organised one and mediated by symbol, may result not so much in the fixation of certainty as in the emotional experience of belonging to the world, of comprehending the ‘binding pattern’, the feeling of ‘presumption of solution’ of life task. Such emotional experience/ attitude (as both intellectual and affective formation) turns out to be more reliable as a foundation for reconstructing one’s life in the process of psychotherapy than pure thought containing an explanation.

Agnotologie, die Grenzen der Gewissheit und die Theorie der Demokratie

Abstract Inspired to some extent by the work of Thomas Kuhn, Ignorance Studies seeks to grapple with the implications that follow from the idea that on a theoretical level we can hardly ever know that we have approached truth. In order to test theories, we would need to have access to empirically raw, theoretically unadorned facts and to confront them with theoretically diverse or contradictory accounts of how to make sense of them. It’s the nature of the case that we are not able to penetrate to such a pure point of origin for things. The words that we use to describe them are already suffused with biases and distortions that limit what we can say about them. Our relationship to phenomena inside us and to things outside us always subsists in a symbolically mediated, indirect medium. Our efforts to be either before or after this state of symbolic mediation generally land us in a state of deepened awareness of the extent of the prolongation of the middle. The conceptualized entity is for all intents and purposes the entity we relate to. The paper argues that given the limits to certainty highlighted by Ignorance Studies, our political institutions need to be responsive to the priorities enshrined in democratic theory to ensure that the policies pursued by any given government are reflective of the needs and the wishes of the majority of the people.

The symbolic mediation of patient trust: Transnational health-seeking among Indian-Australians

This article explores whether this extension of treatment and medication possibilities, owing to greater transnational movement of goods and people, presents increasing challenges for maintaining patients' trust within nationally-bound healthcare systems, such as in Australia. We ran focus groups in Melbourne from June 2012 to June 2013 with 34 Indian migrants to Australia. Our findings illustrate discrepancies between the symbolic mediation of trust within Indian and Australian healthcare encounters. We find that Indian participants associated authoritative and decisive self-presentation by doctors with medical competence, conflicting with Western patient choice models which exalt patient autonomy and agency. We also find that trust in Indian healthcare encounters is mediated through the symbolic deployment of “strong medication” and the engendering of “hope” in patients. Australian doctors' failure to deploy these symbols in the same way contributes to distrust that Indian participants express towards Australian health professionals and healthcare systems. We conclude that in situations where patients have less familiarity with the symbolic repertoire shared by the majority of users of a national healthcare system, such as can be the case with recent migrants, difficulties and misunderstandings may arise in negotiating trust, providing a potential motivator for seeking alternatives transnationally.

Towards a Cultural Psychology: Meaning and Social Practice as Key Elements

Several prominent scholars in the Social Sciences have defended the need for a new way of studying the relationship between culture and the individual. Over the last three decades, it has been common to find studies under the heading of Cultural Psychology (CP), which have focussed on the role of culture in historical and ontogenetic development. However, among the defenders of CP, there have been specific disagreements over theoretical and methodological aspects of the project. This lack of agreement is revealed by the different conceptions of the role of meaning and social practice in human psychological functioning. This paper aims is to analyze some different approaches to CP, and the role of meaning plays in its constitution. For us, the central claim of CP is that the human mind should be seen as inter-penetrated by intentional worlds that are culturally and historically situated, and this psychology must to study the ways psyche and culture; person and context, self and other, practitioner and practice live together, and jointly make each other up. In addition, CP has also identified the symbolic mediation of mind and culture as its analytical focus. Finally, we defend that culture and mind are to be treated as forms of culturally differentiated meaning practices. To make possible this enterprise, we propose the necessity to develop the notion of mediated and situated actions as a unit of analysis of Cultural Psychology.

De l’agent économique à l’homme capable. Une critique de l’économisme à partir de l’herméneutique critique de Paul Ricœur

Le dialogue de Paul Ricœur a été constant avec les sciences humaines et sociales, mais peu avec l'économie. Ce silence ricœurien sur l’économie est relatif. Sans faire une épistémologie des sciences économiques, il manifesta une préoccupation constante pour la condition ouvrière (cf. Simone Weil) et les effets pratiques de l’aliénation économique. Il n’a cessé de porter son attention sur le travail plutôt que sur l’économie, sur les échanges plutôt que sur la modélisation de l’économie mathématique oublieuse de l’économie comme science sociale. Son anthropologie est une anthropologie de l’homme capable plutôt que celle de l’homme comptable. En effet, son souci éthique réinstalle sur le plan des évaluations une activité économique, non seulement uniformisante mais unidimentionnalisante, qui résorbe le plan de la valeur dans celui du prix. Son anthropologie de l’homme capable réévalue la figure de l’agent économique. Ainsi chez Ricœur, le souci éthique est-il instruit épistémologiquement par les sciences sociales. Il pense ensemble éthique et économie via les médiations symboliques des institutions et des structures qui rendent possibles les échanges. D'où une approche fine des thèses de Marx sur l’aliénation économique, et plus tardivement une rencontre des travaux de l’économiste Amartya Sen, non sans liens, avec les travaux de Martha Nussbaum sur les capabilités.