Symbolic Productions Research Articles

Memories and symbolic productions in western Paraná: an analysis of the permanent exhibition of the Itaipu Ecomuseum

O artigo analisa a exposição permanente do Ecomuseu de Itaipu, instituição que se dedica ao desenvolvimento dos projetos de preservação patrimonial, transformação social e expansão científico cultural da Usina Hidrelétrica de Itaipu em sua área de influência no Brasil. Num primeiro momento, o trabalho se concentra na análise expográfica do Ecomuseu por meio da descrição de seu percurso expositivo e dos discursos comunicados nele, o que é feito por meio do estudo das relações travadas entre os diversos elementos expositivos, tais como artefatos, textos e estratégias de iluminação. Em seguida, analisa-se a operatividade simbólica desses discursos, de modo a assinalar o modo pelo qual essa exposição influencia a produção das relações sociais em seu território. Para finalizar, o artigo destaca a importância do desenvolvimento de práticas museológicas e científicas capazes de incentivar a reconexão entre os seres humanos e a natureza por meio de valores afetivos e de solidariedade, uma estratégia compreendida como fundamental para a superação da crise ambiental da atualidade.

Emotions in the Theory of Cultural-Historical Subjectivity of González Rey

In the theoretical thinking of Gonzalez Rey, the acknowledge of the generating character of emotions and their infinite unfolding associated with symbolic productions, which are not of the order of meaning, has represented an essential step for a theory of cultural-historical subjectivity capable of transcending the limitations associated with the treatment of this subject in the modern period. Emotions must be understood in their generating capacity, not as effects, but as processes that maintain a recursive relationship with other psychic processes, as opposed to understanding the psychic coming from other elements, which are at the base, until today, of all atomistic psychology of empirical orientation. In this work, we review different investigations carried out in the field of emotions by Fernando Gonzalez-Rey, which will allow us to understand better the role of emotions in the production of subjective senses that always anticipate the actions of the subject, actions that can have very different forms of expression. Therefore, those subjective senses associated with the subject can be corroded, distorted, or even modified in the process of production of new subjective senses that is developing in the course of the subject’s action.

War and Modernity in 20th-Century Puerto Rico

War and Modernity in 20th-Century Puerto Rico Silvia Álvarez Curbelo (bio) Harry Franqui-Rivera, Soldiers of the Nation: Military Service and Modern Puerto Rico, 1868–1952. University of Nebraska Press, 2018. xxix + 308pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. Harry Franqui-Rivera's book narrates how three wars of the twentieth century shaped Puerto Rico's modernization process and transformed the collective and individual horizon of expectations of Puerto Ricans. It is a book that I recommend not only to those interested in Puerto Rican history but also to global scholars who study wars as engines that disrupt and modify life landscapes in a geography that extends beyond the countries playing the "leading roles." I celebrate this publication for academic and autobiographical reasons. Since I was a child, war has been an essential part of a wealth of images and narratives often intertwined into family references. When my father was born in 1917, my grandmother, who had a special taste for controversy, named him Guillermo after the enemy Kaiser, to many a neighbor's discontent. On my mother's side of the family, my grandfather Eduardo traveled to Panama with the Puerto Rico Regiment to defend the newly built canal. He took great pride in being a veteran of a glorious war for "civilization." Since then, each and every war of the twentieth century was added to the family album. Drawing on these memory ties, I have devoted a great deal of my research as a scholar to the wars of the twentieth century. In honor of my grandparents, I entitled my inaugural speech at the Academia Puertorriqueña de la Historia, "Guerra y destino: Puerto Rico y la Primera Guerra Mundial" ["War and Destiny: Puerto Rico and World War I"]. As I gave my speech in 2014, the world celebrated the hundred-year anniversary of what many in 1914 called "the war to end all wars." The failed dream that lasted four years made the twentieth century a century of wars. It changed the history of the world and, undoubtedly, the history of Puerto Rico. There is a growing guild of historians, sociologists, economists, anthropologists and literary critics who study the repercussions of twentieth-century wars in Puerto Rico: its institutions, agents, symbolic productions, structures, and mindsets. Some venture into the wars of the twenty-first century, which [End Page 331] display a different profile. Following Jorge Rodríguez Beruff's seminal works that focus on Puerto Rico's strategic situation and colonial adjustments, Strategy as Politics (2007) and Island at War (2015, edited with José L. Bolívar Fresneda), and Héctor Negroni's account of Puerto Rican military history from the Spanish conquest, Historia militar de Puerto Rico (1992), the past two decades have produced various approaches ranging from the impact of wars in Puerto Rican economy in the twentieth century to the racism faced by Puerto Rican soldiers, especially in WWII and the Korean War.1 In Honor and Fidelity (2009), Gilberto N. Villahermosa delves into the history of the 65th Infantry, a unit of Puerto Rican soldiers that endured the glory and hell of the Korean War. Recent contributions, such as Manuel Avilés-Santiago's Puerto Rican Soldiers and Second-Class Citizenship (2014), expand the research scope to the wars in the Gulf and Iraq. Avilés-Santiago explores how interactive communication technologies modify the socializations and rites of death of Puerto Rican soldiers. Like Harry Franqui-Rivera, I cannot understand Puerto Rico without the signifier of war. His book, which is the result of rigorous archival research in Puerto Rico, Spain, and the United States, presents a new interpretation of the close relation between war and transformation in our island. While its title, Soldiers of the Nation, may suggest a history of the performance of Puerto Rican soldiers in Spanish and U.S. armies, the book affords us a more complex course of causalities and connections, as hinted in the subtitle Military Service and Modern Puerto Rico, 1868-1952. Franqui-Rivera explores the relations between war and modernization in a country that has been a colony—first of Spain and then of the United States—for over 500 years. ________ The author delimits the...

Parures du Paléolithique supérieur moyen à l’est des Carpates

Mid Upper Palaeolithic personal ornaments found in sites located between Carpathians and the Dniester river, more precisely in the settlements of Poiana Cireșului-Piatra Neamț, Mitoc-Malu Galben, the Brînzeni cave, the Duruitoarea Veche cave, Cosăuți, Climăuți II and Molodova V, have been analysed. The ornaments come from occupations falling in between 26-27 ka uncal. BP and 17 ka uncal. BP. The study of ornaments of this homogeneous and restricted area allow us to discuss the existence of some differences in the technical and stylistic choices of these symbolic productions. The article also serves a documentary purpose, as far as all ornaments discovered east of the Prut, in the Republic of Moldova, are only known through the publication of some drawings, which, moreover, are not always sufficiently precise and informative.

Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson

Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson

Settlement Dynamic and Beadwork: New Insights on Late Upper Paleolithic Craft Activities

In this paper, we explore the social motivations underlying the settlement pattern of the foraging communities 15,000 years ago in the southwest of France. We report on a significant collection of several tens of teeth and shell beads from the Upper Magdalenian site of Peyrazet (Lot, France) and perform a detailed microscopic analysis of this assemblage. We explore which species were selected, examine technological and taphonomic modifications of the material, and compare this collection with the use of similar personal ornaments in Western Europe. Bone industry and zooarchaeological data also provide additional information to discuss and contextualize the bead assemblage. Our results indicate a complex economy dedicated to the accumulation of shells, reindeer skins, and teeth off-site. Peyrazet is identified as a location dedicated to the sewing and decoration of reindeer skins and is an isolated case in the region so far. We conclude that foragers created their personal ornamentation at specific sites in the region and that symbolic productions played a role in the mobility strategies of the communities during the Upper Magdalenian.

O chão, o pano e o bastão

Texto autobiográfico que atravessa experiência em teatro, arte/educação e formação de professores. Toma-se tres “materiais não-estruturados” – chão, pano e bastão, enquanto elementos estruturais e estruturantes dessas práticas, ao mesmo tempo concretas e simbólicas. Um passeio por registros fotográficos dá espaço a memória corporal dos diversos trabalhos que desenvolvi e a faz reencontrar esses tres elementos sempre presentes, construindo e transformando suas experiencias. Comporiam, chão, pano e bastão, uma via de navegação que traz os conflitos presentes nas relações humanas em volta da criação, o desafio de posicionar-se diante das múltiplas possibilidades e efemeridade das produções simbólicas, a aproximação ao enigma do desejo.

Symbols in motion: Flexible cultural boundaries and the fast spread of the Neolithic in the western Mediterranean.

The rapid diffusion of farming technologies in the western Mediterranean raises questions about the mechanisms that drove the development of intensive contact networks and circulation routes between incoming Neolithic communities. Using a statistical method to analyze a brand-new set of cultural and chronological data, we document the large-scale processes that led to variations between Mediterranean archaeological cultures, and micro-scale processes responsible for the transmission of cultural practices within farming communities. The analysis of two symbolic productions, pottery decorations and personal ornaments, shed light on the complex interactions developed by Early Neolithic farmers in the western Mediterranean area. Pottery decoration diversity correlates with local processes of circulation and exchange, resulting in the emergence and the persistence of stylistic and symbolic boundaries between groups, while personal ornaments reflect extensive networks and the high level of mobility of Early Neolithic farmers. The two symbolic productions express different degrees of cultural interaction that may have facilitated the successful and rapid expansion of early farming societies in the western Mediterranean.

MARSEILLE VS THE MEDITERRANEAN Local Practices of Digital Resistance

This article discusses the creation of a participatory web documentary in Marseille in reaction to the spatial imposition and symbolic productions of two new cultural institutions in the city. Based on observations of the web documentary’s producers and participants and an analysis of the final product, it argues that the former have produced a form of resistance in their empowerment of local individuals and perspectives. These perspectives operate in opposition to those of the new institutions that depict Marseille as a “Mediterranean” city while implicitly and explicitly excluding local particularities and practices, which have paradoxically contributed to the city’s identity and international renown.

An approach to Palaeolithic networks: The question of symbolic territories and their interpretation through Magdalenian art

The Magdalenian (20,500–13,000 cal. BP) is an important period for the cultural evolution of societies in the European Upper Palaeolithic. It is characterized by a great increase in settlements and products, probably reflecting demographic growth. Along with other material evidence, symbolic products (art and ornaments) clearly expand. In association with the multiplication of representations, some of them become highly normalized (included geometric signs) whereas others develop a great diversity of forms (such as human depictions).The density of sites and more-or-less normalized products make possible an original spatial interpretation, that is probably unprecedented for Palaeolithic societies. Beyond highlighting the diffusion of some concepts over long distances, these rich data allow a deeper analysis of exchange, influence, and non-influence connections. Consequently, the question arises of the identification of what can be called “territories” (spaces built and delimited by human occupations) or “symbolic territories”. We define “symbolic territories” as spaces without visible material frontiers, symbolic through the weight of the ideas, the shared social norms and the installation of concepts by the societies in their close environment.We propose to examine this question through the prism of symbolic productions: body ornaments, portable art, rock art. Thousands of pieces of symbolic evidence assigned to the Magdalenian and a better stratigraphic definition for this period offer a favourable context for discussing the social implications of the results of several analyses: the distribution of themes in space, the presence of types of sign or figurative subjects contained in a narrow space, the identification of individual images and collective graphic norms. Comparing these approaches to series from the Middle and Upper Magdalenian, in which the evidence is the most abundant, will allow us to consider the nature of perceptible “territories”. Then we will question the relationships between human groups through identity and mechanisms of otherness in Magdalenian societies.

The “migrant crisis” as racial crisis: do Black Lives Matter in Europe?

ABSTRACTWe are currently witnessing a remarkable conjuncture between the escalation, acceleration, and diversification of migrant and refugee mobilities, on the one hand, and the mutually constitutive crises of “European” borders and “European” identity, on the other, replete with reanimated reactionary populist nationalisms and racialized nativisms, the routinization of antiterrorist securitization, and pervasive and entrenched “Islamophobia” (or more precisely, anti-Muslim racism). Despite the persistence of racial denial and the widespread refusal to frankly confront questions of “race” across Europe, the current constellation of “crises” presents precisely what can only be adequately comprehended as an unresolved racial crisis that derives fundamentally from the postcolonial condition of “Europe” as a whole, and therefore commands heightened scrutiny and rigorous investigation of the material and practical as well as discursive and symbolic productions of the co-constituted figures of “Europe” and “crisis” in light of racial formations theory.

As “origens” e o significado do regime republicano: interpretações em disputa

O presente artigo tem por objeto o problema das relações entre agentes sociais, posições políticas e os modos de significação dos acontecimentos que marcaram a transição entre regimes políticos no Brasil de fins do XIX. A partir de um conjunto de produções simbólicas situadas, a análise centra-se no exame dos sentidos atribuídos e das explicações acionadas para a queda do regime monárquico e ascensão do republicano. O objetivo geral é apreender as representações que embasam os modos legítimos de reivindicação de acesso aos cargos e oportunidades abertas pelo novo regime em instalação.

From four to zero? The social mechanisms of symbolic domination in the UK accounting field

Corporate failures and financial crises periodically lead to speculation and critique of the Big Four in the UK. Wide-reaching regulatory changes and reforms have emerged as a consequence, yet the overall dominance of the large accounting firms remains an immutable truth. This paper explores the dominance of the Big Four drawing on Bourdieu's rich system of thought, and in particular the role of symbolic productions, and how symbolic power and symbolic violence are deployed to secure the social integration of an arbitrary order. We document the social mechanisms of symbolic domination that secure the Big Four's position in the social structure of professional accounting firms. We identify a circular system of double-structured domination, where three mechanisms of euphemised discourse, rites of institution and socialisation normalise symbolic systems and disabling constraints for smaller firms. In addition to interviewing informants working in the field, this paper examines recent political challenges that have placed the role of the Big Four and their domination under increasing scrutiny. These challenges bring into focus issues of recognition and resistance to symbolic modes of domination, and we contemplate the impact of such discourses on the dynamics of the UK accounting field, and the Big Four's continued influence.

The Development of Symbolic Uses of Objects in Infants in a Triadic Context: A Pragmatic and Semiotic Perspective

In this study, we address the construction of the first symbolic uses of objects in contexts of triadic interaction (adult–child–object). We assume that symbolic productions are based on public rules of the use of objects previously agreed by the community. The first symbols are not rooted in any literal, evident reality, but in shared rules of uses about the material world. We observed six dyads communicating and interacting together with 10 objects in a semi‐structured situation longitudinally from 9 to 15 months of age. We found that the infants gradually constructed symbolic meanings, and we identified five symbolic levels and sublevels. At 9 months, the infants attended and engaged in the symbolic uses produced by an adult even though they themselves were not yet able to produce them. At 12 months, infants began to use objects symbolically to communicate with adults. The highest percentage of these first symbolic uses was of level 1, that is, with a close relation to the conventional use of the object used to perform the symbol. At 15 months, children increased their symbolic uses and performed symbolic uses at all levels, whereas adults reduced such practices. Adult semiotic mediation and the social meanings of objects can be considered important factors in children's symbolic productions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hipnose, dor crônica e técnicas de ancoragem: a terapia de dentro para fora

O presente trabalho busca resgatar a técnica hipnótica de ancoragem, destacando a condição do sujeito como participante ativo no processo terapêutico. Partindo de algumas ilustrações clínicas com pacientes portadores de dores crônicas, ressalta duas dimensões de grande relevância dessa técnica. Primeiramente, a diagnóstica, que destaca as possibilidades de acesso ao mundo vivido do outro, em sua experiência subjetiva e produção simbólica. Em segundo lugar, a dimensão terapêutica, na qual a técnica favorece uma apropriação da experiência por parte do sujeito que pode, então, assumir uma postura ativa em sua reconfiguração. Na conclusão, destaca a relevância do conhecimento clínico calcado na subjetividade do paciente, a mudança de olhar sobre si mesmo que a técnica proporciona, a postura ativa do sujeito no processo de mudança e o paradoxo entre imaginação e memória.

Transacciones visuales y reinscripciones de la identidad en Nadín Ospina y Calimocho Styles

Reflexionar sobre las identidades en América Latina en el espacio de las artes visuales conlleva a una revisión analítica no sólo acerca de las alternancias con el pasado cultural, sino también del modo en que la transnacionalidad afectó las prácticas contemporáneas, especialmente a través de prolongadas etapas de exilios, diásporas, migraciones y desplazamientos. Un posible ejercicio conceptual se orientaría hacia la ironía o la parodia. En este aspecto, el artista colombiano Nadín Ospina sintetiza posibles permutas entre las producciones simbólicas de la etapa prehispánica, las actuales mercancías fetichizadas y ciertos imaginarios ligados a la esfera mediática. Proyectados desde el sarcasmo, Ospina materializa estos objetos-fetiche que aluden al mote exótico otorgado por Europa a la visualidad americana y ajusta la diferencia cultural al extremo de tornarla potencial y fluctuante. Por otro lado, Calimocho Styles -el dúo conformado por los mexicanos Rubén Ortiz Torres y Eduardo Abaroa- examina el tópico de las identidades inestables y cambiantes que proceden del tránsito fronterizo continuo entre Estados Unidos y México, indagando en las estrategias ambivalentes de generar productos culturales y proponiendo ficciones contemporáneas a partir de referentes icónicos de consumo masivo. En ambos casos se generan resoluciones visuales híbridas que emplazan numerosos interrogantes y discusiones sobre la interculturalidad y su incidencia en Latinoamérica.

The need for alternative paradigms in science and engineering education

There are two main claims in this article. First, that the classic pillars of engineering education, namely, traditional mathematics and differential equations, are merely a particular, if not old-fashioned, representation of a broader mathematical vision, which spans from Turing machine programming and symbolic productions sets to sub-symbolic orderings such as artificial neural nets. Second, that the paradigm of equivalence ought to be extended to those non-traditional engineering disciplines that require at least the same dedication, such as music and its science, musicology, because they broaden the search and identification of structures, one of the most important tasks of creative engineering. Furthermore, an example of contemporary advanced technology will be given that favours these very claims.

Figure di mitopoiesi

Figure is a form which contains an inference, a consolidated metaphorical construction, a fragment of narration which can be inserted in different narrations and speculations therefore linking them together, creating units of meaning and increasing the phenomenon called intertextuality. The lack of attention to figural thinking reinforces the trend to personify and render objective mythologems which generate obsessions, such as the fear of strangers or ecological catastrophe; instead, the original roots of these symbolic productions should be retraced in the deep otherness which inhabits the bottom of our psyche. What is lacking in the post-modern thought, as well as in its pedagogy, is both a literature and a mythology; this is not due to the fact that we lack original sources (books, writings), but to the fact that we are loosing the consciousness and the habit to use them according to a myhtopoeic and figural way. It is necessary to rediscover the meaning of telling and of self-telling as the basis of a way to learn built upon the value of understanding (instead than explaining), therefore pulling out from the narrations those figures which enable us to link the universe we contain to the one which contains us. By doing so, we will realise that the boundaries between the two universes are an imposture: each of us, while getting lost in the labyrinth-universe of the story-telling, will perceive the epiphany of one's own self through the mirror of one's own figures.

Práticas culturais e práticas escolares: aproximações e especificidades no ensino de história

The school education is looking more and more for establishing a dialogue with other cultural spaces with views to explore what those spaces offer for the knowledge acquisition through the use of other languages and tools. When approximating the students of those spaces the school also waits that the knowledge there acquired and lived contribute for a citizen attitude development, in other words, the problematization of the social uses of the memory and of the actions, relationships and men material and symbolic productions, along the time, in different societies and cultures. In this work, we intended to offer some conceptual and methodological contributions that can guide the History teachers of educational practice and of museums educators in the perspective of the construction of historical knowledge. However, before presenting those possibilities, we will problematize the way how this relationship has been given, in away to throw lights for the construction of new relationships.

Économie de chasse et d'exploitation de l'animal au Cuzoul de Vers (Lot) au Solutréen et au Badegoulien

Over approximately 3000 years, the rock shelter of Cuzoul de Vers was intermittently occupied by Solutrean and Badegoulian groups for short periods during the warm season. Within this finely stratified site, numerous hearths, stone knapping locations and ochre accumulations have been preserved. Archaeozoological analyses of some thirty levels have revealed numerous recurrences of types of human behaviour. The Palaeolithic populations had precise knowledge of the environment they exploited. Within each level, we observe that young reindeer, ibex, and chamois were selected and hunted to satisfy not only alimentary needs, but also those associated with technical and symbolic productions. The exploiting of bone as fuel after marrow extraction confers dimensional characteristics on the various types of bone material which can only be demonstrated on material from excavations where all material, without exception, has been collected.