Western Construction Research Articles

Analysis of the facade and spatial quality of educational buildings of the first national architecture period: The case of Konya

In the last years of the 19th century, architects who were under the influence of the nationalist ideas that developed in the last years of the 19th century and were strengthened with the declaration of the constitutional monarchy, led to the emergence of the First National Architectural Period as a reaction. They also considered this period as an eclectic architectural style in which they reinterpreted the facade, plan and ornamental elements of Ottoman and Seljuk architecture with Western construction techniques. In this architectural process, many public buildings, hotels, bank buildings, ministry buildings, educational buildings and residences were built. Educational buildings are an important group among the new types of buildings constructed in Konya, which has maintained its political and cultural importance throughout history. In this study, the façade and spatial quality analyses of the Sanayi Mektebi, Male Teachers' High School (Dârü-l Muallimin), Girl Teachers' School (Dârü-l Muallimat) and Gazi Mustafa Kemal, Hakimiyet-i Milliye and İsmet Paşa Primary Schools, which are among the educational buildings built during the First National Architectural Period and which contributed to the identity of the city of Konya, were examined. The authenticity and conservation values of the selected educational buildings were determined and compared with each other. According to the results obtained from the façade and spatial analyses of these samples; authenticity values are determined depending on the rate of having the characteristics of the period and conservation criteria. The fact that no previous study has been carried out in this period and group of buildings using the method defined increases the originality value of the subject.

A milestone in the history of Chinese modern landscape design: the Fangta Park in Shanghai

Fangta Park in Shanghai is a widely admired Chinese modern park and a representative work by Professor Feng Jizhong. A literature review is first used to explain the construction process of Fangta Park, its design philosophy, master plan, and detailed design, followed by an analysis of the park’s design. Previous studies have shown how Feng Jizhong ‘deconstructed’ Western architectural forms using traditional Chinese space concepts, thus generating novel Chinese architectural forms underpinned by Western construction concepts. He adapted rhetorical devices of Chinese traditional poetry and used them in the spatial arrangement and landscape design of Fangta Park, a modern landscape and architectural masterpiece with distinctive Chinese characteristics. Feng Jizhong promoted blending Chinese culture with modern landscape design and illustrated the process of ‘space-time transformation’ with ‘conative space’. Through the design of Fangta Park, he exhibited his individuality and profound scholarship, charting a unique course for modern landscape architecture in China.

Study on habitat suitability change and habitat network of rare wintering cranes in important international wetlands

Chongming Dongtan wetland is a typical estuarine wetland, located in Chongming District, Shanghai, China, with high ecological significance. The protection of wintering crane's habitat has attracted the wide attention of the international community. Because of the importance of the region in the protection of international biodiversity and the protection of crane habitats, it is of great reference value to study the habitat suitability changes of rare wintering cranes with spatial and temporal distribution characteristics and the distribution of habitat corridors with spatial characteristics, to improve the habitat quality of crane habitats in globally important wetlands. Based on the remote sensing image data of Chongming Dongtan and the field survey data of rare wintering cranes, this study obtained the land use change of Chongming Dongtan from 1986 to 2021 by ENVI and ArcGIS10.8 software, evaluated the habitat suitability of wintering cranes in 36 years by GIS technology, and constructed the habitat corridor of wintering cranes by using the minimum cumulative resistance model(MCR). The results showed that from 1986 to 2021, the number of four typical wintering cranes in Chongming Dongtan showed a general downward trend. In the past 36 years, the habitat suitability of wintering cranes in the internationally important wetland of Chongming Dongtan has gradually changed from a suitable area to an unsuitable area. The suitable areas are mainly distributed in the eastern and northern parts of the study area, and the unsuitable areas are mainly distributed in the western construction land area. The habitat quality of cranes is deteriorating. The overall resistance distribution of Chongming Dongtan in 2021 shows a trend of low resistance value in the east and high resistance value in the west, and the degree of obstruction is strong in the south and weak in the north. There are 208 potential habitat corridors for wintering cranes in Chongming Dongtan, with a total length of 377.12 km. Get 127 Habitat nodes. The density of habitat corridors in the eastern part of the study area is significantly higher than that in the western region, and the ecological space in the eastern region is well connected. Finally, this study proposes the identification of important habitat corridors based on gravity model and the analysis of habitat network structure based on graph theory, which provides a reference for improving the stability of habitat network by means of habitat node optimization, stepping stone increase and ecological restoration. This study is different from previous studies on large-scale ecological conditions such as cities or urban coastal zones. From the perspective of the construction of regional wetland rare species habitat network and the protection of international important wetland biodiversity with important ecological value, it is helpful to optimize the suitable habitat pattern of rare overwintering cranes and provide a method basis for the protection of rare species habitat and the construction of habitat network in regional wetlands. At the same time, Chongming Dongtan is the only internationally important wetland in Shanghai. Wintering cranes are the most important biological resources of wetlands. The study of habitat suitability changes and habitat networks can effectively promote the development of internationally important wetland cities in Shanghai.

Reclaiming the Revolutionary

Reclaiming the Revolutionary

‘蕭何’에 대한 正祖의 인식 고찰

Hwaseong Fortress(水原 華城), which was built by the 22nd King Jeong- jo(正祖) of the Joseon Dynasty by mobilizing all the best intellectuals of the time and aggregating Eastern and Western construction techniques in the 18th century, can be said to be the highlight of the fortress architecture in the early modern era. However, the reason why King Jeongjo built Hwaseong Fortress has not been confirmed, with only various speculations so far. This is because King Jeong-jo built Hwaseong Fortress, but he could not implement his specific plan based on it. Nevertheless, we can find hints about the true meaning of King Jeongjo's construction of Hwaseong through numerous works and words and actions left by King Jeongjo. In this paper, we would like to give a clue to the intention of the construction of Hwaseong Fortress by examining King Jeong-jo's perception of the character “Xiaohe(蕭何)” in History. King Jeong-jo interpreted Han Go-jo(漢 高祖) as a wise and prudent figure and projected himself to Go-jo. In addition, Jeong-jo dream that a servant such as Soha, who accurately read Gojo's intentions, laid the foundation for the early days of the founding with excellent judgment and administrative ability, and became the strategic director of the construction of Weiyanggeong(未央宮) Palace and realized Go-jo's dream. Jeong-jo emphasizes that Xiaohe was able to show his talent because he met rapidly changing era throughout, and that he was able to fulfill his calling because he had a breast that recognized and trusted him. In addition, King Jeong-jo judged that it was a time when new changes such as the establishment of the Joseon Dynasty were needed, and interpreted the construction intention of Weiyanggeong Palace anew and used it as an excellent transcription of Hwaseong construction. As if to prove this, Jeong-jo likens Hwaseong to Weiyanggeong through poetry. This move of Jeong-jo was an expression of confidence that he was ready, and now if a wise god like Soha appeared, he could revitalize Joseon just as the Han Dynasty was founded based on the Confucian tradition. Jeong-jo's a view of wise subjects, which was revealed above, has not received attention in academia, but it is believed that Jeong-jo's self-awareness, a view of subjects, and Hwaseong architectural intentions can be helped in multiple layers.

Secularity and Science: What Scientists around the World Really Think about Religion

Secularity and Science: What Scientists around the World Really Think about Religion

Dynamism: Reconceptualising Resilience in Recovery From Trauma

Resilience research is currently dominated by Western theoretical frameworks, concepts, constructions, worldviews and understandings. Applying a Western construction of resilience to other global settings, is challenged by the fact that cultural practices central to different cultural identities, may not be acknowledged. This paper will present new and existing ways of conceptualising resilience and proposes that the term dynamism may be more culturally appropriate for capturing the concept of resilience in cross-cultural settings. The term dynamism has been crafted from research that initially sought to understand resilience and recovery among young Cambodian trauma survivors (See Wyatt, 2021). The research endeavoured to situate the concept of resilience within a non-Western, Cambodia-specific context. This study looked at factors that enabled young people to move forward with their lives and do remarkably well, despite significant childhood trauma (Wyatt, 2021). This paper is an extension of the key findings and will focus on the construction of the term resilience and its usefulness in cross-cultural settings. Furthermore, this article will present a model for dynamism and how this may be helpful in understanding recovery from trauma in cross-cultural contexts.

8 - ‘New Wars: Forgotten Warriors’: Why Have Girl Fighters Been Excluded from Western Representations of Conflict in Sierra Leone?

Since the end of the cold war, the way we talk about war has changed. Instead of talking about ‘noble’ inter-state warfare, as was common in the past, there is a new Western vocabulary depicting modern conflict as chaotic and callous. Child soldiers are seen as emblematic element of the ‘new wars’, yet the presence of girl fighters has been continually ignored by the international community and neglected in academic writing. When girls have attracted attention, it has been purely as victims. Using a case study of Sierra Leone, this essay analyses how the Western representation of girls as victims plays into the Western construction of Africa as a place needful of military and humanitarian intervention. By looking at discourses of gender and youth, I examine how the construction of the girl child is integral to maintaining the myth of the young ‘aggressive’ African male and the white ‘saviour’; both essential for ‘new wars’ and the humanitarian industry. The conflict in Sierra Leone has been considered by many academics as a prime example of a ‘new war’ (Kaplan 1994; Kaldor 2001) and thus lends itself particularly well to the subject under discussion. The emphasis in the West has been on the ‘barbarity’ and high level of atrocities carried out by combatants 1 as well as the use of child soldiers. As Rosen points out, it is seen as a ‘symbol of the horrors of modern war’ (2005:58) and continues to attract media attention, as has done the recent film Blood Diamonds shows. Sierra Leone has also been chosen as a case study because of the high level of female participation in the conflict (Mazurana and Carlson 2004:2) and because of the recognition that girls were failed in the Demobilisation Demilitarization and Reintegration (DDR) process (Coulter 2005), which I shall briefly touch on in this essay, although space limits a more detailed analysis.

Islam and the Invention of Religion: A Study of Medieval Muslim Discourses on Dīn

Abstract In recent years, the validity of the category of religion has been increasingly subjected to severe criticism across several academic disciplines. The thrust of this critical position – despite the nuances and sophistication of the various arguments advanced in support of it – rests, in the main, on one central claim: that the notion of religion did not exist in non-Western and premodern civilizations and is therefore a unique invention of the modern West. It is my contention, however, that in fixating on the Western construction of the category of religion and the theoretical problems associated with it, scholars have neglected to consider whether a similar concept might have existed prior to the modern West, and if so, what this might mean for our understanding of religion as a historical phenomenon. As a remedy to this trend, this article will engage in a comprehensive conceptual historical analysis of the Arabic term dīn (and its related terminology) in order to demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, premodern Muslims did indeed possess a concept akin to the modern sense of “religion” long before the rise of the modern West, and that, furthermore, they were the first historical community to sustain and develop a rich and robust analytical discourse around the idea of religion, which consequently played a major role in various social, political, and intellectual endeavors in Islamic history. My investigation will reveal that premodern Muslims continuously redefined and repurposed the concept of religion (based on a readily available conceptual vocabulary produced within the Late Antique Near East) in the process of offering particular sociological accounts of the origins and nature of religion, addressing political concerns like the unravelling of power, classifying the “Other,” and more.

From Philosophy of Religion to History of Religions Criticism of the Western Construction of Religion

Din felsefesi ile Dinler Tarihi “din” üzerine felsefi ve tarihsel bir takım incelemeleri ve soruşturmaları içerir. Ancak incelemelerine ve soruşturmalarına konu edindikleri “din” kavramının mahiyetine yönelik derin bir sessizlik ve belirsizlik göze çarpar. Bu disiplinlerde “din” denilince bilimsel bir nesne mi, olgusal bir gerçeklik mi, yoksa ideolojik bir inşa mı kastedildiği belli değildir. Din felsefesi disiplininde din üzerine felsefi soruşturmalar yapılırken Hristiyan teolojisinin genel ve özel sorunları mı tartışılır, yoksa her dinin özel sorunlarından yola çıkılarak felsefi bir soruşturma mı yapılır? Dinler tarihi dinin tarihsel görünümleri ve dönüşümleri mi tasvir eder, ya da dinler tarihi Batılı metafizik önyargıların bilimsel bir forma bürünmüş hali midir? Bu makalede Batı’da din felsefesinden dinler tarihi disiplinine seyreden din üzerine yapılmış çalışmaların bazı örtük varsayımları ve problemleri hakkında bir soruşturma yapılacaktır. Makalenin temel iddiası genel olarak Batı’da ortaya çıkan din bilimlerinin özel olarak ise din felsefesi ile dinler tarihi disiplininde kullanılan “din” kavramının Batı merkezci bir gramer tarafından inşa edildiği ve Hristiyan kültürün söz dağarcığı ile şekillendiğidir. “Din” üzerine bu örtük varsayımlar ve arkaplan ile yüzleşilmediği veya hesaplaşılmadığı takdirde hem akademik olarak hem de entelektüel olarak anlamlı bir mesafe alınamayacaktır. Makalede jeneolojik yöntemle dinin Batılı inşasının yarattığı sorunlar dile getirilecektir. Bu sayede dinler arasındaki belirgin farklılıkların bastırılmasının önüne geçilebilecek ve belli bir kültürde kurgulanmış bir dinin diğer dinlere ontolojik ve epistemolojik şiddet uygulanmasının önüne geçilmiş olacaktır.

African Freedom: How Africa Responded to Independence by Phyllis Taoua

Reviewed by: African Freedom: How Africa Responded to Independence by Phyllis Taoua Abou-Bakar Mamah African Freedom: How Africa Responded to Independence BY PHYLLIS TAOUA Cambridge UP, 2018. xii + 321 pp. ISBN 9781108427418 cloth. Phyllis Taoua’s African Freedom: How Africa Responded to Independence questions perceptions of freedom and independence by individuals and African nations after independence. The author discusses the stark contrast of being independent and not enjoying freedom based on human experience: “My book is an attempt to capture what is most essential in an evolving conversation about the ongoing struggle to achieve meaningful freedom in Africa after national liberation” (15). This quest for a new definition of freedom, sixty years after most African nations gained independence, lies in the historical assumption by researchers and experts in the field that political and economic independence existed in name only. Taoua does not make her claim lightly: she draws on the Pan-African movement, championed by Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and well-known African historical figures of the anticolonialist struggle, such as Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as the anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, to make her case for how Africans are and should keep fighting to bring about meaningful freedom. As a seasoned scholar who has traveled all over Africa, shaping her research through the lenses of what she calls the “Formule Ricard” (14), Taoua goes to great lengths to illustrate, in a manner reminiscent of the imprisonment or exile that authors such as Wole Soyinka of Nigeria and Mongo Beti of Cameroun have endured, how the illusory freedom of Africa affects individuals as well as nations. The density of the book resides in its geographical scope, which spans from North to western and southern Africa with a focus on a vast array of works by contemporary African writers and filmmakers in global Africa, where “multinationals make [End Page 213] billions in profit, while the people who live on the land are trapped in endemic poverty and often traumatized by armed conflict” (217). Her analysis covers both Francophone and Anglophone Africa with an extensive exploration of the works and thought of authors in the canon of African letters, such as Sony Labou Tansi and Ayi Kwei Armah, that scrutinize the ways colonial heritage dashed the hope of African people for “meaningful freedom” under the authority of new African leaders who were bound to safeguard the interests of the former colonizer. Women’s freedom, based on Taoua’s own experience as the wife of a Tuareg man, cannot be dissociated from the narrative of meaningful freedom. Existential issues that women face in African society, including the right to education, personal finances, and the choice of their own spouses, is a leitmotif of African feminism underpinned in the works of Malian director Cheick Oumar Sissoko and writers such as Mariama Bâ of Senegal and Assia Djebar of Algeria. Taoua skillfully frames Africans’ ongoing sociopolitical and economic struggles in the era of democracy, as depicted in the works of contemporary African writers and filmmakers, under the concept of meaningful freedom. Democracy is not holding ground on the continent, since it was not imagined by Africans for themselves in relation to their own social, cultural, political, and economic realities. African democracy is a Western construction that must yet adapt to Africans’ way of life and their expectations. In that sense, Taoua’s quest is a wake-up call that echoes Achille Mbembe’s claim: “Decolonization without democracy is a very poor, fictitious form of repossession of self. But, if Africans want democracy, it’s up to them to imagine its forms and pay the price. No one will pay it for them. They won’t get it on credit either” (29). In her approach to ongoing African struggles, Taoua identifies three types of freedom that become, with the exception of the last chapter, the footprint to the conclusion of each chapter in her book: instrumental, substantive, and existential, the sum of which equals what she coins “meaningful freedom.” Abou-Bakar Mamah Rhodes College mamaha@rhodes.edu WORKS CITED Mbembe, Achille. Sortir de la grande nuit: Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée. La Découverte, 2010. Google Scholar...

Authenticity and discourses in Aladdin (1992)

Abstract Since the first encounters between the East and the West, many Western artistic productions have been produced to introduce the Orient to the Occident. Antoine Galland’s translation of the oriental folkloric tales, known as One Thousand and One Nights marked a cultural transfer through introducing an exotic, colourful and adventurous, yet unsafe, life-threatening and mysterious image of the Orient. Scholars question the authenticity of the translation, and reject the true belonging of the tale of Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp to the oriental cultural heritage suggesting its Western construction. This fabrication suggests the existence of several discourses that are to be unfolded with the critical discourse analysis of the pictorial and textual discourse of the tale and its several filmic adaptations. The tale was fully or partially adapted in several cinematographic productions during the last century. For example, while Aladin (1906) faithfully adapted part of the original tale, the 1992 version directed by Clements and Musker is a loosely inspiration perceived through an orientalist filter. The aim of this article is to investigate the authenticity and disclose the discourses concealed in Galland’s translation and its 1992 filmic adaptation, the critical discourse analysis in addition to Edward Saïd’s Orientalism provide the theoretical framework to analyse the excerpts from the translation and scenes from the film, in order to disclose the colonial, orientalist and feminist discourses they encapsulate.

Harms of secondary recognition in the Context of sociopolitical conflicts: Three factors for their exclusion from Transitional justice legal discourse

This work seeks to explain why feminist theory has said transitional justice legal discourse has notrecognized the totality of harms women experience in the context of socio-political conflicts. To doso, it analyzes three factors responsible for international law and the Western construction of thefemale body as dualist and essentialist. Based on this analysis, it establishes that harms not usuallyrecognized by this legal discourse are considered “harms of secondary recognition,” since they donot form part of the typical legal figures that precede the experience itself.

Racialization and discourses of “privileges” in the Middle Ages: Jews, “Gypsies”, and Kawaramono

ABSTRACT The dominant contention in the sociology of racialization asserts race as a modern Western construction. However, we lack studies that juxtapose the experiences in the Trans-Atlantic with the Trans-Pacific. This article, by examining the social conditions experienced by Jews in Spain, the “Gypsies” in Romania, and the Kawaramono in Japan in the Middle Ages, claims that the racialization had already begun before European colonization. It points out a variety of parallel patterns of marginalization and racialization, including but not limited to, “monopolization” of economic activities, an ambiguous relationship with the ruling class, and the discourses of “privileges.” My examination can contribute to understanding global trends of racism and the backlash against minoritized groups associated with the mythical discourses of “privileges” facing us all in the twenty-first century.

Transnational identities in the Canadian context: Kurdish refugee youth as actors and citizens

ABSTRACTThis study explores the circumstances of Kurdish refugee youth in Canada. Using a critical ethnographic approach, I interviewed twenty young people, aged 15–30, to examine their transnational identities and lived experiences in the Canadian context. Arendt’s notion of the right to have rights, Isin’s concept of acts of citizenship, and Hall’s concept of state hegemony proved to be useful theoretical tools to examine the exclusion of refugee youth from the educational market and their statelessness, rightlessness, and statuslessness in the nation-states. The interview data indicate that the statelessness and statuslessness of refugee youth stem from the practices of hegemony, assimilation, and racism by their home and host state. The study also suggests the importance of questioning the state’s hegemony and the domination of the western construction of citizenship to provide alternative forms of social and educational participation that can transform the youths’ status from refugees to actors and citizens.

Gunslinging Justice: The American Culture of Violence in Westerns and the Law by Justin A. Joyce

Reviewed by: Gunslinging Justice: The American Culture of Violence in Westerns and the Law by Justin A. Joyce Marek Paryz Justin A. Joyce, Gunslinging Justice: The American Culture of Violence in Westerns and the Law. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2018. 248 pp. Cloth, $120. In Gunslinging Justice: The American Culture of Violence in Westerns and the Law Justin A. Joyce demonstrates how what he calls [End Page 447] "paradigm shifts" in US legal regulations governing gun use have influenced the representation of gun violence in Westerns. His argument is informed by Michel Foucault's theory of modern disciplinary practices that have led to the formation of subjects characterized by their capability of self-control. Joyce perceives the gunman in a Western movie as an epitome of such a subject. The gunman's self-restraint is key to how Westerns have defined justifiable gun violence and its necessary conditions. Depictions of justifiable gun violence in Westerns tellingly parallel the major changes of the legal doctrine sanctioning its use, the doctrine's fulcrum being the idea of self-defense. Its modifications over time reveal an increasing juridical tendency toward the conception of self-defense based on an individual's recognition of threat. Joyce does not stop there, however; having established a connection between the impact of a series of breakthrough court rulings and the Western's changing firearm iconography, he offers a theory of the evolution of the genre, the primary criteria of which are the representations of justified gun violence and corresponding constructions of masculinity. The first three chapters discuss key issues in the development of laws regulating the use of gun violence. Joyce first examines revenge as a legal problem, a cultural phenomenon, and a narrative motif marking the normative limits of gun violence across social discourses and artistic representations. He then goes on to discuss the American self-defense doctrine and demonstrates, based on several breakthrough court cases, that the doctrine departed from the English common law duty to retreat and gradually broadened the definition of self-defense to incorporate a greater variety of actions as justified violence. Finally, Joyce puts in historical perspective the problem of gun possession and use, arguing that this right was initially justified as a notional necessity but ultimately came to be sanctioned as an individual right. The remaining chapters discuss selected Western novels and films. Chapter 4 concentrates on firearm iconography, juxtaposing the precision of the rifle with the speed of the pistol as reflecting changing notions of defensive violence. Here Joyce uses examples ranging from Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales to Peckinpah's [End Page 448] The Wild Bunch to show how the Western has been employed to preclude the radical implications of the increasingly individuated conceptions of self-defense. In chapter 5 Joyce refers to Barbara Cruikshank's term "technology of citizenship," which describes a complex of social discourses and practices shaping individual forms of political activity and self-government and applies it to the Western's cultural work. Analyzing several film Westerns as examples, in particular Shane and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, Joyce demonstrates how the Western's construction of an Anglo hero with a gun who is exceptionally skilled with weapons and capable of self-restraint when it comes to using his skills has helped control gun violence. Chapter 6 is devoted to Eastwood's Unforgiven, whose depiction of extralegal violence brings into focus the problem of competing conceptions of justice that may function at any given time, highlighting the processual nature of the law. Chapter 7 problematizes race and justifiable homicide in the neoliberal age on the basis of the TV series Justified and Tarantino's Django Unchained. One could perhaps wish for a better interweaving of the narratives of the law and the genre in Joyce's book as one occasionally gets the impression they are parallel but separate. A two-paragraph reference to Jarmusch's Dead Man in chapter 3, wholly devoted to a discussion of juridical solutions, exemplifies this structural problem. The future will show whether Joyce's theory of the evolution of the Western genre will have had as much resonance as some of the theories preceding it. What potentially lessens its appeal is...

Tamed Monsters and Human Problems in Cinema’s <i>Interview with the Vampire</i> (1994)

What can the taming of the monster reveal about its construction and the potential and limits of change? Modernist, individualist qualities of Western culture and society have shaped the construction and deconstruction of the monster in popular culture in general and film in particular. The idea of an historically emergent human nature and its associated norms is key to the construction of the monster as transgressive. Less obvious but nonetheless apparent is the constraining role this Western construction of human nature continues to play in recent cinematic attempts to approach the monster more closely. These are explored through a consideration of vampire movies within the horror genre, with a focus on Interview with the Vampire (dir. Neil Jordan, 1994), as arguably both influential within and emblematic of a more general trend. The film dismantles the conventional monster figure of the vampire, humanising her by detailing her transposition from a natural, human setting to something otherworldly. Human (read as Western) qualities are reinforced and salvaged from the disturbing ambivalence of conventional monstrosity, as we observe the logic of ‘human’ adaptation to alien conditions. In this way, both the paradoxical model of freedom as conformity to nature and the naturalising reification of contingent social groupings are re-affirmed.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CULTURAL OTHER IN JOSEPH CONRAD’S STORY «KARAIN: A MEMORY»

Aim. The article aims at examining Joseph Conrad’s vision of the Malay region and its image building forces in his story «Karain: A Memory» (1897), which articulates the representation of some late 19th-century social and cultural constructs of the Other and becomes a part of literary dialogue between East and West. Methods. An imagological approach and the strategies of cultural studies are applied in the article to highlight how Conrad’s story «Karain: A Memory» is used to assert the Other’s cultural identity, constructing and deconstructing some national stereotypes and cultural prejudices of the period. Results. The idea is that the fictional world of the Malayan Archipelago as reconstructed by Conrad through the narrative of «Karain: A Memory» contributes to the meanings attached to the image of the Malays (that is national characterisation) and serves as a medium in the accumulative Western construction of the East and the cultural Other. Scientific novelty. There has been made an attempt to prove that Conrad’s works demonstrate the complex manner of textual representations in which nineteenth-century cultural assumptions, concerning European civilization and colonial periphery, are simultaneously revived and challenged. The practical significance. The article may serve for the further research of the cultural Other and its representation in the English literature.
 Key words: cultural Other, national stereotypes, cultural identity, colonial discourse, Joseph Conrad.

Epistemologies of fire: an approach from ancestral thoughts

This article reveals an investigation carried out on the production of ancestral thoughts from the rituals of many native populations of America (Abya Yala) in what has been called by the authors “Epistemologies of fire”. Here their ways of production, search and transmission of knowledge are set which, from the ancestral, have been used by indigenous communities for the construction of a community, privileging how each being thinks of itself inside a world view and a cosmic intelligence1 that allows for bases to be laid to confront the idea of internal and external separation, that has been pursued by human beings since the western construction of the world. Continuing with the idea elaborated by other authors of a pluriverse (a world where many worlds can fit), these epistemologies based in the recognition of diversity contribute as well to the construction of an academic polyphony that can recapture these native sciences to integrate their knowledge and the way of producing them to expand the perspectives in Social Sciences. Continuing with the idea woven by other authors of a pluriverse (a world where many worlds fit), these epistemologies based on the recognition of diversity also contribute to the construction of an academic polyphony that can take up these native sciences to integrate their knowledge and way to produce them to broaden the perspectives in the Social Sciences. An immersion work was developed using learning and description methodologies specific to the villages with which the work was carried out. This allowed us to carry out an exercise in careful listening to the spoken word of the elderly (knowledgeable grandparents) and participation in their rituals, which are understood as ancestral pedagogies.

Una sociología histórica global de la construcción del estado racionalizado en la modernidad internacional

El estado es una institución clave en la modernidad internacional. Desde sus orígenes al estado se le ha supuesto y reconocido una capacidad racional y funcional. Este estatus racional del estado ha sido incorporado a la realidad naturalizada en la modernidad internacional contemporánea y se ha constituido como estado racionalizado. El análisis de la construcción social del estado racionalizado se centra en la relación entre ideologías e ideas y las dinámicas de las estructuras sociales. El análisis se organiza en un doble eje. Primero, el eje interior y exterior de los estados en la historia occidental: se distingue entre la dimensión interior respecto al orden social interno y la dimensión exterior en la relación con otros estados y sociedades. Segundo, el eje occidente y no-occidente: el enfoque global aspira a superar el etnocentrismo occidental, y reconoce que el mundo no-occidental ha sido es una referencia clave para la construcción del estado racionalizado. Se concluye que: primero, el estado racionalizado ha sido una construcción histórica, social y cultural liderada por los países europeos y occidentales en relación a y con la realidad no-occidental; y en segundo lugar, que el estado racionalizado es un factor clave en la creciente multipolaridad en las relaciones internacionales.