Figured Worlds

Figured Worlds PDF Author: Professor John Clammer
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802087492
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
"World Visions can conceive of everything except alternative world visions." If this pronouncement by Umberto Eco is right, how can any ethnic group conceive of living with another group on the same territory - in Canada or elsewhere - if their world visions are incompatible? Can we sidestep incompatible world visions or should we try to understand them? Figured Worlds explores the possibilities of equilibrium between commitments to mutual understanding and the framing of strategies of negotiation. This collection begins its rich analytical investigation by describing how people - Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maori, Japanese, and Africans - first learn the figured worlds of their own culture, made up of sensations, affirmations and will, prophecy, revelation, myth, dream, and metamorphoses. It then sets out how diverse figured worlds within a given social system are related, and concludes by offering insightful mappings of the dynamics of these relations, perceived in both their existential-ontological aspects, as well as their material-practical means. Comprising scholarship that is half Canadian and half British, this work offers important foundational perspectives into the thought worlds of cultures found within other cultures.

Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds

Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds PDF Author: Dorothy Holland
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674005624
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Book Description
This text addresses the central problem in anthropological theory of the late 1990s - the paradox that humans are both products of social discipline and creators of remarkable improvisation.

Myanmar’s Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes

Myanmar’s Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes PDF Author: Oh Su-Ann
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9814695769
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
This edited volume adds to the literature on Myanmar and its borders by drawing attention to the significance of geography, history, politics and society in the construction of the border regions and the country. First, it alerts us to the fact that the border regions are situated in the mountainous and maritime domains of the country, highlighting the commonalities that arise from shared geography. Second, the book foregrounds socio-spatio practices — economic, intimate, spiritual, virtual — of border and boundary-making in their local context. This demonstrates how state-defined notions of territory, borders and identity are enacted or challenged. Third, despite sharing common features, Myanmar’s borderscapes also possess unique configurations of ethnic, political and economic attributes, producing social formations and figured worlds that are more cohesive or militant in some border areas than in others. Understanding and comparing these social practices and their corresponding life-worlds allows us to re-examine the connections from the borderlands back to the hinterland and to consider the value of border and boundary studies in problematizing and conceptualizing recent changes in Myanmar. “This ambitious project combines sophisticated theorization of boundary-making as a form of social practice and empirical studies of Myanmar’s heterogeneous borderlands, both land and sea. Seeing the country from its edges opens up a provocative and altogether novel vision of the contestations joining diverse peripheries and centre. This volume brings together the leading scholars of the country in a collection that is a must-have for anyone interested in contemporary Myanmar, border studies, and Southeast Asia.” -- Itty Abraham, Head, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore (NUS) “This is the first book to attempt to bring together such a diverse range of Myanmar’s land and maritime border regions for comparison. In doing so, it highlights the diversity of the country’s demographic, social, economic and political make-up when viewed from the margins rather than the centre. It reveals how these border regions help to constitute the nation and how they shape what modern Myanmar is today — they also give strong indicators of what it might become. This is an essential read for anyone in the social sciences interested in borderlands, as well as those requiring a broader understanding of the challenges facing the contemporary Myanmar government as it attempts to usher in social and political cohesion following decades of conflict.” -- Mandy Sadan, Reader in the History of South East Asia, School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS)

Transmodal Communications

Transmodal Communications PDF Author: Margaret R. Hawkins
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1788926382
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description
This book examines semiotics, meaning-making and the co-construction of relations in transmodal communications. Through the lens of transpositioning – the multiple and interwoven layers of emplacements and positionings that are entailed in communications which cross and transcend the boundaries that have historically shaped our thinking about the world and its inhabitants – the chapters interrogate digital languaging and literacies, and how transmodal communications shape identities, belongings and relationships, with particular attention paid to issues of equity and social justice. The chapter authors consider both transmodalities and critical cosmopolitanism as they analyze empirical data from youth, adults and researchers participating in a project that digitally connects youth to share their lives across diverse and under-resourced global communities. In offering this multi-perspectival, multi-voiced volume, the authors portray and address methodological issues in researching transglobal transmodal communications.

Working from Within

Working from Within PDF Author: Luis Urrieta
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816529179
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
Combining approaches from anthropology and cultural studies, Working from Within examines how issues of identity, agency, and social movements shape the lives of Chicana and Chicano activist educators in U.S. schools. Luis Urrieta Jr. skillfully utilizes the cultural concepts of positioning, figured worlds, and self-authorship, along with Chicano Studies and Chicana feminist frameworks, to tell the story of twenty-four Mexican Americans who have successfully navigated school systems as students and later as activist educators. Working from Within is one of the first books to show how identity is linked to agency--individually and collectively--for Chicanas and Chicanos in education. Urrieta set out to answer linked questions: How do Chicanas and Chicanos negotiate identity, ideology, and activism within educational institutions that are often socially, culturally, linguistically, emotionally, and psychologically alienating? Analyzing in-depth interviews with twenty-four educators, Urrieta offers vivid narratives that show how activist identities are culturally produced through daily negotiations. UrrietaÕs work details the struggles of activist Chicana and Chicano educators to raise consciousness in a wide range of educational settings, from elementary schools to colleges. Overall, Urrieta addresses important questions about what it means to work for social justice from within institutions, and he explores the dialogic spaces between the alternatives of reproduction and resistance. In doing so, he highlights the continuity of Chicana and Chicano social movement, the relevance of gender, and the importance of autochthonous frameworks in understanding contemporary activism. Finally, he shows that it is possible for minority activist educators to thrive in a variety of institutional settings while maintaining strong ties to their communities.

Learning Identity

Learning Identity PDF Author: Stanton Wortham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521845882
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
This book describes how social identification and academic learning can deeply depend on each other, through a theoretical account of the two processes and a detailed empirical analysis of how studentsa identities emerged and how students learned curriculum in one classroom. The book traces the identity development of two students across an academic year, showing how they developed unexpected identities in substantial part because curricular themes provided categories that teachers and students used to identify them and showing how students learned about curricular themes in part because the two students were socially identified in ways that illuminated those themes. The book's distinctive contribution is to demonstrate in detail how social identification and academic learning can become deeply interdependent.

An Introduction to Discourse Analysis

An Introduction to Discourse Analysis PDF Author: James Paul Gee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317820584
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Book Description
Discourse analysis considers how language, both spoken and written, enacts social and cultural perspectives and identities. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis examines the field and presents James Paul Gee’s unique integrated approach which incorporates both a theory of language-in-use and a method of research. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis can be used as a stand-alone textbook or ideally used in conjunction with the practical companion title How to do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit. Together they provide the complete resource for students studying discourse analysis. Updated throughout, the fourth edition of this seminal textbook also includes two new chapters: ‘What is Discourse?’ to further understanding of the topic, as well as a new concluding section. A new companion website www.routledge.com/cw/gee features a frequently asked questions section, additional tasks to support understanding, a glossary and free access to journal articles by James Paul Gee. Clearly structured and written in a highly accessible style, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis includes perspectives from a variety of approaches and disciplines, including applied linguistics, education, psychology, anthropology and communication to help students and scholars from a range of backgrounds to formulate their own views on discourse and engage in their own discourse analysis. This is an essential textbook for all advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of discourse analysis.

World Wide Mind

World Wide Mind PDF Author: Michael Chorost
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439141207
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
What if digital communication felt as real as being touched? This question led Michael Chorost to explore profound new ideas triggered by lab research around the world, and the result is the book you now hold. Marvelous and momentous, World Wide Mind takes mind-to-mind communication out of the realm of science fiction and reveals how we are on the verge of a radical new understanding of human interaction. Chorost himself has computers in his head that enable him to hear: two cochlear implants. Drawing on that experience, he proposes that our Paleolithic bodies and our Pentium chips could be physically merged, and he explores the technologies that could do it. He visits engineers building wearable computers that allow people to be online every waking moment, and scientists working on implanted chips that would let paralysis victims communicate. Entirely new neural interfaces are being developed that let computers read and alter neural activity in unprecedented detail. But we all know how addictive the Internet is. Chorost explains the addiction: he details the biochemistry of what makes you hunger to touch your iPhone and check your email. He proposes how we could design a mind-to-mind technology that would let us reconnect with our bodies and enhance our relationships. With such technologies, we could achieve a collective consciousness—a World Wide Mind. And it would be humankind’s next evolutionary step. With daring and sensitivity, Chorost writes about how he learned how to enhance his own relationships by attending workshops teaching the power of touch. He learned how to bring technology and communication together to find true love, and his story shows how we can master technology to make ourselves more human rather than less. World Wide Mind offers a new understanding of how we communicate, what we need to connect fully with one another, and how our addiction to email and texting can be countered with technologies that put us—literally—in each other’s minds.

They Create Worlds

They Create Worlds PDF Author: Alexander Smith
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 042975261X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 601

Book Description
They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. 1 is the first in a three-volume set that provides an in-depth analysis of the creation and evolution of the video game industry. Beginning with the advent of computers in the mid-20th century, Alexander Smith’s text comprehensively highlights and examines individuals, companies, and market forces that have shaped the development of the video game industry around the world. Volume one, places an emphasis on the emerging ideas, concepts, and games developed from the commencement of the budding video game art form in the 1950s and 1960s through the first commercial activity in the 1970s and early 1980s. They Create Worlds aims to build a new foundation upon which future scholars and the video game industry itself can chart new paths. Key Features: The most in-depth examination of the video game industry ever written, They Create Worlds charts the technological breakthroughs, design decisions, and market forces in the United States, Europe, and East Asia that birthed a $100 billion industry. The books derive their information from rare primary sources such as little-studied trade publications, personal papers collections, and oral history interviews with designers and executives, many of whom have never told their stories before. Spread over three volumes, They Create Worlds focuses on the creative designers, shrewd marketers, and innovative companies that have shaped video games from their earliest days as a novelty attraction to their current status as the most important entertainment medium of the 21st Century. The books examine the formation of the video game industry in a clear narrative style that will make them useful as teaching aids in classes on the history of game design and economics, but they are not being written specifically as instructional books and can be enjoyed by anyone with a passion for video game history.

Educated in Romance

Educated in Romance PDF Author: Dorothy C. Holland
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226349446
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Book Description
Is romance more important to women in college than grades are? Why do so many women enter college with strong academic backgrounds and firm career goals but leave with dramatically scaled-down ambitions? Dorothy C. Holland and Margaret A. Eisenhart expose a pervasive "culture of romance" on campus: a high-pressure peer system that propels women into a world where their attractiveness to men counts most.