/pdf/cosmologies-diversite-bioculturelle-et-preservation-de-l-3izy6nh5dk.pdf

Bruno Latour, Nous n'avons jamais été modernes. Essai d'anthropologie symétrique, Paris, La Découverte, 1991

Cosmologies, diversité bioculturelle et préservation de l'environnement

This paper seeks to inquire into the constructionist knowledge practices by further exploring the interchange outlined by philosopher Gaston Bachelard between the naive realist’s conjuration of reality as a precious good in her possession and the miser’s complex of savings the pennies. In fact, this elective affinity holds true not just for naive realism, but also for its very critiques, most of which remaining passionately attached to a little something that is prior to any socio‐historical process. This realistic little something is better understood as a double negation, namely as a not‐nothing, in that it precisely survives the critique of a pre‐existing reality out there as is the case for the discourse of social construction. I will suggest here that this not‐nothing proceeds from knowledge practices that enact “epistemic covetousness” as their critical gesture.

Of “Epistemic Covetousness” in Knowledge Economies: The Not‐nothing of Social Constructionism

This chapter introduces some basic questions and concepts related to the semiotic study of culture and of cultures. The first question “Is semiotics necessary to life?” leads to the analysis of the role of semiotics and semioticness vis-a-vis human beings. The chapter suggests a double necessity of semiotics, intended both as a quality proper to humankind and as a scientific knowledge necessary to reflect and develop awareness of our unperceived “cultural nature.” The second question is related to a basic and yet forgotten claim of semiotics. This is the idea that regards semiotic analysis not only as a form of intellectual knowledge but also as an action that aims to transform reality. This leads to the definition of the semiotician as a political subject, and to the reflection about the general status of subject and subjectivity from a semiotic point of view. The third question confronts the paradox of a cultural space that is always singular and plural at the same time. The chapter proposes some theoretical and methodological tools—e.g., the circular intellectual movement represented by analysis and catalysis—in order to manage the complex relations between parts and whole, micro and macro, order and chaos, and sense and nonsense. The second part of the chapter proposes three key concepts for the contemporary and for a future semiotics of culture(s): semiosphere, formation, and translation. Starting from the structural paradoxes of the idea of semiosphere, developed in the 1980s by Juri Lotman, the chapter proposes a dynamic and glocal idea of culture(s) based on a relationalist approach. The idea of formation enables the mapping of different types of semiotic relations pertaining to the study of culture. At the same time, the concept of formation encapsulates the concepts of sign, text, discourse, and language. The concept of formation assumes a central role in the description of the various modes of translation and in the understanding of the implications of translation on the constitution or on the transformation of common sense and reality. The chapter proposes to consider translation as a key concept that allows the articulation of different semiotic visions and schools as well as the analysis of some of the most interesting and thorny dynamics and devices of actual cultural life.

Semiotics of Culture(s). Basic Questions and Concepts

ipe.2011.0769 Auteur(s) : Alain Giami alain.giami@inserm.fr Directeur de recherche, Inserm-CESP U 1018, equipe Genre, sante sexuelle et reproductive, F-94276, Le Kremlin Bicetre, France Tires a part : A. Giami « Qu’est-ce que c’est un hormosessuel ? demanda Zazie. C’est un homme qui met des bloudjinnzes, dit doucement Marceline. » (Raymond Queneau, Zazie dans le metro. Paris : Gallimard, 1959, p. 87.) « Les categories psychologiques sont devenues des categories [...]

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00592401/document

Identifier et classifier les trans : entre psychiatrie, épidémiologie et associations d’usagers

Les recherches recentes sur la ruralite quebecoise dans plusieurs disciplines des sciences sociales font generalement consensus quant a l’importance d’une analyse des formes symboliques conjuguees a celle du territoire dans ses manifestations concretes et localisees. L’analyse epistemologique des limites et fondements des principaux courants de recherche (sociologie du developpement, geographie de la territorialite, demographie historique) montrent cependant qu’ils oscillent entre une definition « objective » et « subjective » qui nuit a la connaissance empirique des pratiques sociales. Quelques pistes de solution sont proposees en conclusion pour depasser cette dichotomie, dont la relance des etudes monographiques, tresor neglige de la tradition sociologique.

/pdf/du-materiel-au-symbolique-fondements-et-limites-des-etudes-1ovmpzajig.pdf

Bruno Latour, Nous n'avons jamais été modernes. Essai d'anthropologie symétrique, Paris, La Découverte, 1991

Citations

Cosmologies, diversité bioculturelle et préservation de l'environnement

Of “Epistemic Covetousness” in Knowledge Economies: The Not‐nothing of Social Constructionism

Semiotics of Culture(s). Basic Questions and Concepts

Identifier et classifier les trans : entre psychiatrie, épidémiologie et associations d’usagers

Du matériel au symbolique. Fondements et limites des études rurales québécoises contemporaines

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