The Human Condition.
TL;DR: In some religious traditions, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness.
Abstract: Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:
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01 May 2019
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25 Dec 2016
TL;DR: Lim et al. as discussed by the authors explored the complex spatialities of conceptions, everyday practices and actions of one of these places that preserves genuine rhythms of daily lives, where local inhabitants develop idiosyncratic tactics to engage with public space, encroaching sidewalks with complex set of practices.
Abstract: Under the impact of economic globalization, today cities put a high priority to improve their attractiveness and become ideal destinations for global capital and elites (William S.W. Lim, 2014). Results of these “improvements” are often severe gentrification and spectacularisation processes that compromise resilience of local communities. These have an important impact on the materiality of tradition that constitutes complex of historical, social and cultural linkages is being gradually decontextualized and commodified, severely damaging local identity, community and knowledge (William S. W. Lim, 2013). Epitomes of these disruptions of complex rooted linkages are the “creative,” post-consumerist landscapes of consumption, ubiquitously emerging in public spaces of ancient central city streets.Contrasting such tendency of producing deterritorialised places of consumption, trapping people for hours at a time in hyper-real spaces, relevant socio-spatial instances of resistance are found. This paper explores the complex spatialities of conceptions, everyday practices and actions of one of these places that preserves genuine rhythms of daily lives. The historical central district of Hanoi is chosen as case study, where local inhabitants develop idiosyncratic tactics to engage with public space, encroaching sidewalks with complex set of practices. These are places where local inhabitants everyday actualise complex sets of conceptions, practices and actions that notably exemplifies those that produce differential spaces - using the notion proposed by Henri Lefebvre. Disassociating from regulated, limited, planned and homogenized environments as occurring in present shopping malls and theme parks, the central district of Hanoi sidewalks offer chances for accidental encounters, unexpected events and support a very diverse range of local inhabitants in an extremely active and dynamic play. The sidewalks appear as a loosen space (Franck & Stevens, 2007), where unpredictable uses, intermingled spatial interconnections and complex social interrelations generate.This paper discusses the findings of a research aimed to explore (how – what – why) the interaction between the multifarious spatial activities of residents and transients, and describe the patterns of such inclusionary relations. Particularly, the study intends to demonstrate how there is a (ambivalent condition in witch) complex networks of social activities produce and are produced by a distinct set of spatialities that involve inclusive networks of local agencies. So as to achieve the target, the theoretical lenses of Lefebvre’s spatialities and Kim’s spatial ethnography are useful, on the one hand to comprehensively decode and interpret “social space” and on the other hand to clearly describe such space.
14 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...The research is to ultimately evaluate how this realm is key to produce resistant instances of a kind of space that Hannah Arendt (2013) defined as agonistic — a space in which “moral and political greatness, heroism and pre-eminence are revealed, displayed, shared with others” (Benhabib, 1992, p.…...
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...Models of public space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition and Jurgen Habermas....
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...The research is to ultimately evaluate how this realm is key to produce resistant instances of a kind of space that Hannah Arendt (2013) defined as agonistic — a space in which “moral and political greatness, heroism and pre-eminence are revealed, displayed, shared with others” (Benhabib, 1992, p. 78)....
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Abstract: Michael Titlestad has suggested that jazz serves “to mediate, manage and contest” what he terms a “staggered, but also cruel and unusual South African modernity.” His volume Making the Changes (2004) uses the “pedestrian” as a chronotope to describe the “local peripatetic appropriations of global symbolic possibilities” that jazz affords there. This paper proposes a different “chronotope”: that of the train. This substitution facilitates the reading of jazz history in South Africa in tandem with histories of labour migration and other forms of displacement – including trajectories of exile that intersect my account elsewhere of the “global itinerary” of South African cultural formations under apartheid. The deterritorialisation of South African works of expressive culture and social actors associated with anti-apartheid resistance, I have argued, affords the cultural historian strong historiographic purchase over conjunctures outside of South Africa. The present discussion explores this claim in r...
14 citations
References
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27 Mar 2015
TL;DR: In this article, a series of meditations on life, ground, weather, walking, imagination and what it means to be human are presented, with a focus on the life of lines.
Abstract: To live, every being must put out a line, and in life these lines tangle with one another. This book is a study of the life of lines. Following on from Tim Ingold's groundbreaking work Lines: A Brief History, it offers a wholly original series of meditations on life, ground, weather, walking, imagination and what it means to be human.
In the first part, Ingold argues that a world of life is woven from knots, and not built from blocks as commonly thought. He shows how the principle of knotting underwrites both the way things join with one another, in walls, buildings and bodies, and the composition of the ground and the knowledge we find there.
In the second part, Ingold argues that to study living lines, we must also study the weather. To complement a linealogy that asks what is common to walking, weaving, observing, singing, storytelling and writing, he develops a meteorology that seeks the common denominator of breath, time, mood, sound, memory, colour and the sky. This denominator is the atmosphere.
In the third part, Ingold carries the line into the domain of human life. He shows that for life to continue, the things we do must be framed within the lives we undergo. In continually answering to one another, these lives enact a principle of correspondence that is fundamentally social.
This compelling volume brings our thinking about the material world refreshingly back to life. While anchored in anthropology, the book ranges widely over an interdisciplinary terrain that includes philosophy, geography, sociology, art and architecture.
410 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the fact that gender equality and women empowerment have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice.
Abstract: The language of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ was mobilised by feminists in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting women’s rights onto the international development agenda. Their efforts can be declared a resounding success. The international development industry has fully embraced these terms. From international NGOs to donor governments to multilateral agencies the language of gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pervasive presence and takes pride of place among their major development priorities. And yet, this article argues, the fact that these terms have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice. Critically examining the trajectories of these terms in development, the article suggests that if the promise of the post-2015 agenda is to deliver on gender justice, new frames are needed, which can connect with and contribute to a broader movement for global justice.
271 citations
TL;DR: A network simulation model used to study a possible relationship between echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation finds an “echo chamber effect”: the presence of an opinion and network polarized cluster of nodes in a network contributes to the diffusion of complex contagions.
Abstract: The viral spread of digital misinformation has become so severe that the World Economic Forum considers it among the main threats to human society This spread have been suggested to be related to the similarly problematized phenomenon of “echo chambers”, but the causal nature of this relationship has proven difficult to disentangle due to the connected nature of social media, whose causality is characterized by complexity, non-linearity and emergence This paper uses a network simulation model to study a possible relationship between echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation It finds an “echo chamber effect”: the presence of an opinion and network polarized cluster of nodes in a network contributes to the diffusion of complex contagions, and there is a synergetic effect between opinion and network polarization on the virality of misinformation The echo chambers effect likely comes from that they form the initial bandwagon for diffusion These findings have implication for the study of the media logic of new social media
223 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a mediation model to explain the relationship between CEO humility and firm performance and found that when a more humble CEO leads a firm, its top management team is more likely to collaborate, share information, jointly make decisions, and possess a shared vision.
215 citations
TL;DR: The turn to the study of antibiotic resistance in microbiology and medicine is examined, focusing on the realization that individual therapies targeted at single pathogens in individual bodies are environmental events affecting bacterial evolution far beyond bodies.
Abstract: Beginning in the 1940s, mass production of antibiotics involved the industrialscale growth of microorganisms to harvest their metabolic products. Unfortunately, the use of antibiotics selects for resistance at answering scale. The turn to the study of antibiotic resistance in microbiology and medicine is examined, focusing on the realization that individual therapies targeted at single pathogens in individual bodies are environmental events affecting bacterial evolution far beyond bodies. In turning to biological manifestations of antibiotic use, sciences fathom material outcomes of their own previous concepts. Archival work with stored soil and clinical samples produces a record described here as ‘the biology of history’: the physical registration of human history in bacterial life. This account thus foregrounds the importance of understanding both the materiality of history and the historicity of matter in theories and concepts of life today.
204 citations