Cybernetyczny model systemu autonomicznego w zastosowaniu do badań nad kulturą

Author(s): Małgorzata Abassy / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2015

In the paper the problem of possibilities to apply some of the theoretico-methodological conclusions from the field of cybernetics to investigating the problems of culture has been studied. According to the proposed hypothesis, the theory of system approach and the methodology that was worked out by the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics combined with the concepts and methodology of the cybernetic model of autonomous systems by Marian Mazur will allow the researchers first of all, to determine where exactly the borders of a culture are; secondly, to group the elements of a culture into modules according to their functions and, finally, to recognize the type of interactions between the cultural system and the other systems such as: political, social, economical etc. In the further research perspective, thorough studies over the specific cases of cultural phenomena is necessary to verify the possibilities of application the new methodological tool on practice.

O zagrożeniu e-mancypacją człowieka w przestrzeni wirtualnej

Author(s): Sylwia Jaskuła / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2015

The new sphere of human presence combining the elements of reality and virtual reality poses new opportunities for people in the 21st century, generating new desires, and new forms of risk. One of the threat areas in the virtual space is human e-mancipatio, which is depriving him of his rights (mancipatio) in the media world of information society. This situation raises the question about anthropology and humanistic condition of human activity in the virtual space. New facts of network civilization should not limit the humanities only to seek research tools that can be used in virtual space, but should aim to find, often in a symbolic sense, possible signs of human presence, the technological impact (both positive and negative) on society and culture, so that the usefulness of digital tools would not mean the elimination of the human factor. Replacement of the humanities with the reflection on the information technology of the learning process is a methodical inadequacy, that cannot eliminate questions about the completeness of humanity also in the virtual space.

Projekt ICS – kulturoznawstwo zintegrowane. Rozważania wstępne

Author(s): Robert Boroch / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2015

In the article, I discuss theoretical problems of Polish Cultural Studies regarding methodology, methods of data collection and procedures of hypothesis formulation. I propose to undertake a discussion of possibilities for its integration. Establishing the framework for Integrated Cultural Studies Project (ICS Project) could result in comprehensible methodology. The well-structured methodological approach towards cognition of cultural phenomena would eliminate freedom of cognition that leads towards eclecticism. Furthermore, ICS Project theoretically would allow the rational formulation premises together with the elimination of latitude approach towards issues of cognition.

„Nieme opowieści, mówiące obrazy” – aspekt wizualny współczesnych form narracji historycznej (bezpośredniej i medialnie zapośredniczonej)

Author(s): Marta Smoleń-Sidyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2015

The purpose of this article is an interdisciplinary metareflection on the concepts common in almost every society. The aforementioned are necessary to sustain social relationships and sustainable development of culture. These considerations, despite being quite apparent, still seem worth highlighting in view of the naturally occurring evolution of civilization. In the era of unbridled development of popular culture, with the increasing pace of change induced by migration processes, these phenomena gain particular significance and require the revision of forms of their expression and redefinition of the meaning their try to conveys.Answering the research questions involves, firstly identifying a universal and timeless system of cultural patterns, possible to be visualized and presented using digital media, secondly deliberate shaping of the content of those patterns that prevail normatively and canonically in a culture. Civilization is constantly being enriched with new values, nevertheless undeniably amaintaining a mental connection with the traditional ones. A more comprehensive assessment of the consequences of this process, in which the contemporary society participates, falls beyond the coverage of this brief.Thise article thus aims to present a proposal of a system of archetypal evaluation encourage new ways of teaching and with the goal to popularize the humanities.

„Prawo naturalne rzeczowe” a „prawo naturalne ludzkie” – nowy humanizm i granice naturalizmu w badaniu kultury

Author(s): Paweł Cieślarek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2015

Irving Babbitt (1865-1933) defended a view of humanities supported by a method that would match the expectations of modern man enchanted by the practical consequences of science and technology without negating the basic truth of the dualism of human nature. Man as a biological phenomenon is governed by the outer law of constant change, relativity, and expansion. But what is distinctively human, to be recognized and moved by an act of will, must turn to a different law – the human law of concentration, selection and measure. Only by obeying it, one can regain his self-knowledge and self-control. This neglected domain of human existence should – according to Babbitt – form a suitable point of departure in the task of attaining a truly modern view of humanities.The article confronts the views preached by the supporters of the digital humanities with the prospects offered by Babbitt’s “new humanism” to form an argument in the ongoing quarry over the future of the humanities.

Źródła i typy redukcjonizmów we współczesnych analizach kultury

Author(s): Leszek Korporowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

There are many approaches and schools, so many research orientations and strategies, which are aimed at bringing us closer to understanding the nature of culture and cultural studies. Regardless of this, the basic and for the most part still unanswered questions, continued to be valid: How do we understand the subject of these studies? What are the motives behind pursuing them? How do we integrate the reflection, knowledge and study with the more broadly understood human cognitive and cultural activity? How will the study allows us to overcome the constraints of time, space and patterns of our own cultures, methods, professional roles, canons of sensitivity and imaginations, but also different kinds of reductions and make it possible to increase the potential of its development? This article describes some kinds of ontological, anthropological, structural and personal types of reductions in contemporary cultural analyses and their consequences, especially when the instruments of the study displace their objects, when such values like wisdom we treat as knowledge, truth as agreement, responsibility as pragmatism, beauty as a kind of experience, and in the final of the process, all these values we reduce to information, images and impressions.

Kultura a praktyka badawcza

Author(s): Andrzej Zaporowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

The article aims at analysing a link between culture and a research practice. The former is referred to the propositional attitudes, where this reference is of intersubjective nature. The latter is given in terms of the human interactions. Their relevant component, that is, an individual’s physical action is an instance of a physical event. The author’s claim is that culture conditions the research practice. This practice is interwoven into other social practices (like commonsense or religious), so that the relation between the social and the cultural is of a holistic and dynamic nature. The author discusses a number of positions which have dealt with the particular topics or problems of the link in question to show how many facets this link may have. Finally, the analysis is to reveal the multicultural dimension in which the research practice may be approached.

Nowa Respublica Litteraria? Humanistyka cyfrowa jako metaorientacja współczesnych badań humanistycznych

Author(s): Ewa Solska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

In the article, I refer to the the issue of the digital turn in humanities, concerning its implications from the methodological perspective. I deal with the question: should digital humanities be defined only as the application of digital research methods in the field of humanities and the potential mode of its institutionalisation? Or may it be considered as a proposal for the improvement and introduction of the new republic of humanists, creating the research area for the projects situated between constructing / inventing and finding the solution?

Tekst – dramat – spektakl. Współczesne możliwości badacza

Author(s): Jadwiga Gracla / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

This paper discusses three aspects of the drama in virtual space: Internet library (text), virtual archives (photos and performance materials), and performance in the Internet space. The first two modes of existence were considered valuable source of information, enabling study of little popular texts (especially Russian and German ones from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century). The third mode, discussed with reference to the play of Evgenij Grishkovec („Out of paper”), raises theoretical dilemmas. The show is here primary in relation to the text. In this case, no analysis is possible without knowing the performance, which also exists in the Internet space. It is therefore part of the digital world.

Religioznost i spremnost na pomirenje. Antropološki pogled

Author(s): Goran Pavel Šantek / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 2/2015

This paper is an anthropological study of processes that lead to the traumatization of a society, and of processes that result in forgiveness and reconciliation as chosen ways of dealing with post-conflict situations. The area on which the research is focused is Southeastern Europe, or more precisely Croatian and Serbian societies and relations. As cultural anthropology has not developed any special theory to deal with the causes of traumatic experiences in cultures and societies, this study uses the conceptions of closely related cultural sociology, formulated in Jeffrey Alexander's works. According to Alexander cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways. Insofar as they identify the cause of trauma, and thereby assume such moral responsibility, members of collectivities define their solidary relationships in ways that allow them to share the sufferings of others. In thinking that the suffering of others might also be our own societies expand the circle of the we. According to the same theory, when social groups refuse to recognize the existence of others' trauma and suffering, they not only diffuse their own responsibility for the suffering but often project the responsibility for their own suffering on these others. It is necessary then, for any process of reconciliation to be successful, that groups recognize suffering of others and their own responsibility. From the fact that social groups might refuse to participate in the process of trauma creation, it is obvious that trauma does not exist naturally, but that trauma is a social construction, a socially mediated attribution. This paper and research are also designed as an anthropological comparison with a huge sociological research of religiosity in Croatia done in 2000, partly also focused on the topic of reconciliation. Anthropological research of young believers for this paper was conducted in 2014 and 2015 in Croatia, with interview used as the main research method. The main results show that: there still exists an important difference between proclaimed and practical believers; both Catholic Church in Croatia and Serbian Orthodox Church are expected to work on forgiveness and reconciliation; ecumenism is highly valued; readiness for taking part in common Catholic-Orthodox meetings and services is ubiquitous; and that the readiness to forgive and conciliate is real and substantial. The research confirmed the vision of youth believers as a group that is especially ready to conciliate and actively work on the processes of reconciliation and forgiveness, and that there is a solid basis for the success of these processes in contemporary Croatian society.

Немци поново у Гакову: сусрети, сарадња и помирење некадашњег и садашњег локалног становништва

Author(s): Aleksandar Krel / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2015

This paper presents a case study about a reunion of the evicted members of the German national minority in Vojvodina, who after almost five decades came to visit their homeland, and the local population in Gakovo. The case study attests about lengthy and very complicated process in resolving post-conflict situations. The process’ launch is dependent on the willingness of the individuals involved to face not only one’s own pain caused by the enemy, but also on ability to comprehend, during an encounter with “the dark side of one’s past”, sufferings and humiliation experienced by the adversary. Awareness and acceptance of one’s own responsibility in the conflict are a prerequisite for forgiveness and reconciliation of the opposing parties. The outcome of this process is uncertain to the very end and conditioned upon the entire network of interlocking political, economic and cultural factors.

The Significance of Serbia’s Recent War-Ridden Past for Young People’s Identity Perceptions

Author(s): Jelena Spasenić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2015

How do we ethnographically chart the ways in which a recent war-ridden past features in everyday identifications of young adults, who have little or no direct experience of that past? One way is to treat this question as a matter of how everyday knowledge is constituted and transferred between individuals, as well as how historical legacies, cultural and political models enter their life-worlds, what they think and know, and who they are. These inquiries stood at the core of the study I conducted among two high-school classes between 2007 and 2009 in Novi Sad. This article will shed light on my main conclusions and problematize the notion of collective confrontation with the past. My contention is that arguments for collective confrontation with the past, together with official policies informed by this discourse, need to take into account social psychological mechanisms of identity construction in order to avoid the assumption that knowledge and moral insight can be mapped onto people’s minds.

Река понорница: о променљивом статусу феномена менталитета и менталног мапирања

Author(s): Gordana Đerić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2015

The paper examines the issue of inconstancy and academic exclusion of the term mentality, which occur despite a long history of its being studied by several scholarly disciplines and a broad usage in various public spheres. Being of the opinion that, in the academic sense, the term mentality is like a sinking river - intermittently present and absent - the authoress reminds us of dominant paradigms of mentality studies, both the ones that use the term and those that rejected it, but nevertheless addressing it from the perspective of contemporary theoretical concepts and under different names. Apart from the academic exclusion, the necessity for developing a more adequate analytical approach lies in the instrumental-associative potentials of mentality-related contents in their political and propagandist usage, as well as in their adaptability to different forms and means of communication. In the opposite case, by avoiding themes and phenomena that are not in academic fashion, we deprive ourselves of the knowledge of the academic community that creates that fashion and the apparent status quo. Similarly, in case of ceasing to question narratives on mentality properties, we deprive ourselves of the knowledge of communities that create such narratives and their interest derived from the placement of such narratives.

'Empires' of Otherness in Tourism Advertising. A Postmodern Approach

Author(s): Crăciunescu Ana / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

In this paper we envisage disscusing tourism as a postmodern manifestation that involves cultural issues projected, in the consumerist society, through media. In the larger context of post-war international relations, we shall see different perceptions of Otherness, understood in terms of exotic destinations locating minor cultures. The peculiarities of tourism also lead us to examine its cultural paradoxes, further depicted in the light of sociolinguistic perspectives of tourism. The question is to determine to what extent has Otherness became an issue of cultural, linguistic and economic reversed relations and what role does media play in shaping identities at the level of the specific promotional language of tourism.

Moral (Dis)order and Social Anomie: Concepts of Community and Society in Post-Socialist Serbia

Author(s): Marina N. Simić / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

It is sometimes argued that post-socialist transformation in Europe brought so called “moral disintegration” of local communities. These ideas resonate well with the opinions of many people with whom I worked in Serbia during my fieldwork research in Novi Sad in the mid- 2000s and again in 2013-2014. My informants tend to evoke the Durkheimian idea that society was brought into existence by people’s moral beliefs and sense of obligation towards one another; if this became eroded, society begins to suffer from anomie. In this paper I investigate those widely shared beliefs and the ways they relate to and reveal the ideas about morality, community and society.

Jarocin pamięci społecznej

Author(s): Żaneta Wechterowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 04/2015

The article takes up the subject of the memory of the Jarocin festival in the 1980s, shown from the perspective of the city’s inhabitants. Analyzing the social memory of Jarocin’s citizens, the author presents the factors that distinguish specific attitudes within this group, nationwide phenomena and contemporary trends relating to the revaluation of the past, linked to, among other things, the political transformation in 1989. These circumstances influenced, and to a large extent continue to influence, the ideas of the past in the group studied. At the same time, they explain why the Jarocin community, the majority of which was not interested in alternative music or the ideology of subcultures, recalls the festival during the last decade of communism with great fondness and enthusiasm.

Festiwale muzyczne – próba ujęcia autoetnografi cznego

Author(s): Marta Machowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 04/2015

The article aims to look at the phenomenon of music festivals from the perspective of autoethnography. The author, who first participated in 2015 in such events, tries to understand why people are so eager to participate in them. At festivals a special kind of social relations is produced that corresponds to the needs of today’s times of liquid modernity: they are intense, but also short-term and non-committal. At the same time, the popularity of the festival shows the great need in modern society to feel part of a greater whole.

Badanie Jarocina: 2015. Raport z badań ankietowych

Author(s): Arkadiusz Jełowicki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 04/2015

Images from a Lost World

Author(s): Tony Reevy / Language(s): English Issue: 05/2016

Balekvadászat

Author(s): Károly Soós / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1-2/2016

George A. Akerlof – Robert J. Shiller: Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception (A balekvadászat közgazdaságtana) Princeton University Press, Princeton,2015. 288 old., $ 16.95