Download or read book Genesis of Symbolic Thought written by Alan J. Barnard and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinguished social anthropologist Alan Barnard explores the origins of the symbolic thought that is fundamental to human existence.
Download or read book Genesis of Symbolic Thought written by Alan Barnard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-21 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinguished social anthropologist Alan Barnard explores the origins of the symbolic thought that is fundamental to human existence.
Download or read book The Logic of Practice written by Pierre Bourdieu and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our usual representations of the opposition between the "civilized" and the "primitive" derive from willfully ignoring the relationship of distance our social science sets up between the observer and the observed. In fact, the author argues, the relationship between the anthropologist and his object of study is a particular instance of the relationship between knowing and doing, interpreting and using, symbolic mastery and practical masteryor between logical logic, armed with all the accumulated instruments of objectification, and the universally pre-logical logic of practice. In this, his fullest statement of a theory of practice, Bourdieu both sets out what might be involved in incorporating one's own standpoint into an investigation and develops his understanding of the powers inherent in the second member of many oppositional pairsthat is, he explicates how the practical concerns of daily life condition the transmission and functioning of social or cultural forms. The first part of the book, "Critique of Theoretical Reason," covers more general questions, such as the objectivization of the generic relationship between social scientific observers and their objects of study, the need to overcome the gulf between subjectivism and objectivism, the interplay between structure and practice (a phenomenon Bourdieu describes via his concept of the habitus), the place of the body, the manipulation of time, varieties of symbolic capital, and modes of domination. The second part of the book, "Practical Logics," develops detailed case studies based on Bourdieu's ethnographic fieldwork in Algeria. These examples touch on kinship patterns, the social construction of domestic space, social categories of perception and classification, and ritualized actions and exchanges. This book develops in full detail the theoretical positions sketched in Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice. It will be especially useful to readers seeking to grasp the subtle concepts central to Bourdieu's theory, to theorists interested in his points of departure from structuralism (especially fom Lévi-Strauss), and to critics eager to understand what role his theory gives to human agency. It also reveals Bourdieu to be an anthropological theorist of considerable originality and power.
Download or read book Human Origins written by Camilla Power and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human Origins brings together new thinking by social anthropologists and other scholars on the evolution of human culture and society. No other discipline has more relevant expertise to consider the emergence of humans as the symbolic species. Yet, social anthropologists have been conspicuously absent from debates about the origins of modern humans. These contributions explore why that is, and how social anthropology can shed light on early kinship and economic relations, gender politics, ritual, cosmology, ethnobiology, medicine, and the evolution of language.
Download or read book The Wisdom of the Liminal written by Celia Deane-Drummond and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Celia Deane-Drummond charts a new direction for theological anthropology in light of what is now known about the evolutionary trajectories of humans and other animals. She presents a case for human beings becoming fully themselves through their encounter with God, after the pattern of Christ, but also through their relationships with each other and with other animals. Drawing on classical sources, particularly the work of Thomas Aquinas, Deane-Drummond explores various facets of humans and other animals in terms of reason, freedom, language, and community. In probing and questioning how human distinctiveness has been defined using philosophical tools, she engages with a range of scientific disciplines, including evolutionary biology, biological anthropology, animal behavior, ethology, and cognitive psychology. The result is a novel, deeply nuanced interpretation of what it means to be distinctively human in the image of God.
Download or read book Theology and Evolutionary Anthropology written by Celia Deane-Drummond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out some of the latest scientific findings around the evolutionary development of religion and faith and then explores their theological implications. This unique combination of perspectives raises fascinating questions about the characteristics that are considered integral for a flourishing social and religious life and allows us to start to ask where in the evolutionary record they first show up in a distinctly human manner. The book builds a case for connecting theology and evolutionary anthropology using both historical and contemporary sources of knowledge to try and understand the origins of wisdom, humility, and grace in ‘deep time’. In the section on wisdom, the book examines the origins of complex decision-making in humans through the archaeological record, recent discoveries in evolutionary anthropology, and the philosophical richness of semiotics. The book then moves to an exploration of the origin of characteristics integral to the social life of small-scale communities, which then points in an indirect way to the disposition of humility. Finally, it investigates the theological dimensions of grace and considers how artefacts left behind in the material record by our human ancestors, and the perspective they reflect, might inform contemporary concepts of grace. This is a cutting-edge volume that refuses to commit the errors of either too easy a synthesis or too facile a separation between science and religion. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of religious studies and theology – especially those who interact with scientific fields – as well as academics working in anthropology of religion.
Download or read book Language in Prehistory written by Alan Barnard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-14 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking an anthropological perspective, Alan Barnard explores the evolution of language by investigating the lives and languages of modern hunter-gatherers.
Download or read book Body Poetics of the Virgin Mary written by Jane Petkovic and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Judeo-Christian scriptures understand humans as being made in the image of God. What exactly does this mean? Basic agreement is that it means humans can only know and understand themselves in relation to God. If, however, this God is pure uncreated spirit, where does human embodiment fit in? Is it an obstacle to understanding? Or is it in some way instructive? John Paul II comes down decisively in favor of the body’s value and importance. In his catechetical series, widely known as the Theology of the Body, John Paul II analyzes what is distinctive about human beings. He undertakes a “reading” of the body. This book reflects on John Paul II’s interpretation, extending his findings to the Virgin Mary. Her specifically female, maternal body is seen to offer insights into how the body images God—in how it “speaks.” The transformations of the female body parallel the transformations of language in poetry. The reconfigurations and accommodations of the gestational body are, this book suggests, poetic incarnations of God-likeness. Body-Poetics of the Virgin Mary offers a Mariological slant on theological anthropology and a new way to think of how humans poetically image God.
Download or read book The Law of Kinship written by Camille Robcis and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-05 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In France as elsewhere in recent years, legislative debates over single-parent households, same-sex unions, new reproductive technologies, transsexuality, and other challenges to long-held assumptions about the structure of family and kinship relations have been deeply divisive. What strikes many as uniquely French, however, is the extent to which many of these discussions—whether in legislative chambers, courtrooms, or the mass media—have been conducted in the frequently abstract vocabularies of anthropology and psychoanalysis. In this highly original book, Camille Robcis seeks to explain why and how academic discourses on kinship have intersected and overlapped with political debates on the family—and on the nature of French republicanism itself. She focuses on the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan, both of whom highlighted the interdependence of the sexual and the social by positing a direct correlation between kinship and socialization. Robcis traces how their ideas gained recognition not only from French social scientists but also from legislators and politicians who relied on some of the most obscure and difficult concepts of structuralism to enact a series of laws concerning the family. Lévi-Strauss and Lacan constructed the heterosexual family as a universal trope for social and psychic integration, and this understanding of the family at the root of intersubjectivity coincided with the role that the family has played in modern French law and public policy. The Law of Kinship contributes to larger conversations about the particularities of French political culture, the nature of sexual difference, and the problem of reading and interpretation in intellectual history.
Download or read book Claude L vi Strauss and the Making of Structural Anthropology written by Marcel Hénaff and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As anthropology continues to transform itself, this book affords a broad and balanced account of the remarkable accomplishments of one of the great intellectual innovators of the 20th century. It presents an authoritative and accessible analysis of Claude Levi-Strauss's research in anthropological theory and practice as well as his contributions to debates surrounding linguistics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.
Download or read book Religion and the Philosophy of Life written by Gavin Flood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion and the Philosophy of Life considers how religion as the source of civilization transforms the fundamental bio-sociology of humans through language and the somatic exploration of religious ritual and prayer. Gavin Flood offers an integrative account of the nature of the human, based on what contemporary scientists tell us, especially evolutionary science and social neuroscience, as well as through the history of civilizations. Part one contemplates fundamental questions and assumptions: what the current state of knowledge is concerning life itself; what the philosophical issues are in that understanding; and how we can explain religion as the driving force of civilizations in the context of human development within an evolutionary perspective. It also addresses the question of the emergence of religion and presents a related study of sacrifice as fundamental to religions' views about life and its transformation. Part two offers a reading of religions in three civilizational blocks—India, China, and Europe/the Middle East—particularly as they came to formation in the medieval period. It traces the history of how these civilizations have thematised the idea of life itself. Part three then takes up the idea of a life force in part three and traces the theme of the philosophy of life through to modern times. On the one hand, the book presents a narrative account of life itself through the history of civilizations, and on the other presents an explanation of that narrative in terms of life.
Download or read book The Origins of Shamanism Spirit Beliefs and Religiosity written by H. Sidky and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity, H. Sidky examines shamanism as an ancient magico-religious, divinatory, medical, and psychotherapeutic tradition found in various parts of the world. Sidky uses first-hand ethnographic fieldwork and scientific theoretical work in archaeology, cognitive and evolutionary psychology, and neurotheology to explore the origins of shamanism, spirit beliefs, the evolution of human consciousness, and the origins of ritual behavior and religiosity.
Download or read book The Scenic Imagination written by and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-11 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates the indispensability of the "scenic imagination" to human self-understanding by examining hypothetical scenes of origin in the writings of two dozen thinkers from Hobbes to the present day.
Download or read book The Cradle of Thought written by R. Peter Hobson and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imaginative and creative thought is what distinguishes humans from animals. It is what defines us as Homo sapiens. What it means to have thoughts, and what gives us the remarkable capacity to think, have been subjects of debate for centuries. In The Cradle of Thought, Peter Hobson presents a new and provocative theory about the nature and origins of uniquely human thinking. A prevailing opinion on the acquisition of thought and language is that babies are born with pre-programmed modules in the brain. But this is too narrow and too simplistic an explanation. Professor Hobson's radical view is that what gives us the capacity to think is the quality of a baby's exchanges with other people over the first 18 months of life. As part and parcel of an intellectual revolution in the second year, the child achieves new insight into the minds of itself and others. Human thought, language, and self-awareness are developed in the cradle of emotional engagement between infant and caregiver; social contact has vital significance for mental development. Professor Hobson draws on 20 years of clinical experience and academic research as a developmental psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He follows the thread of mental development over the first 18 months of ababy's life to describe and to explain the emergence of thinking; he shares startling insights into mental development gained from his studies of autism; and he shows how, from infancy to adulthood, disturbances of thinking may be rooted in troubled early relationships. Finally, he pinpoints tiny but momentus changes in the social relations of pre-human primates from which human thought sprang. In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Peter Hobson shows how very early engagement with others fosters the child's growth out of the cradle of infancy and into the realm of human thought and culture.
Download or read book The Symbolic Species The Co evolution of Language and the Brain written by Terrence W. Deacon and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1998-04-17 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.
Download or read book Human Origins and the Image of God written by Lilley & Pedersen, eds. and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did human beings originate? What, if anything, makes us unique? These questions have long been central to philosophers, theologians, and scientists. This book continues that robust interdisciplinary conversation with contributions from an international team of scholars whose expertise ranges from biology and anthropology to philosophical theology and ethics. The fourteen chapters in this volume are organized around Wentzel van Huyssteen's pioneering work in human rationality, embodiment, and evolutionary history. Bringing a variety of diverse perspectives to bear on a hotly debated issue, Human Origins and the Image of God showcases new research by some of today's finest scholars working on questions regarding human origins and human uniqueness.
Download or read book Noah s Ark and the Genesis 10 Patriarchs written by Ross Marshall and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-04 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literate world history took shape during the course of the third millennium BCE chiefly in the Mesopotamian land of Sumer. There is a vast difference between the way secular scholars process this data and the way believers in the Bible can and should process it. By accepting at face value both the chronological perspective of the Bible and the high longevities of the Noahic patriarchs, biblicists can make sense of Sumerian data and revolutionize the image of world history at its source. This book details the genealogical comparisons of all the nations mythological pantheons with the Genesis Chapter 10 list of post flood patriarchs and establishes a foundation for building a true history of mankind. 420 pp.
