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Science and World Culture

Lawrence A. Scaff

in Max Weber in America

This chapter examines Max Weber's views on science and world culture by focusing on his lecture at the Congress of Arts and Science held in September 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis ... More

This chapter examines Max Weber's views on science and world culture by focusing on his lecture at the Congress of Arts and Science held in September 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis Congress featured hundreds of papers assessing the state of knowledge in the human, biological, and physical sciences; medicine; law; the humanities; religion; and education. Weber spoke in a social science panel concerned with rural communities. The discussions centered on the methodological unity of the sciences. The chapter first considers Weber's insistence on science as an experimental inquiry into the phenomena and actualities of the world, which also assumed that scientific knowledge was a product of culture, before discussing his views on “rural society,” European capitalism and American equality of legal rights, and his implicit questioning of American “exceptionalism.” It also analyzes Weber's thoughts about art, gender, education, and authority.Less

Introduction

Rayna Denison, Rachel Mizsei-Ward, and Derek Johnston

in Superheroes On World Screens

This introduction argues that superheroes are now a global phenomenon. While connections between the USA and superheroes persist in discussions of the superhero in contemporary culture, many local ... More

This introduction argues that superheroes are now a global phenomenon. While connections between the USA and superheroes persist in discussions of the superhero in contemporary culture, many local superheroes are now being revealed, and many more “American” superheroes have been fully localized and transnationalized through contact with world culture. Therefore, this collection argues for a new interpretation of the superhero beyond US borders, rethinking the “US” identities of American superheroes, considering the disparities and similarities between local and transnational superhero production cultures and rethinking the political, ideological and socio-cultural impact of superheroes within world culture. In doing so, we argue that superheroes are everywhere, and that their impact on global culture is increasing as a result.Less

Final Words

Nancy Lee Chalfa Ruyter

in La Meri and Her Life in Dance: Performing the World

This chapter begins with an overview of La Meri’s life and career and her contribution to the spread of knowledge about different cultures around the world, including world dance and culture. It then ... More

This chapter begins with an overview of La Meri’s life and career and her contribution to the spread of knowledge about different cultures around the world, including world dance and culture. It then discusses her work in relation to modern concerns with theoretical issues—such as appropriation, cultural imposition, orientalism, and so forth—and relates it to concepts that have been investigated in gender and cultural studies. It is important to note that she performed non-Western and Western dances in both Western and non-Western locations. After La Meri settled in the United States, she performed her international repertoire to American audiences, most of whom would have known little or nothing about the foreign cultures where the dances originated. But it’s equally important to understand that both the briefness of La Meri’s actual training in the various dance forms and her minimal or non-existent knowledge of any of the local verbal languages would have limited her understanding of the foreign cultures whose dances she studied, performed, and taught—and about which she wrote.Less

An American Angle of Vision, Part 2

John J. McDermott

in The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy of Culture

This chapter presents an essay on the impact of cultural formulations on the intellectual sector in America. It suggests that with all the massive cultural reformulations ... More

This chapter presents an essay on the impact of cultural formulations on the intellectual sector in America. It suggests that with all the massive cultural reformulations aimed at developing the dominant metaphors for world culture, one can find in America the perils and fruits of original attitudes not institutionalized elsewhere. It highlights the confusion that frequently exists between the analysis of American philosophy and the philosophical analysis of American culture.Less

Aby Warburg and the Secularization of the Image

Michael P. Steinberg and Yaron Ezrahi

in Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy

This chapter draws attention to the anthropological imagination of Aby Warburg, the great student of world culture and comparative mythology whose “Warburg Library,” founded in Hamburg, served as the ... More

This chapter draws attention to the anthropological imagination of Aby Warburg, the great student of world culture and comparative mythology whose “Warburg Library,” founded in Hamburg, served as the meeting place for Weimar philosophers, historians, and cultural critics. Warburg determined the library's acquisitions from 1886 until his sudden death in October 1929. In December 1933 the library (approximately 60,000 books, plus slides, photographs, other materials, as well as the collective argument of the enterprise itself) was evacuated to London, to be linked as of 1937 to the University of London and fully incorporated into the university in 1944. The Warburg Institute's second-generation principal scholars, adherents, and administrators included Erwin Panofsky, Ernst Gombrich, Rudolf Wittkower, Edgar Wind, Frances Yates, and Anne Marie Meyer. In recent years, the methods and claims of visual culture and visual studies have embraced the legacy of Warburg's critique of formalist art history.Less

Nostalgia for World Culture

in Poetry & Translation: The Art of the Impossible

This chapter examines the larger ramifications of poetry and translation in relation to world literature. It discusses Nadezhda Mandelstam's nostalgia for world culture and Johann Wolfgang von ... More

This chapter examines the larger ramifications of poetry and translation in relation to world literature. It discusses Nadezhda Mandelstam's nostalgia for world culture and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's idea about world literature. It suggests that the impossibility of translation is consistent with the idea of world culture and that nostalgia or the longing for a world of differences is expressed by the strict impossibility of translation. This chapter also contends that the use of literal meaning to privilege a particular word-choice in poetry translation does not guarantee perfect replication of sense between languages.Less

Consuming High Culture: Allusion and Structure in “The Dead”

Thomas Jackson Rice

in Cannibal Joyce

This chapter focuses on how James Joyce consumes the body of world literary culture to nourish his own works wherein although his works were often cast in the metaphor of cannibalism they remained ... More

This chapter focuses on how James Joyce consumes the body of world literary culture to nourish his own works wherein although his works were often cast in the metaphor of cannibalism they remained well within the traditional readings of the fictions. In this chapter, the focus is on his consumption of classical literature and popular culture. His fondness of consuming “high” culture and his capacity for incorporation is examined in this chapter.Less

Acculturation of States: The Empirical Record

Ryan Goodman and Derek Jinks

in Socializing States: Promoting Human Rights through International Law

This chapter summarizes and analyzes empirical evidence suggesting acculturation-driven influence of states. Evidence is considered from several substantive domains—including, most centrally, ... More

This chapter summarizes and analyzes empirical evidence suggesting acculturation-driven influence of states. Evidence is considered from several substantive domains—including, most centrally, evidence concerning international human rights.Less

Conclusion: Empire and the Western Canon

Gauri Viswanathan

in Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India

This concluding chapter discusses how the emergence of the discipline of English in colonial India, its origin within strategies of sociopolitical control, gave rise to fresh inquiry into possible ... More

This concluding chapter discusses how the emergence of the discipline of English in colonial India, its origin within strategies of sociopolitical control, gave rise to fresh inquiry into possible implications of empire for current debates on curriculum in general. The knowledge that English developed in colonial times would likely strengthen the claims for a broadening of curriculum to include submerged texts of minority and third world cultures. A principal objective of this book is to draw attention to reconceptualizations of curriculum along these lines, since it became evident that the Eurocentric literary curriculum of the nineteenth century was less a statement of the superiority of the Western tradition than a critical, active instrument of Western hegemony together with commercial expansionism and military action.Less

The Tributary Mode of Production and Justifying Ideologies: Evaluating the Wolf-Trigger Hypothesis

Robert M. Rosenswig

in Modes of Production and Archaeology

In his definition of the tributary mode of production, Eric Wolf proposes that those societies that extract economic surplus through political means generate religious models of the cosmos where ... More

In his definition of the tributary mode of production, Eric Wolf proposes that those societies that extract economic surplus through political means generate religious models of the cosmos where supernatural beings provide a metaphor of tribute relations in the human world. As Wolf puts it, “…public power is thus transformed into a problem of private morality." This is a classic Marxist assertion that religion creates false consciousness and motivates people to act against their material interests. Rather than assuming this proposition is correct, anthropological data can be employed to assess it. This chapter evaluates whether a society’s mode of production corresponds to beliefs about the structure of the cosmos using ethnographic data from the eHRAF World Cultures database. Do societies where tribute is extracted by political means have similar justifying ideologies? Conversely, do societies where surplus extraction occurs through kin relations lack such justifying ideologies? My goal is to evaluate Wolf’s intuitively logical proposition with anthropological data. The implications of this evaluation are at the heart of a materialist understanding of causation by empirically evaluating whether material conditions influence ideational beliefs.Less

On the Tragedies and Comedies of the New World Faulkner

George B. Handley

in Global Faulkner

This chapter argues that the global Faulkner calls for a new kind of reader who abandons the regional and national models of literature and instead probes Faulkner’s relevance to New World cultures. ... More

This chapter argues that the global Faulkner calls for a new kind of reader who abandons the regional and national models of literature and instead probes Faulkner’s relevance to New World cultures. This kind of reading “makes the boundaries of one’s community tenuous since the reader is brought out of bounds, beyond the confines of accepted knowledge and into the uncertain terrain of calls and echoes between and among communities, near and far.” The chapter brings two communities of readers into contact with each other. The translation of the parchments in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude functions similarly to Ike’s “translation” of the ledgers in “The Bear”: these documents are “repositories of the communities’ fragmented histories, transgressions, and genealogies—each containing the secret of incest and the implication of the reader in a history of transgressions.” Reading the ledgers or the parchments is neither purely an act of decoding a text nor an act of the imagination, but recognition that all knowledge is produced between author and reader, between “revelation” and “translation.”Less

Faulkner and the World Culture of the Global South

Ramón Saldívar

in The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 6: The American Novel 1879-1940

This chapter explores the relationship between William Faulkner and the world culture of the “global South.” It begins by discussing the relevance of a trans-American context to many of Faulkner's ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between William Faulkner and the world culture of the “global South.” It begins by discussing the relevance of a trans-American context to many of Faulkner's novels and his participation in transnational crossings. It then considers the trans-Atlantic aspects of modernism, the links between modernisms and modernists in the Americas, and Faulkner's connection with the issues of coloniality and postcoloniality. It also examines Latin America's underdevelopment and dependency using dependency theory, along with Faulkner's focus on the dependency of the South to the processes of modernization. Finally, the chapter analyzes three of Faulkner's works: The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936).Less

Wangechi Mutu’s Family Tree (2013)¹

Kristine Stiles

in Concerning Consequences: Studies in Art, Destruction, and Trauma

This chapter examines the hybrid, cyborgian identity that Wangechi Mutu constantly reinvents in her art througth an analysis of Family Tree. Mutu's collage and installation work delivers visual ... More

This chapter examines the hybrid, cyborgian identity that Wangechi Mutu constantly reinvents in her art througth an analysis of Family Tree. Mutu's collage and installation work delivers visual creolization as the corollary of “contact zones.” She continually reforms the metaphorical “we” in images, objects, and actions, working in every medium to invent this hybrid. The chapter explores Mutu's visual analysis of world culture and its planetary rootedness in racial, sexual, economic, and national divides; war; and the violence of privilege. It places Mutu's work within the domain of a philosophical conversation on intersubjectivity and discusses her exacting reconstruction of shared states of collective subjectivity and cultural agency. It also considers the convergence of trauma and feminism in her work and the forensic aspect of her reconstruction of composite imagery.Less

The Quest for Universalism

Lutz Leisering

in The Global Rise of Social Cash Transfers: How States and International Organizations Constructed a New Instrument for Combating Poverty

The ubiquitous global call for ‘social security for all’ reflects the world cultural principle of universalism, which is the ultimate background of the global spread of social cash transfers to the ... More

The ubiquitous global call for ‘social security for all’ reflects the world cultural principle of universalism, which is the ultimate background of the global spread of social cash transfers to the poor. This chapter examines the institutional varieties and the pitfalls of universalism. It is argued that universalism can be institutionalized in various ways (including the Basic Income), and that all involve substantial inequalities. The pitfalls of the global universalistic culture are highlighted, questioning widespread egalitarian and monistic notions of universalism. The limitations of the current state of cash transfers can be traced to these pitfalls. Universalism has a price: universalistic world culture is often phrased in vague terms, encouraging decoupling, doubletalk, and particularistic interpretations, as found in policy proposals by international organizations and in actual cash transfer regimes. Universal social citizenship creates new inequalities and spaces of social control, reflecting the double-edged nature of modern social interventionism.Less

Modernization, World System, and Clash of Civilization Perspectives in Lay Views of the Development–Morality Nexus in the United States and the Middle East

Arland Thornton, Kathryn M. Yount, Linda Young-DeMarco, and Mansoor Moaddel

in Values, Political Action, and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring

This chapter examines the relationship between laypeople’s perceptions of national development and morality. The authors studied whether people perceive national development and morality as ... More

This chapter examines the relationship between laypeople’s perceptions of national development and morality. The authors studied whether people perceive national development and morality as complementary or conflicting. They situated their research within the theoretical frameworks of modernization, world system, and the clash of moralities, the latter being a modified version of clash of civilization. These frameworks offer different predictions about how people see the relationship between development and morality. Using survey data, the authors examined how these predictions conform to the ways in which morality and development are connected in the perceptions of Egyptians, Lebanese, Saudi Arabians, and Americans. These data suggest that in each country, one or more of these perspectives is reflected in laypeople’s perceptions, but the distribution of perceptions varies across the countries. Most Americans perceive the association between development and morality as positive, suggesting views that are consistent with modernization theory. The data from the three Middle Eastern countries reveal extensive heterogeneity of viewpoints—some consistent with modernization theory, others with world system theory, others with clashes of morality, and others that combine the three perspectives. These findings are important in today’s globalized world; perceptions of diverse cultures shape national priorities and international relations.Less

Acculturation of States: The Theoretical Model

Ryan Goodman and Derek Jinks

in Socializing States: Promoting Human Rights through International Law

This chapter addresses the question whether socialization occurs in any meaningful sense on a global level—and whether there is any evidence suggesting that state policies and practices reflect ... More

This chapter addresses the question whether socialization occurs in any meaningful sense on a global level—and whether there is any evidence suggesting that state policies and practices reflect global social influence. Because the evidence supporting global-level material incentives and persuasion is well known and substantial, the chapter emphasizes the evidence of acculturation on the global plane. The chapter presents and analyzes a substantial body of interdisciplinary research suggesting that institutional environments influence, via acculturation processes, the goals and structure of formal organizations, including states. The chapter also provides a detailed checklist of important empirical markers of acculturation-driven influence.Less

The Monster’s Place

Robert Horton

in Frankenstein

This concluding chapter discusses the more contemporary permutations of the Frankenstein story (and its monster) in various films, spin-offs, and even merchandise. The 1931 film known as Frankenstein ... More

This concluding chapter discusses the more contemporary permutations of the Frankenstein story (and its monster) in various films, spin-offs, and even merchandise. The 1931 film known as Frankenstein (more so than Mary Shelley's novel, or any stage adaptation, or any sequel/spin-off) has contributed an image to world culture that is familiar even to people who have never seen the film. The process by which something disreputable becomes something mainstream is a complicated one, and the 80-years-plus timeline of Frankenstein provides a large history with which to study. A story about the creation of life has itself continued to create life, leaving its traces of the uncanny on each generation; in its shadowplay we perceive the outlines of our fears of family rejection, social abjectness, death, and the less controllable parts of our own nature. It's alive, and it always will be.Less

Interdisciplinary Initiatives at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century; or, Institutions Designed to Foster Interdisciplinary Research

John H. Aldrich

in Interdisciplinarity

Most of the literature reflects an assumption that most interesting or influential interdisciplinary research is connected to education and takes place in universities. This chapter raises the ... More

Most of the literature reflects an assumption that most interesting or influential interdisciplinary research is connected to education and takes place in universities. This chapter raises the question of what happens if this academic-centric assumption is untrue, as there is reason to believe that it is probably becoming at least less accurate. The increasing importance of not-for-profit and nongovernmental organizations in research and advocacy suggests that interdisciplinary research takes place in many other places. Initiatives emphasizing different foci can be broadly identified with particular historical moments (e.g., policy issues in the first half of the twentieth century, area studies in the 1950s and 1960s, identity programs in the 1970s and 1980s, methods in the 1990s, particularly as new computing technologies permit new kinds of data analysis).Less