In this paper, I examine the early history of discussions of participant observation and objectivity in anthropology. The discussions resolve around the question of whether participant observation is a reliable method for obtaining data that may serve as the basis for true accounts of native ways of life. I show how Malinowski in 1922 introduced participant observation as a straightforwardly reliable method and then discuss how—and why—most of the discussants in the 1940s and 1950s maintained that the method (...) is reliable only if the researcher takes a whole number of precautionary measures. (shrink)

Medicine does not usually consider the human body from an aesthetic point of view. This article explores the notion of the lived body as aesthetic object in anthropological medicine, concentrating on the views of Buytendijk and Straus on human uprightness and gracefulness. It is argued that their insights constitute a counter-balance to the way the human body is predominantly approached in medicine and medical ethics. In particular, (1) the relationship between anthropological, aesthetic and ethical norms, (2) the possible danger of (...) a naturalistic fallacy, (3) the implications for the care of disabled people and (4) the intrinsic aesthetic quality of the human body are dealt with. (shrink)

What kind of stuff is the world made of? What is the nature or substance of things? These are ontological questions, and they are usually answered with respect to the objects of science. The objects of technoscience tell a different story that concerns the power, promise and potential of things - not what they are but what they can be. Seventeen scholars from history and philosophy of science, epistemology, social anthropology, cultural studies and ethics each explore a research object (...) in its technological setting, ranging from carbon to cardboard, from arctic ice cores to nuclear waste, from wetlands to GMO seeds, from fuel cells to the great Pacific garbage patch. Together they offer fascinating stories and novel analytic concepts, all the while opening up a space for reflecting on the specific character of technoscientific objects. With their promise of sustainable innovation and a technologically transformed future, these objects are highly charged with values and design expectations. By clarifying their mode of existence, we are learning to come to terms more generally with the furniture of the technoscientific world - where, for example, the 'dead matter' of classical physics is becoming the 'smart material' of emerging and converging technologies. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss and develop the risk account of scientific objectivity, which I have recently introduced, contrasting it to some alternatives. I then use the account in order to analyse a practice that is relatively common in anthropology, in the history of science, and in the sociology of scientific knowledge: withholding epistemic judgement. I argue that withholding epistemic judgement on the beliefs one is studying can be a relatively efficient strategy against collective bias in these fields. (...) However, taking into account the criticisms presented against the strategy, I also argue that it is a usable strategy only when the distance between the researchers and their ideas, and the people and ideas being studied, is significant enough. (shrink)

Anthropologists, through participant observation, play a large role in creating the very locus of their research: socio-cultural context. Challenges to the social-scientific ‘objectivity’ of this process draw strength from historical precedent, and serve a vital role in the larger anthropological project of confronting, as both critic and product of Western thought, its inherent tensions. In this paper, I focus on two types of epistemological bias that construct and reinforce the validity of objective knowledge: objectivism and literalism. An analysis of (...) ethnographic treatments of the philosophical concerns of metaphor theory and phenomenology of the senses illustrates both the difficulty and utility of taking on the epistemological underpinnings of social science. (shrink)

Criticism of post-modernizm and post-colonializm caused to question the mission of anthropology in terms of understanding different societies. Materialist, secular and anthropocentric anthropological approaches based on enlightenment and modern assumptions have faced criticism by many disciplines from philosophy and critical theory to science and quantum theory. Anthropology of religion which is a branch of cultural anthropology is also effected by changes within the broader field of anthropology. The aim of this project is to shed light on (...) the potential of the critical approach, which emerged in anthropology of religion recently and underlined the ontology, to understand religious experiences and practices of different societies. This approach is called ontological turn. In this article, first I point out the historical process in anthropology which led to the turn to ontology. Social structuralism and representationalism which played an important role for the formation of anthropology impacted significantly the ways in which anthropology understands nature and human being. According to these assumptions commonly used in anthropology, while human beings try to understand universal and static natural law principles, they create representations about nature. But, for there is only one nature, there must be only one true representation. This attempt to understand nature through representations created the base for the concepts of belief, knowledge, and mind of Edward Tylor who was the pioneer of cultural anthropology. While the mind refers to rational capacity of human being, belief is an area of irrational representations that human beings pragmatically need. Religious assumptions and practices are listed under incorrect representations. The concept of belief has been frequently used after Tylor as well to understand societies which are located outside of modernity. What ontological turn aims with criticism of conceptual framework is to prevent the domination of Western based reality. Therefore, one of the most emphasized arguments is the multiplicity of reality. This approach of ontological turn is called as taking everything serious. New definitions which are made in a way including the experiences of ethnographic objects mean taking them serious. Acceptance of the concepts by anthropologist in the ethnographic field means acceptance of difference in reality. The act of definition and conceptualizing is the act of creating different realities. In many ethnographic researches, ethnographers choses their concepts before entering to the field. This means that trying to fit differences within existing concepts and confirming the existing thoughts from different perspectives. Understanding ethnographic materials with its own terms or analyzing, explaining or interpreting ethnographic phenomenon by eliminating presumptions was always a concern for anthropology. These questions are asked so commonly that they can be seen as banal questions. The difference of ontological turn is not to ask these questions, but to ask ontological questions as an epistemological approach. The base of this ontological approach is the thought that what forms anthropologists’ perspective are not social or cultural but ontological assumptions. Thus, the question to be asked is how anthropologists’ assumptions about what the world is can be eliminated. To sum up, the idea of taking everything serious in ontological turn aims to eliminate the hierarchy between the subject and object of ethnography. Instead of seeing ethnography as an object of anthropology through modern categories, ontological turn suggests seeing ethnography as a real source to create new concepts and analytical tools. (shrink)

Martin Paleček and Mark Risjord have recently put forward a critical evaluation of the ontological turn in anthropological theory. According to this philosophically informed theory of ethnographic practice, certain insights of twentieth-century analytic philosophy should play a part in the methodological debates concerning anthropological fieldwork: most importantly, the denial of representationalism and the acceptance of the extended mind thesis. In this paper, I will attempt to evaluate the advantages and potential drawbacks of ontological anthropology—arguing that to become a true (...) alternative to current social scientific thinking about methodology, it has to meet certain philosophical objections. (shrink)

Our everyday life is increasingly permeated with digital objects that carry out smart and complex functions. The latest (but certainly not final) advancement of smart digital applications – is to be identified the creation of a field, at once conceptual and material, of things denominated smart objects (henceforth SOs). This technological evolution is so pervasive that it is referred to as smartification. Smart objects have some distinctive features including in particular varying degrees of agency, autonomy and authority. There is no (...) doubt that the SO category is extremely broad, various and intrinsically fuzzy, it is evident that the phenomenon is by no means easy to define: which objects are really smart and which are not? But above all: what do we mean in semio-linguistic, and not psychological nor merely phenomenological terms, when we attribute the qualifier smart to an artifact? What is clear is that a new, or at least different (and controversial) relationship is developing between objects and subjects, or rather between human beings and objects inhabiting the spaces of social action: that is, a new system of objects, to cite Baudrillard (1968), or a new “society of objects” (see Landowski and Marrone 2002). In this paper we will focus on a type of smart physical device designed to interact with its users in the domestic sphere, assisting them in a variety of tasks – such as for example Amazon Echo, capable of connecting to Alexa, an intelligent personal assistant based on machine learning, or the more recent Google Assistant. Our semiotic-oriented – or, more precisely, potentially socio-semiotic/ethno-semiotic – analysis will deal with these issues theoretically by concentrating on the problem of identity, which is anthropologically, but also and above all philosophically, sensitive. We shall look at the impact of technological devices on the perceptive/cognitive systems of human beings, starting with a reflection on the practices of interaction, signification and interpretation that also involve digital objects with a possible impact on everyday life. (shrink)

Anthropological scholarship after Marilyn Strathern does something that might surprise lawyers schooled in the tradition of ‘law and society’, or ‘law in context’. Instead of construing law as an instrument of social forces, or as an expression of processes by which society maintains and reproduces itself, a new mode of anthropological enquiry focuses sharply on ‘law itself’, on what Annelise Riles calls the ‘technicalities’ of law. How might the legal scholar be inspired by this approach? In this article, I explore (...) one possible way of approaching law after anthropology, which is to find within law’s own archive a set of resources for an analogous representation of law itself. Drawing on the historical scholarship of Yan Thomas, I suggest that the Roman conception of law as object offers an engaging counterpart to the anthropological take on law as a specific set of tools or, technicalities, or as a particular art of making relations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology by Paige E. HochschildJoseph T. Lienhard, S.J.Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology. By Paige E. Hochschild. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 251. $125.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-19-964302-8.When students of St. Augustine consider his teaching on memory, they turn instinctively to the Confessions, book 10, and to On the Trinity, books 11 and 12. The lyrical passage in the Confessions is easy to (...) teach and intriguing in its contents. Paige Hochschild paints a much larger picture, drawing on far more sources. She also sees memory as a central category in Augustine’s thought. In the opening paragraph of the introduction, she describes memory (for Augustine) as the way the mind meets the world, as the way things external to the body are apprehended, as the way intelligible objects are known, and as what it means to be constituted in the image of God. This is a big order. And “order,” in Augustine’s sense, is key: the mind, as memory, brings order to the natural world, but also brings to light a providential order that is implicit in the sensible.The book is divided into three parts: (1) the philosophical tradition (Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus), (2) Augustine’s earlier writings (from the Cassiciacum dialogues up to De magistro and De musica), and (3) the Confessions and De trinitate. The conclusion of this complex study is that memory is salvific: it accounts for the soul’s progress by the dialectical play of the knowledge and love of what is possessed, yet not possessed. The lifelong process of healing in which memory functions is fulfilled in contemplation.Two characteristics of Hochschild’s book can be mentioned at the outset. First, she studies each author diachronically, measuring progress and growth in the author’s thought, and particularly in his understanding of memory. Second, she readily invokes a wide range of categories to explain and illuminate her main topic. The book is anything but an extended encyclopedia article on “memoria in Augustine.” The two principal terms in the title, “memory” and “theological anthropology,” are richly developed and elaborated.Chapter 1 begins with a short note on Augustine’s knowledge of Plato. It is generally admitted that Augustine read some of the dialogues of Plato in translation: the Timaeus, the Republic (albeit only parts of it), the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus. Some of these works, at least, may have come down to him through doxographers. But Plato’s influence on Augustine remains shadowy. It is “Platonism,” and particularly Plotinus, that influences him so clearly, a point made memorably in Confessions 7.9.13-15, and its intriguing reference to the libri Platonicorum. Before all else, Platonism delivers Augustine from the bondage of materialism.Hochschild treats Plato’s doctrine of memory under four headings: sense perception, knowledge as recollection, divisions in the ways of knowing, and the practice of dialectic. In regard to sense perception, the sharp distinction (found in the Republic) between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (epistêmê) [End Page 144] needs to be refined, Hochschild avers. At least in some later works, the sensible is an image of the intelligible, and hence some sense perception can be infallible. On the next topic, Plato invokes recollection to explain direct apprehension of the forms, but recollection does not recall what was perceived in the past but is a restoration of a clear, logical relationship. The Republic introduces a new element, “the illuminative power of the Good” (21). The final section of chapter 1 treats dialectic, concluding that “knowledge is fulfilled in virtue, and the art of dialectic is not merely an exercise in definition, but a hexis, and a way of living” (27).Chapter 2, on Aristotle, begins with the observation that, if Plato’s influence on Augustine was indirect, Aristotle’s was even more indirect, reaching Augustine through Plotinus. Most familiar, of course, are Augustine’s account of reading Aristotle’s Categories during his days at Carthage (Confessions 4.16.28-31) and his later use of the categories of substance and relation in his understanding of the Trinity, creating the category of “substantial relation,” which would... (shrink)

In our study of U.S. counterterrorism programs, we found that anthropology needs a mode of analysis that considers security as a form distinct from insecurity, in order to capture the very heterogeneity of security objects, logics and forms of action. This article first presents a genealogy for the anthropology of security, and identifies four main approaches: violence and State terror; military, militarization, and militarism; para-state securitization; and what we submit as “security analytics.” Security analytics moves away from studying (...) security formations, and how much violence or insecurity they yield, to identifying security forms of action, whether or not they are part of the nation-state. As a framework for anthropological inquiry, it is oriented toward capturing how these forms of action work and what types of security they produce. We then illustrate this approach through our fieldwork on counterterrorism in the domains of law enforcement, biomedical research and federal-state counter extremism. In each of our cases, we use security analytics to arrive at a diagnosis of the form of action. The set of conceptual distinctions that we propose as an aid to approaching empirical situations and the study of security is, on another level, a proposal for an approach to anthropology today. We do not expect that the distinctions that aid us will suffice for every situation. Rather, we submit that this work presents a set of specific insights about contemporary U.S. security, and an example of a new approach to anthropological problems. (shrink)

In Anthropology in the Making, Laurent Vidal takes the reader into the world of research in the fields of health and development, providing a fresh and provocative perspective on the practice of anthropology. This volume investigates the "science of otherness" across four multi-disciplinary research projects in Africa, examining the practices of health workers, the behaviors of patients, and the organization and management of health systems struggling with AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Balancing epistemological considerations with the practical concerns thrown (...) up by real-life situations, Vidal explores the researcher's choices - of method, objective, and terrain. (shrink)

In the advertising discourse of human genetic database projects, of genetic ancestry tracing companies, and in popular books on anthropological genetics, what I refer to as the anthropological gene and genome appear as documents of human history, by far surpassing the written record and oral history in scope and accuracy as archives of our past. How did macromolecules become "documents of human evolutionary history"? Historically, molecular anthropology, a term introduced by Emile Zuckerkandl in 1962 to characterize the study of (...) primate phylogeny and human evolution on the molecular level, asserted its claim to the privilege of interpretation regarding hominoid, hominid, and human phylogeny and evolution vis-à-vis other historical sciences such as evolutionary biology, physical anthropology, and paleoanthropology. This process will be discussed on the basis of three key conferences on primate classification and evolution that brought together exponents of the respective fields and that were held in approximately ten-years intervals between the early 1960s and the 1980s. I show how the anthropological gene and genome gained their status as the most fundamental, clean, and direct records of historical information, and how the prioritizing of these epistemic objects was part of a complex involving the objectivity of numbers, logic, and mathematics, the objectivity of machines and instruments, and the objectivity seen to reside in the epistemic objects themselves. (shrink)

These meditations, which begin with Stephan Schwartz and Mark Schroll's contested and contesting histories of the lineage and founding of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (below), contribute to the imagining of what Bethe Hagens calls "the relatively new interdisciplinary field of anthropology of consciousness.” Ethnographic vignettes from fieldwork of anthropologists, as well as fieldwork of students studying that fieldwork, highlight the paradox of anthropology's secularism and invite the reader, through the reading and writing of the (...) text itself, to participate in the practices of consciousness described. Using Schwartz's metaphor of "boulders in the stream,” these practices, and the modes of consciousness they invoke, serve as boulders that readers must swim around, or hop from, secularist anthropology through cyborg anthropology to an anthropology of consciousness itself. (shrink)

Ever since Kant, the possibility of having objects of knowledge has been one of the most basic anthropological questions (“what can I know?”). For the logician, the linguist, or the semiologist who studies natural language, negation is one of these objects. However, as an operation and as a symbol, it has the paradoxical property of not being able to be objectivized in the discourse that treats it without being used in this construction. Of course, it is an entirely general problem (...) that it is not possible to have a “distant view” of symbolism without using a symbolism of some sort or another. Anthropology is essentially concerned with such objects. The descriptions of ethnologists are thus fertile ground for the epistemologist who believes, like Aristotle, that non-being is not and therefore that, even though in fact we speak only of things (otherwise, what good is speaking?) our discourse cannot be a copy of them. (shrink)

The essays in this special issue shed new light on the transnational movement and exchange of researchers, data, theories, and scientific objects in the anthropological and genetic study of human populations in the twentieth century. Historians have long stressed how the study of race and human populations in this period served to create a national identity for emerging nation states. More recently, historical narratives of anthropology and human genetics have emphasized the global scale of research networks in these sciences. (...) This issue explores the specific routes, crossings, and interactions between national and international contexts prompted by the study of races and populations. The essays reveal not only how... (shrink)

Using Greek ethnography as a mirror for an ethnography of anthropology itself, this book reveals the ways in which the discipline of anthropology is ensnared in the same political and social symbolism as its object of study. The author pushes the comparative goals of anthropology beyond the traditional separation of tribal object from detached scientific observer, and offers the discipline a critical source of reflexive insight based on empirical ethnography rather than on ideological speculation alone.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anthropological Perspectives in Psychiatric NosologyJuan J. López-Ibor Jr. (bio) and María-Inés López-Ibor (bio)KeywordsDSM, etiology, Aristotelian causes, social dramasPsychiatry and clinical psychology, as we learn in this paper, are disciplines in need of an ontological perspective. Very few branches of contemporary learning share this characteristic. Probably only theoretical physic and theology—as the rest have long ago given up trying to define and understand the essence of their object, for example, (...) life in the case of biology or mind in psychology. Consequently, the paper by Pérez-Álvarez, Sass and García-Montes, “The Ontology of Mental Disorders in Constructivist Perspective,” (2008) should be welcomed and indeed included in the reading lists for trainees in psychiatry and clinical psychology.The authors propose an approach to the understanding of mental disorders that is extremely attractive and well articulated, and which also has practical implications for clinicians. It is not just another “philosophical divertimento” devoid of scientific and practical importance. Let us analyze the article in an orderly way.Less DsmThe authors of the target paper disapprove of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-III/IV approach to defining illnesses by starting from the symptoms that are present—on the grounds that this may lead clinicians to assume that their sole role is to identify, fight, and suppress the symptoms by whichever procedure. They propose an alternative that is dear to myself because it follows the path of the so-called “anthropological” psychiatry of Binswanger, von Gebsattel, Erwin Strauss, Zutt, López-Ibor, Sr., and others. In essence, this is a phenomenological approach to the meaning of mental diseases, one that emphasizes how the illness is revealed to the patient him- or herself.The target article’s criticism of DSM should be considered in the context of the abuses committed on its behalf. The DSM is not a textbook of psychiatric disorders, nor does it contain a definition of the diseases. The DSM does not tell what a disease is (Klerman et al. 1984)—something that is impossible with a classification system based on the manifestations of the diseases, the signs and symptoms. The DSM, as its title states, is just a diagnostic and statistical manual, which does not contain anything about the origin of [End Page 259] any disease nor an explanation of why it exists or what it means. The DSM is, in fact, just a tool to determine whether a disease is present, and therefore to facilitate communication between professionals and with other individuals, without saying anything about the disease’s aitia—a key term (associated with notions of essence as well as cause) to be discussed below. In theory, most clinicians should understand these limitations; it may be, however, that this is not really the case for many who read or use the DSM. In the world there are around 200,000 psychiatrists; since 1980 the number of DSM copies sold is in the order of several hundred thousand.The misuse of a classification system is even more noticeable in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 Research Version. The instructions for the use of this version recommend that the first step is to make an inventory of all the symptoms present, and then to construct a diagnosis based on them. This how all computer-assisted systems work. This procedure can, however, only be valid if the clinician has already reached a diagnostic conclusion by other means—a diagnosis then to be confirmed for research purposes. It may be that this is one of the reasons why the ICD-10 Research Version has almost never actually been used for research.Furthermore, the concept of symptoms in psychiatry applies only to organic mental disorders (Schneider 1959), conditions in which the patient’s attitude and way of experiencing the symptoms do not play the kind of role that they play in schizophrenia and other mental disorders. The quotation from the important paper by Sass and Parnas in this context is most appropriate. It is indeed that case that “subjective experience can play an important causal role in the progressive experiential transformations of a developing schizophrenic illness... (shrink)

This essay examines a controversy that erupted in 2004 over the bones of a human relative discovered in Indonesia, proclaimed to be a new species named Homo floresiensis. It argues that the controversy comprised two intertwined struggles with roots in Indonesia’s colonial history. Indonesia’s transition to an independent country, it contends, gave rise to a particular set of cultural values, scientific practices, and theories that resulted in scientific objects becoming tied to national identity in ways that shaped the debates. Highlighting (...) the imbalances that can occur in cross-cultural negotiations over the study of human relatives, this essay reveals that the circulation of scientific objects is not a simple process. By focusing on how anthropological objects moved—and the claims of ownership and access embedded in those movements—it illustrates the role of local circumstances in shaping that knowledge as it contributes to increasingly global science. (shrink)

The idea of culture has been subject to critical debate in anthropology during the past decade as the result of a shift in emphasis from the bounded local culture to transnational cultural flows. But at the very same time that cultural mobility is being emphasized by anthropologists, the people they study are recasting culture as a place of belonging as they construct local identities. Siting Culture argues that it is only through rich ethnographic studies that anthropologists may explore the (...) significance of place in the global space of relations which mold the lives of people throughout the world. By examining the concept of culture through case studies from Europe, Africa, Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean, it probes the methodological and theoretical implications of the divergent scholarly and popular concepts of culture. (shrink)

This article has two objectives. In the first part, I present a critical overview of the extensive anthropological literature that may be deemed “phenomenological.” Following this critique, which is built up around a classification into four different varieties of phenomenological anthropology, I discuss the relationship between phenomenological anthropology and the ontological turn (OT). Contrary to received wisdom within the anthropological discipline, I suggest that OT has several things in common with the phenomenological project. For the same reason, I (...) argue, it is not accurate to posit OT and phenomenology as opposing or antagonistic projects, as they are often depicted among critics and advocates of OT alike. On the contrary, I go as far as suggesting, OT may be understood as one of the most concerted attempts anthropology has produced to realize a distinctly anthropological version of Husserl’s method of phenomenological bracketing, namely what could be called the ontological epoché. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault's first published piece, “Introduction to Binswanger's Dream and Existence“ in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn't received much critical attention, is of particular interest because, whereas OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of “Man” as an empirico‐transcendental double in particular, IB views “existential anthropology” as a unique opportunity to establish (...) a new and fruitful relation between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object, “Menschsein”, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault, existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault's later view. (shrink)

The purpose. Explore the major ideological patterns of development of a socially philosophies of education in the context of the problems of institutionalization of knowledge about human and social development. To analyse system-integration aspect of social philosophy and education management in interaction of concepts of an instrumentalism of a pragmatism and a neopragmatism with model of «new humanism» in formation of socially valuable orientations. Methodology. Classification existing in the western philosophy of education and education of directions is spent, proceeding from (...) basic principles of philosophical school or a current, first of all considering those the purpose and means which are really involved by them in process of education, social development and socially-moral education and being based on the basic installations, the purpose expressed by that or other direction, how its supporters imagine the person, its requirement, a social role, модус behaviour which the education system and education urged to form. Scientific novelty. In conditions when against crisis of an education system of the government of the USA and the leading countries of Europe are compelled to begin its long-term reform, its theorists substantially pay attention to democratic workings out of concepts of an instrumentalism of a pragmatism/neopragmatism in modern social philosophy of education, in particular on their aspiration to introduce in process of social development, education and education idea and practical model both educational, and a social equality. Considering growing requirement of a practical embodiment of ideas of freedom, justice, aspiration to realization of the human rights proclaimed a society, supporters of the concept of «new humanism» see the main objective in blocking a way to conformism, to a manipulation behaviour of the person and to create conditions for its free self-expression, for realization by the person of a fundamental choice of acts in a concrete situation and by that to warn danger of formation of the unified form of behaviour. In it principles of «new humanism» approach with a position of «new humanism» instrumentalism and neopragmatism. Conclusions. Before social philosophy of education/education it is necessary to define a problem factors which cause achievement of its main objective, to state an estimation to moral principles and personal qualities with which actually the education/education theory connects realization of the problems, to show, why these, instead of any other principles and qualities open to the person possibility to choose in a concrete situation socially powerful both morally defensible and comprehensible line of conduct in public the relation. Statement of a question on necessity of the philosophical analysis of problems of education and education in a social context serves as an indicator of understanding philosophers, teachers of an increasing role of the human and moral factor in society development. And, at last, the aspiration to develop socially-philosophical bases of pedagogics in general and education in particular, testifies that the western and domestic philosophers, teachers, representatives of social and psychological sciences, at least, the majority of them, have realized the public importance of an education system and education, its global character. (shrink)

This lecture is divided, roughly, into three parts. First, there is a general and perhaps rather simple-minded discussion of what are the ‘facts’ that social anthropologists study; is there anything special about these ‘facts’ which makes them different from other kinds of facts? It will be useful to start with the common-sense distinction between two kinds or, better, aspects of social facts; first—though neither is analytically prior to the other—and putting it very crudely, ‘what people do’, the aspect of social (...) interaction, and second, ‘what—and how—people think’, the conceptual, classifying, cognitive component of human culture. Now in reality, of course (and perhaps not so ‘of course’; people do tend to think of them as separate ‘things’), these two aspects are inextricably intertwined. But it is essential to distinguish them analytically, because each aspect gives rise to quite different kinds of problems of understanding for the social anthropologist. We shall see that the problem of how to be ‘objective’, and so to avoid ethnographic error, arises in both contexts, but in rather different forms in each. (shrink)

This lecture is divided, roughly, into three parts. First, there is a general and perhaps rather simple-minded discussion of what are the ‘facts’ that social anthropologists study; is there anything special about these ‘facts’ which makes them different from other kinds of facts? It will be useful to start with the common-sense distinction between two kinds or, better, aspects of social facts; first—though neither is analytically prior to the other—and putting it very crudely, ‘what people do’, the aspect of social (...) interaction, and second, ‘what—and how—people think’, the conceptual, classifying, cognitive component of human culture. Now in reality, of course (and perhaps not so ‘of course’; people do tend to think of them as separate ‘things’), these two aspects are inextricably intertwined. But it is essential to distinguish them analytically, because each aspect gives rise to quite different kinds of problems of understanding for the social anthropologist. We shall see that the problem of how to be ‘objective’, and so to avoid ethnographic error, arises in both contexts, but in rather different forms in each. (shrink)

This paper presents current debates on an anthropological principle in linguistics that Russian scholars are involved in. It presents as important the consideration of traditional issues in linguistics from the position of anthropologism. Also, it is fruitful to understand the lingual personality as an object of study in linguistics, to interpret the meaning of words from an anthropocentric position, and to anthropologically interpret ways of the world conceptualization in semantics of the lingual and textual units. It is especially important to (...) consider an anthropological approach in relation to human creativity. (shrink)

Purpose. The article suggested for consideration is aimed at clarifying the shift in human perception from the spatial turn announced by Michel Foucault, to a performative turn. The performative turn has an anthropological footing. It is based on the all-round investigation of the body’s principal role for cultural existence, as a result of a reverse reaction to artificial conceptual gap between space and body, which basically means ignoring the embodiment theme. An example of such theoretical deformation was Edmund Husserl’s “ (...) class='Hi'>anthropology phobia” revealed and thoroughly analysed by Hans Blumenberg in his critical works. Originality of the approach applied in this research, first and foremost, demonstrates not an abstract phenomenological conception as a theoretical construct, but a phenomenological activity itself, as well as practical work expressing antepredicative experience and solving the problems arising in this complicated process. Applying the Blumenberg’s analysis also allows to peep in the sideline notes of Edmund Husserl himself, which, for their part, acquire special meaning in relation to such a practical turn. Conclusions show the following state of affairs demonstrated by the anthropological and performative shift towards the body theme: 1) absolutisation of space without mentioning its relation to body experience is unreasonable and groundless, like in Husserl’s “anthropology phobia ”; 2) since the ground itself is a metaphorical anthropology basis, anthropology can reveal the structural conditions of perception due to thematic fronting of embodiment; 3) this gives anthropology some compensational features, to avoid false culture and nature dualism; 4) so, the space and body relationship is expressed by the Vehikel-phenomenon of the body itself, by placing, arranging and depicting, and thus replacing something missing and unavailable for direct contemplation, by revealing the spatial infrastructure for object perception, creating the presence conditions and metaphorically marking the contemplation boundary; 5) the depicting arrangement is at the same time a bodily performance, a play, staging and performing, which gives an aesthetic, poetic and emphatic impact on the use of philosophy language, in our case, on the way a phenomenology philosopher works with the language. (shrink)

Purpose. The article suggested for consideration is aimed at clarifying the shift in human perception from the spatial turn announced by Michel Foucault, to a performative turn. The performative turn has an anthropological footing. It is based on the all-round investigation of the body’s principal role for cultural existence, as a result of a reverse reaction to artificial conceptual gap between space and body, which basically means ignoring the embodiment theme. An example of such theoretical deformation was Edmund Husserl’s “ (...) class='Hi'>anthropology phobia” revealed and thoroughly analysed by Hans Blumenberg in his critical works. Originality of the approach applied in this research, first and foremost, demonstrates not an abstract phenomenological conception as a theoretical construct, but a phenomenological activity itself, as well as practical work expressing antepredicative experience and solving the problems arising in this complicated process. Applying the Blumenberg’s analysis also allows to peep in the sideline notes of Edmund Husserl himself, which, for their part, acquire special meaning in relation to such a practical turn. Conclusions show the following state of affairs demonstrated by the anthropological and performative shift towards the body theme: 1) absolutisation of space without mentioning its relation to body experience is unreasonable and groundless, like in Husserl’s “anthropology phobia ”; 2) since the ground itself is a metaphorical anthropology basis, anthropology can reveal the structural conditions of perception due to thematic fronting of embodiment; 3) this gives anthropology some compensational features, to avoid false culture and nature dualism; 4) so, the space and body relationship is expressed by the Vehikel-phenomenon of the body itself, by placing, arranging and depicting, and thus replacing something missing and unavailable for direct contemplation, by revealing the spatial infrastructure for object perception, creating the presence conditions and metaphorically marking the contemplation boundary; 5) the depicting arrangement is at the same time a bodily performance, a play, staging and performing, which gives an aesthetic, poetic and emphatic impact on the use of philosophy language, in our case, on the way a phenomenology philosopher works with the language. (shrink)

_Purpose. _The article is aimed at considering the concept of leisure in the daily practice of Ukrainian refugees in Poland and identifying the main trends in its development. _Theoretical basis._ The author used the quantitative method, the method of online search for respondents, the method of monitoring social networks, and the comparative method. The study was conducted in Poland from 01.08.2022 to 31.01. 2023 as part of grant support from the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies. The study is based on (...) the results of a qualitative and quantitative survey, the analysis of groups and chats of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, and the comparative analysis with the results of other studies. The comparison of these results leads to the assumption that a different understanding of the category of leisure in Polish and Ukrainian culture can result in the violation of intergroup relations. _Originality. _The author deduced the concept of refugees’ leisure beyond the concepts of adaptation, assimilation, and integration. Leisure is proposed to be considered as a connecting link between the past and present life of refugees and determine its place in the structure of national consciousness. _Conclusions._ The modern scientific discourse experiences a certain gap in the study of the leisure sector of Ukrainian refugees, the problematic areas in the leisure anthropology of Ukrainian refugees in Poland were identified, and a working hypothesis was put forward for further research. The misunderstanding in the organization of leisure activities of representatives of two cultures arises at the level of national self-consciousness (codes, traditions, attitudes). Therefore, external communication does not always reach its ultimate objective and leads to misunderstanding. To determine the mechanism of misunderstanding, the place of leisure in the structure of national consciousness should be determined. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault?s first published piece, Introduction to Binswanger?s?Dream and Existence? in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn?t received much critical attention, is of particular interest because while OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of?Man? as an empirico-transcendental double in particular, IB views?existential anthropology? as a unique opportunity to establish a new and (...) fruitful relation between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object,?Menschsein?, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but as the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault?s later view. (shrink)

In an (indirectly or involuntarily) iconoclastic subject, Claude Fintz proposes to put in perspective the conceptual universe of the humanities by confronting it with the thought of a master of contemporary Indian advaita, Nisargadatta Maharaj—as reflected by his disciple Ramesh S. Balsekar. In this “between” of the scientific and spiritual quest, the great notions of the philosophy of the subject will resonate. The author hypothesizes that this paradoxical encounter is likely to bring out the mystery of a first-person search where, (...) in the context of a certain philosophy of consciousness (resonating with the quest of Henri Michaux), the looking subject turns out to be the mirror of the looked object. This apocalypse projects vitriol on the conceptual bubbles that are the so-called subject (and his free will), knowledge and imagination—all constituents of the human “sciences”, bordered in fact by nothingness, according to a “vacant” anthropology. (shrink)

Death is an invariant of human existence, a kind of its “omega point”. At the same time, the attitude towards it is not a constant, but rather undergoes changes, being incorporated in a wide sociocultural context. The mail goal of the article is an analysis of the nature of these changes at the present stage specifically under the influence of rapid biotechnological progress and dilemmas generated by these changes. Firstly, there is a tendency of increasing optimism: some theorists tend to (...) perceive death not as an inevitable reality, but rather as a problem and a challenge. At the same time a radical direction arises, believing that death can be overcome only through the complete separation of man from its body substrate. The utopian nature of this project forces more moderate theorists to look for indirect way, which consists in a “war” with aging as the main predecessor of death, up to attempts of its complete abolition. Gradually, the formation of scientific immortology as a kind of opposition for thanatology takes place. At the same time, many theorists, and even more ordinary people remain skeptical position about the prospects for victory over death. It can be concluded that biomedical progress actualizes general human intention for self-preservation and death avoidance, but science requires an assessment of not only the objective possibilities for overcoming death but also both ontological and anthropological consequences of it. (shrink)

Psychology has been a deductive science where theory and hypotheses precede investigation of new knowledge. Data inform theory which then leads to more refined hypotheses. The recent move toward a cultural psychology calls for an unfurling of this perspective. This involves consideration of an epistemology at the core of anthropology, a shift toward first-person points of view, where ethnography is the inductive method based on a practical philosophy. This paper examines what is at stake for psychology to enter the (...) interpretive social sciences where culturally-constituted subjectivity and intersubjectivity are the objects of investigation. An anthropological imagination is a critical supplement to a multi-method approach in psychology, or an alternative epistemology, that augments knowledge of cultural persons. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

According to a widespread view, Hegel holds that beauty cannot be found in the creatures and objects of the natural world, but is strictly limited to works of art. I argue in this paper that Hegel’s restriction of beauty to works of art is not as straightforward as it is often taken to be, by showing that the phenomenon of beauty has anthropological roots in Hegel. Juxtaposing the Lectures on Aesthetics with sections from Hegel’s Anthropology in the Encyclopedia of (...) Philosophical Sciences, I demonstrate that the living human individual has considerable aesthetic potential in Hegel’s view. According to the interpretation developed in the paper, Hegel holds that artistic beauty—at least in its classical form—is inspired by the beauty of the living human individual. This interpretation makes emerge a strong, ambitious conception of artistic beauty according to which beautiful art not only stands in continuity with human nature, but also makes normative claims pertaining to the living human individual. (shrink)

The philosophical symbolism of H. Skovoroda’s works lies in wisdom, congenial work, seeing the big in the small, unveiling mysteries through the symbolic world. Skovoroda states that to be a human-being is to be a philosopher. The aim of philosophy is to reawaken the main mottos of the Age of Enlightenment (honor, dignity, freedom, justice, solidarity, morality). Creating open society in Ukraine on the basis of these mottos is the aim of the modern national state-building. The aim of the article (...) is to ascertain the influence and meaning of the philosophical and anthropological problems in the works of H. S. Skovoroda for building open society in the modern Ukraine. Methodology of the study is complex and based on the social-philosophical and historic-philosophical analysis of anthropological problems in the works by H. S. Skovoroda and its significance for finding personal freedom and building open society. The leading methodological tools are fundamental research basics of the scientific analysis – principles of objectivity, systematicity, integrity, unity of the historic and the logical, determinism, development, and interrelation. Methodology of social and symbolic representations, ethnic representations, and structural functionalism has been used. Results. As Ukraine is experiencing complex social and political processes, the philosophical works by H. S. Skovoroda acquires special importance: formation and preservation of the Ukrainian national identity, national values, morality, and culture. The society needs politically-minded citizens with clear ideas about the prospects of the state development. Researching works of Skovoroda, one can trace the development of the human spirit: an internally-devastated person devoid of life reference points is gradually adapting to the life in society, overcomes the discrepancies between the singular and the whole finding a compromise in the relations with the world around them. The fates of the people and the nation, language and the state were the key problems which H. S. Skovoroda thoroughly and passionately analyzed through the perspective of universal human values. Conclusions. The modern Ukrainian society needs people in harmony with themselves and the world who work on improving themselves and the society. Such people should be able to overcome both their own internal contradictions and the conflicts in society and the world. Putting significant hope on the human-being as the creator of the new morality, H. Skovoroda believed in the possibility of building solid foundations of the state. An internally rich person and citizen is going to contribute to harmony of the nature, the world, human relations focusing on the issues of good and love as integral attributes of the human existence. The writer considered such personalities to be able to carry peace and unity to the unstable reality full of life challenges and to oppose the alienation, absurdity, and insignificance of the human existence. (shrink)

In this article I consider the uses of the concepts ‘society’ and ‘culture’ in various sociological and anthropological traditions, arguing that sociology needs to learn from the division between social anthropology and cultural anthropology. First I distinguish the social and the cultural sciences: the former use ‘society’ as leading concept and ‘culture’ as a subordinate concept; the latter do the contrary. I discuss the origins of the terms société and Kultur in the classical French and German traditions respectively, (...) and their subsequent uptake in Anglo-American sociology and anthropology, ‘society’ becoming the leading concept for sociology and social anthropology, ‘culture’ the leading concept for cultural anthropology. I contrast the sociology of culture with the cultural anthropological consideration of society. I next examine the terms for ‘society’ in the classical German tradition, especially Weber, pointing to interpretivism as a cultural theory of society. I then consider Weber’s Kultursoziologie, arguing that it is culture (Kultur) not society (Gesellschaft) that is the ultimate object of Weber’s sociology. I conclude that sociology needs to identify classical German sociology and its derivatives as cultural science not social science, and to make comprehensive adjustments to its methodological debates accordingly. The implications of this for the problem of sociology’s encounter with the natural world are noted. (shrink)

Introduction. A man of today inevitably acquires the status of a patient in the context of preventive medicine, even when he is healthy. But at the same time, he or she becomes an object of influence both from medicine itself and from numerous social institutions and commercial structures, in addition to health institutions, which proclaimed their mission to ensure human well-being. The purpose of the study is to comprehend the philosophical and anthropological aspects of the patient’s phenomenon and clarify basic (...) foundations of transforming a patient’s consciousness in the context of progressive life medicalization. Methods. The methodological basis of the research comprises sociocultural, hermeneutic, existentialphilosophical and phenomenological approaches. The research is based on M. Heidegger’s anthropological ontology, E. Giddens’ existential ontology; M. Foucault’s concept of life medicalization; P.D. Tishchenko’s concept of transforming bio-power in modern culture. Scientific novelty of the research. The author has developed a hypothesis for the principles of forming individual and mass patient consciousness, which determines a modern person’s way of being in the context of life medicalization. Results. Suffering from the fear of the existence finiteness becomes the existential foundation of the modern patient’s consciousness, while the existential and rational foundations of the patient consciousness of the modern enlightened individual are mutually mediated. The link in their mutual mediation is believing in the possibility of achieving the ideal health, formed in modern socio-cultural conditions. In the situation of total life medicalization, in which health is understood as a prosperous existence, a special way of human being is formed on the basis of the individual patient’s consciousness. The “effect” of the life medicalization is the emergence of a mass patient consciousness - the fear of losing health forms the ideology of a medicalized society in which every individual becomes a patient. Conclusions. The progress of biomedicine is able to determine the crisis of human identity. In this regard, it is important to clarify the philosophical concepts of health and illness in the context of the modern sociocultural situation, which allows to determine the possible ideal of health within the framework of medical interventions that are safe for the human essence and capable of providing “ontological safety” when healing an individual. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The basis of the presented research is a philosophical and methodological analysis of the human-centrism concept as a new intellectual strategy of comprehending and understanding the prospects of human existence in a situation of information-digital reality, which provides for the consistent solution of the following problems: 1) to make an explication of the conceptual content and semantic loading of human-centrism in the discourses of social philosophy and philosophical anthropology; 2) to analyse the theoretical significance and methodological role of (...) human-centrism in the information-digital reality; 3) to characterize the main parameters of the problematic field of human-centrism in overcoming the crisis of identity and preserving the system of universal human values. _Theoretical basis__._ The objective logic of unfolding of the modern information-digital world transforms philosophical anthropology into a new level of comprehending the human existence. Human-centrism interacts with philosophical anthropology and evaluates it from the point of its metaphilosophical, axiological-existential and methodological content. The assertion of human-centrism is caused by the identity crisis in the context of civilizational transformations, which as a result of the cumulative effect of information technology have a powerful influence on all aspects of human life and thinking. The philosophy of human-centrism as a life-affirming factor determines the development and adaptation of human self-consciousness to the modern socio-cultural environment, determined by information and technological processes. _Originality__._ It is substantiated that human-centrism as a new strategy of modern philosophical and anthropological discourses opens new cognition perspectives of the essence of human in the information-digital reality and contributes to the construction and implementation of new dimensions of identity in interaction with a qualitatively different level of world attitude. _Conclusions__._ The assertion of information-digital reality gives rise to a new type of philosophical and anthropological paradigm, a qualitative manifestation of which is the theory and methodology of human-centrism. It is characterized by a modern level of philosophical reflection, which allows preserving and at the same time renewing the system of universal human values. On this basis, human-centrism is a way of complementarity of all aspects of human life, who reconstructs themselves in a situation of new anthropological dimensions. (shrink)

In this paper the relation between being and becoming is analyzed and the Kierkegaard’s existential method is considered. Also the three stages of existence are described as the evolution of a human being. This evolution means gradual creation of true selfhood due to decisive choices and actions. The author stresses that Kierkegaard’s existential anthropology is a version of the dialectical religious existentialism. A human being is paradoxical and her or his conflicts cannot be resolved by rational way. Existence has (...) its own logic, which differs from the dialectical logic of Hegel’s absolute idea or spirit. This logic is paradoxical and needs other laws, i.e. the laws of love, faith and repetition. Repetition is essential for religious experience, because it teaches to be humble. An individual’s humility means that he/she is not disturbed by any superfluous things and he/she does not pursue them. Such humble individual remains quiet in any situations. The author proves that Kierkegaard is one of the philosophers of Modern Time, who struggles against speculative and objective thinking, which depersonalizes a human being; a human’s being is totally subjective and on higher level it is a passion of faith. (shrink)

Ethnographic research, anthropological theory, and the understanding of the objects of inquiry, are co-created through figuration (using tropes and rhetorical figures) and techniques of persuasion. Delving into descriptive ethnography and theoretical texts spanning across classical monographs and recent texts in cultural anthropology, Culture Figures places rhetoric and rhetoricity as central to the discipline's self-understanding. It focuses on how understandings of 'culture' and social life are shaped and conveyed in cultural anthropology through textual rhetoric. The book demonstrates how processes (...) of using tropes and modes of persuasion underlie the creation of meanings or misunderstandings in society. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate how museum collection sustainability is grounded in a range of concrete care practices that are social and material. It explores the unstable nature of heritage materials, drawing on the ecological approach of infrastructure and maintenance studies in the field of art and museums. To do this, I analyse the role of mundane operations in the daily functioning of an exhibition area, presenting data from fieldwork I conducted from 2015–2016 at the Musée du quai Branly in (...) Paris, which preserves collections of art and ethnology from outside Europe. I observed the museum's preventive conservation practices, which work to minimise the risks of material deterioration of heritage objects, focusing attention on stabilising the relationship between objects and their environments. These practices contribute to the construction of the temporalities of museum objects. In exploring the means and devices of preserving these heritage objects, the very assumption of perpetuation is destabilised. Environments continually unfold with the silent material metamorphosis of objects. The exhibition becomes a place of flows, where a multitude of entities circulate and cohabit at different scales, such as insects, dust, and powdery fragments. The daily human work of vacuuming, cleaning, trapping, and measuring provide a set of actions united with other entities engaged in the material life of the exhibited object. As we zoom in on the exhibition space, different timelines emerge that are inextricably linked to the different lives of the museum. (shrink)

On March 25, 2023, the Faculty of Philosophy at Lomonov Moscow State University hosted the “Moscow Anthropological School: New Ideas in Philosophy” International Scientific Conference. The event was held in honor of Professor Fyodor Ivanovich Girenok’s jubilee. The conference welcomed speakers from Russia, Belarus, France, and the United Kingdom, along with attendees from various universities, cultural, government, and business institutions both within Russia and internationally. The conference delved into the fundamental issues of philosophical anthropology, highlighted contemporary strategies for understanding (...) humanity, explored future development prospects, and showcased the accomplishments of the Moscow School of Anthropology in shaping modern philosophical concepts. Among the anthropological strategies proposed were singular philosophy, event anthropology, synergistic anthropology, Messianic anthropology, the anthropology of silence, the anthropology of the tale, and network-centric anthropocentrism. A central theme that resonated through-out the conference discussions was the relationship between the human and non-human aspects of humanity, and the associated issue of the relationship between consciousness and artificial intelligence. Emphasizing the uniqueness of human existence, conference participants explored phenomena such as morality, action, meaning generation, imagination, inner life, self-action, self-falling, human duality, and non-objectibility. The conference under-scored the distinction between artificial intelligence, defined by an algorithmic function, and human consciousness, characterized as an extension of reality through the establishment of values and goals. The conference also paid special attention to the issue of language, specifically the dichotomy of word and image, sign and silence, and the potential for their synthesis in speech and the symbolization of social practices. (shrink)

The article deals with Kant's understanding of personhood and autonomy. It highlights the connection of autonomy and human dignity within Kant's appreciation of morality, and indicates how his distinction between the empirical and transcendental spheres enables Kant to extend dignity even to humans who are not actually autonomous. Turning to contemporary approaches within ethics that refer to Kant but omit this transcendental framework, it defends the necessity of a trans-empirical frame within the Kantian system and hints at consequences for bioethics. (...) It concludes that Kant works with neither an absolutist notion of freedom in terms of solipsistic autarky, nor an empirical freedom and autonomy that begin and end at certain points of time. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to return to the concept of bricolage as theorized in 1962 by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and examine its presence and utility in the art and architectural history of the twentieth century. While Lévi-Strauss was the first theorist to present bricolage as an analogy for the creation of mythical thought among indigenous cultures, the concept has seen a wide range of conceptual, methodological and practical applications across different fields, including design, visual arts, urban (...) planning and the built environment. This article will examine the applicability of bricolage as a technical metaphor for the creative process and its relevance to artistic creation by tracing its trajectory over the course of the twentieth century. It will evaluate the significance of objects and events of ‘everyday life’ in the creative practices of contemporary artists, and draw attention to the emerging role of the architect as bricoleur or improviser, to conclude that it was the art of the ‘ordinary’ that gave creative inspiration to twentieth-century artists and architects to engage with the materiality and past experiences of the world. (shrink)