Money is not enough: exploring the impact of social and cultural resources on youth health

Findings on socioeconomic health differentials in youth remain fragmented with the role of cumulative and interaction effects of different forms of health resources not well understood.

Translated Literature in the Bulgarian Middle Ages as a Social and Cultural Phenomenon

The study reviews the Medieval Bulgarian translations from Greek as a multi-centennial process, preconditioned by the constant contacts between Byzantium and its Slavonic neighbor and dependant on the historical and cultural circumstances in Medieval Bulgaria. The facts are discussed from the prospective of two basic determining factors: social and cultural environment (spiritual needs of the age, political and cultural ideology, translationsʼ initiator, centers of translation activities, degree of education/literacy). The chronological and typological analysis of the thematic and genre range of the translated literature enables the outlining of five main stages: (1) Cyrillo-Methodian period (the middle of the 9th centuty – 885) – reception of the corpus needed for missionary purposes; (2) The First Bulgarian Tsardom period (885–1018) – intensive translation activities, founding the Christian literature in Bulgaria; (3) The period of The Byzantine rule (1018–1185) – a standstill in the translation activities and single translations of low-level literature texts; (4) The Second Bulgarian Tsardom – the period of Asenevtsi dynasty (the late 12th and the 13th centuries) – a partial revision of the liturgical and paraliturgical books; (5) The Second Bulgarian Tsardom – the Athonite-Tarnovo period (the 14th – early 15th century) – extensive relations with Byzantium and alignment to the then-current Byzantine models, intensifications of the translations flow and a broad range of the translation stream. (taken from: http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails.aspx?issueid=fb876e89-ce0b-48a8-9373-a3d1e4d579a6&articleId=3056800e-cac7-4138-959e-8813abc311d9, 10.12.2013)

Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity : Transdisciplinary Enquiries

Digital game environments are of increasing economic, social and cultural value. As their influence on diverse facets of life grows, states have felt compelled to intervene and secure some public interests. Yet, the contours of a comprehensive governance model are far from recognisable and governments are grappling with the complexity and fluidity of online games and virtual worlds as private spaces and as experimentation fields for creativity and innovation. This book contributes to a more comprehensive and fine-grained understanding of digital game environments, which is a precondition for addressing any of the pressing governance questions posed. Particular attention is given to the concept and policy objective of cultural diversity, which also offers a unique entry point into the discussion of the appropriate legal regulation of digital games. Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity will be of interest to researchers of media law, internet law and governance, cultural studies, anthropology and sociology. As the book addresses a highly topical theme, it will attract the attention of policymakers at national, regional and international levels and will also serve as a great resource tool for scholars in new media and, in particular, digital games and virtual worlds.

Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity : Transdisciplinary Enquiries. Preface

Digital game environments are of increasing economic, social and cultural value. As their influence on diverse facets of life grows, states have felt compelled to intervene and secure some public interests. Yet, the contours of a comprehensive governance model are far from recognisable and governments are grappling with the complexity and fluidity of online games and virtual worlds as private spaces and as experimentation fields for creativity and innovation. This book contributes to a more comprehensive and fine-grained understanding of digital game environments, which is a precondition for addressing any of the pressing governance questions posed. Particular attention is given to the concept and policy objective of cultural diversity, which also offers a unique entry point into the discussion of the appropriate legal regulation of digital games. Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity will be of interest to researchers of media law, internet law and governance, cultural studies, anthropology and sociology. As the book addresses a highly topical theme, it will attract the attention of policymakers at national, regional and international levels and will also serve as a great resource tool for scholars in new media and, in particular, digital games and virtual worlds.

Approaching diplomatic and courtly gift-giving in Europe and Mughal India. Shared practices and cultural diversity

This article deals with courtly gift-giving practices in Europe and Mughal India from a comparative and interwoven perspective. Given the historiographical lacunae on Mughal gift-giving, the article presents preliminary observations for further research. Unlike most contributions to this volume, this article understands the notion of diversity in terms of an intercultural diversity that came to the fore in courtly contexts and in diplomatic encounters. My arguments are bifold. On the one hand, European and Mughal rulers and their envoys shared a common ground of diplomatic gift-giving practices that were shaped by an understanding of what was worthy of giving and of the symbolic power of the given objects. On the other hand, courtly gift-giving practices were embedded in different social and cultural environments in Europe and India. By looking at the notion of the ‘gift’ and the social organisation of the Mughal elite, it becomes clear that pīshkash was an idiosyncratic concept in South and Central Asian contexts and that offerings of manṣabdārs to the Mughal emperor had a different character than those of European courtiers to their rulers.

Die Odyssee der Pygmäen. Eine prekäre Figur auf den neuzeitlichen Spieltischen anthropologischer Differenz

Due to the impacts of postcolonialism, social and cultural anthropology has been dealing intensively with the possibilities and limits of representing "other” human beings and their meaningful worlds. Scholars such as George Marcus, James Clifford or Clifford Geertz have discussed ways of improving anthropological methods of representation without, however, fully raising questions about the quality and validity of the objects represented and the very idea, that they could be “represented”. Thus, despite attempts to purify classical anthropological categories, substantialized presences (“Humans”, “Others”, “Pygmies” etc.), various forms of binary oppositions (us–them, culture–nature, human–animal) as well as certain epistemological modes/ logoi (representation, interpretation) have been rehearsed until today. The research aims to dissect and challenge the metaphysical outputs of the “anthropological machine” (Giorgio Agamben). I intended to solve these from their apparent familiarity as representable identities or differences in order to investigate their genealogy. In Derrida’s and Foucault’s understanding, genealogy becomes manifest mainly in the “blind spots” (Derrida) or “anomalies” (Foucault) between differences, at the borders of identities. As an analytical guideline, the research uses on one concrete metonym for the Derridean blind spot, one incorporation of a Foucauldian Other, namely pygmy narratives within early modern and 19th century imaginings. “Pygmies” have been part of both Western mythology and anthropological reflection since the antiquity and finally became “ethnographical facts” within an evolutionary anthropology in the 19th century during the European exploration of Africa. Throughout this veritable Odyssey, they were mostly precarious “category-jammers” (Timothy Beal), occupying the impossible middle grounds within (proto)anthropological classification. Thus, along with the early modern wild men, enfants sauvages or the apes of proto-primatology, the pygmies of the Homeric myth, as a catalyst for the negotiation of categories, played a decisive role in early modern and 19th century conceptions of the human. Through the precarious Pygmies, concrete socio-historical materializations of Identities (human, European), differences (human–animal etc.), as well as the accompanying logoi which vindicate these as pseudo-entities, appear evident. The research aims to read and write the history of early modern and 19th Century anthropology through one of its many classificatory constituting Others. It thus contributes to a discipline that for a long time has examined concrete systems of knowledge and the genealogy of classification in general. One might call it an “anthropologization” of anthropology.