The Social Imaginary of Culture/Civilization in the Arabic Literary Tradition

Charles Taylor’s contribution to social imaginaries offers an interpretive framework for better understanding modernity as secularity. One of its main aspects is conceiving of human society in linear, homogenous time (secular time). Looking into the Arabic intellectual tradition, I will argue in my paper that Taylor’s framework can help us understand major social and intellectual transformations. The Ottoman and Arabic modernization process during the 19th century has often been understood by focusing on certain core concepts. One of these is tamaddun, usually translated as “civilization.” I will be mostly talking about the works of two “pioneers” of Arab modernity (which is traditionally referred to as an-nahḍa, the so-called Arab Renaissance): the Syrian Fransīs Marrāsh and the Egyptian Rifāʿa aṭ-Ṭahṭāwī. First I will focus on Marrāsh’s didactic novel “The Forest of Truth” (1865), as it offers a complex view of tamaddun, which has sometimes been construed as merely a social and political reform program. The category of "social imaginary,” however, is useful in grasping the wider semantic scope of this concept, which is reading it as a signifier for human history conceived of in secular time, as Taylor defines it. This conceptualization of human history functioning within the immanent frame can also be observed in the introduction to “The Extraction of Pure Gold in the Description of Paris” (1834), a systematic account of a travel experience in France that was written by the other “pioneer,” aṭ-Ṭahṭāwī. Finally, in translating tamaddun as “the modern social imaginary of civilization/culture,” the talk aims to consider this imaginary as a major factor in the emergence of the “secular age.” Furthermore, it suggests the importance of studying (quasi-) literary texts, such as historiographical, geographical, and self-narratives in the Arabic literary tradition, in order to further elaborate continuities and ruptures in social imaginaries.

A cultura brasileira de Darcy Ribeiro em língua inglesa: um estudo da tradução de termos e expressões de antropologia da civilização

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Antropologia da Civilização: um estudo da tradução para o inglês de termos simples, expressões fixas e semifixas recorrentes em duas obras de Darcy Ribeiro

The main purpose of this article is to investigate the most frequent simple terms as well as fixed and semi-fixed expressions in Social Anthropology of Civilization subarea in Portuguese and their corresponding terms in English, found in two works written by the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro. The methodology used is that of Corpus-Based Translation Studies (BAKER, 1995, 1996, 1997; CAMARGO, 2005, 2007), Corpus Linguistics (BERBER SARDINHA, 2004) and Terminology (BARROS, 2004; KRIEGER &FINATTO, 2004). Results show that there are similarities and differences among the use of the terms in the main subcorpora composed of source and target texts and in the comparable corpora in Portuguese and in English. This data indicate that terms and expressions are not univocal in the anthropological language due to the differences in the conceptualization of the same referents by different specialists in the area.

Feasibility study on the establishment of a FLACSO graduate school of applied social anthropology in the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

On the pragmatics of social theory. The case of Elias's "On the Process of Civilization"

This paper proposes a new approach to the study of sociological classics. This approach is pragmatic in character. It draws upon the social pragmatism of G.H. Mead and the sociology of texts of D.F. McKenzie. Our object of study is Norbert Elias’s On the Process of Civilization. The pragmatic genealogy of this book reveals the importance of taking materiality seriously. By documenting the successive entanglements between human agency and non-human factors, we discuss the origins of the book in the 1930s, how it was forgotten for thirty years, and how in the mid-1970s it became a sociological classic. We explain canonization as a matter of fusion between book’s material form and its content, in the context of the paperback revolution of the 1960s, the events of May 1968, and the demise of Parsons’ structural functionalism, and how this provided Elias with an opportunity to advance his model of sociology.

Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and republican : a historical, geographical, political, statistical and social account of that country from the period of the invasion by the Spaniards to the present time : with a view of the ancient Aztec empire and civilization, a historical sketch of the late war, and notices of New Mexico and California /

Mode of access: Internet.

The light of the Cross in the Twentieth Century : the influence of the Church on modern civilization, her treatment of the great moral and social problems of our time, by master minds, the foundations, history and progress of her great educational institutions in the United States, her great religious orders of men and women for spreading the Gospel and teaching secular and religious knowledge, the history of the organization, development and aims of the great Catholic fraternal societies of the United States and their national federation with many other important subjects, the teachings of the Church made manifest to the modern mind /

Contents: v. 3. The glorious teachings of our holy religion

Dawn of modern civilization : or, Sketches of the social condition of Europe /

Mode of access: Internet.

Social forces in German literature, a study in the history of civilization,

Mode of access: Internet.

Hypercapitalism: New media, language, and social perceptions of value

Every day trillions of dollars circulate the globe in a digital data space and new forms of property and ownership emerge. Massive corporate entities with a global reach are formed and disappear with breathtaking speed, making and breaking personal fortunes the size of which defy imagination. Fictitious commodities abound. The genomes of entire nations have become corporately owned. Relationships have become the overt basis of economic wealth and political power. Hypercapitalism explores the problems of understanding this emergent form of global political economic organization by focusing on the internal relations between language, new media networks, and social perceptions of value. Taking an historical approach informed by Marx, Phil Graham draws upon writings in political economy, media studies, sociolinguistics, anthropology, and critical social science to understand the development, roots, and trajectory of the global system in which every possible aspect of human existence, including imagined futures, has become a commodity form.