O tym, co dziś pozostało po ideałach rewolucji obyczajowej lat 60. XX w., mówi prof. zw. dr hab. Wojciech Burszta z Instytutu Slawistyki PAN.
O życiu kobiet na Bliskim Wschodzie w XIX w. i dziś mówią dr Teodozja I. Rzeuska, dr Anetta Łyżwa-Piber i mgr Katarzyna Molga z Instytutu Kultur Śródziemnomorskich i Orientalnych PAN, autorki książki „Haremy. Skryty świat kobiet Orientu na starych pocztówkach poznany i opisany przez polskich podróżników, pielgrzymów, wagabundów i ekspatriantów”.
The author presents the output of Eduard Makarian, a Russian cultural anthropologist, featuring his contribution to the problem of origin of culture. The development of Makarian’s scientific research has been presented from the understanding of systemic character of culture to the research on the origin of culture; from reflecting upon the first principles of culture development to the concept of system evolution as anthropogenesis, social evolution and cultural evolution, to the understanding of the origin of culture as a creative core of culture (cultural heritage, dynamics of cultural traditions, “tradition”–“change” dichotomy, hypothesis of “cultural genes”, etc.). The scientist moved from the issue of the origin of culture in the prehistoric times through the issues of permanent creation and dialectic self-revival of culture to the problems of culture in contemporary world. His research was of key importance for the establishment of philosophical and cultural approach in the research of the origin of culture in Russia.
The aim of this analysis is to determine whether Marx’s diagnosis of alienated work applies to work that is performed in our time, and whether the concept itself is useful for philosophical anthropology. Marx assumes that there is a link between alienation of work and alienation of the worker. The author asks if these premises lead to further questions, such as: Is the phenomenon of alienation of work characterized unambiguously and precisely? Can it be useful for analyzing social phenomena occurring outside the proletariat? Is it relevant to apply this phenomenon to the philosophical discourse on man conducted independently of the historical perspective assumed by Marx? Will abolition of private ownership of means of production eliminate the phenomenon of alienated work? Which is more nearly true: Marx’s idea that private property is the result of alienated work, or the opposite, that private property is its cause?
Like all religions Islam, too, has substantial ethical contents. The unique character of Islamic ethics, however, comes from the fact that it is entirely rooted in religion and so cannot be separated from it. Thus it is formed by the teaching of the Quran, to which the way of life of the Prophet Muhammad (sunnah) offers explanations. Man’s behavior in this sense is an act of either obedience or disobedience to God himself. It is also true that in the Muslim world a philosophical conception of ethics has evolved mainly due to Islam’s encounter with Greek culture. The central concept of Islamic ethics is character (khuluq), which is the state of man’s soul. It is in his character that man develops a tendency to perform either good or bad actions. Such understanding of human dispositions has much to do with Aristotle’s perception of man’s inner state that guides him to good or evil actions. These preliminary basic clarifications on Islamic ethics are then followed by brief accounts of select issues of moral life. Among those there are three main virtues (justice, kindness, charity) and vices (indecency, wickedness, oppression), marriage and the family, or the sanctity of human life (implying an ethical rejection of abortion and euthanasia).
Nie zawsze zaangażowana postawa antropologów łączy się z działaniami emancypacyjnymi i antyhegemonicznymi. W przeszłości autorytet naukowy polskich etnografów służył ugruntowywaniu nacjonalistycznego dyskursu nawet wtedy, gdy byli względem niego krytyczni. Artykuł przedstawia analizę tekstów publicystycznych dwojga międzywojennych etnografów: Bożeny Stelmachowskiej, piszącej na temat Kaszubów oraz Jana Stanisława Bystronia krytykującego megalomanię narodową. Wspólnym mianownikiem tych tekstów jest esencjalizujące pojęcie narodu i grup etnicznych, które dobrze służyło celom politycznym, podobnie jak i ich terytorializacja. Jedynie wyprzedzający swój czas Józef Obrębski trafnie wskazał mankamenty ówczesnych teorii. Historyczna lekcja, którą prezentuje artykuł, może się przysłużyć krytycznej refleksyjności współczesnych badaczy i dekonstruowaniu nacjonalistycznego dyskursu.
This article aims to reconstruct Max Scheler’s conception of three types of knowledge, outlined in his late work Philosophical Perspectives (1928). Scheler distinguished three kinds of knowledge: empirical, used to exercise control over nature, eidetic (essential) and metaphysical. I review the epistemological criteria that underlie this distinction, and its functionalistic assumptions. In the article’s polemic part I accuse Scheler of a) crypto-dualism in his theory of knowledge, which draws insufficient distinctions between metaphysical and eidetic knowledge; b) totally omitting the status of the humanities in his classification of knowledge types; c) consistently developing a philosophy of knowledge without resort to the research tools offered by the philosophy of science, which takes such analyses out of their social and historical context (i.e., how knowledge is created in today’s scientific communities).
The aim of the article is an attempt to trace the fate of several appellatives grouped in the lexical field around the hyperonym świnia ʽpig, swine’ (wieprz ʽhog’, knur/kiernoz ʽboar’ and prosię ʽpiglet’) as the motivation of many names in Polish onymy, mainly in anthroponymy and toponymy. My research has been conducted along the lines of historical anthropology. Proper names in this approach play an important role in the reconstruction of the past. The field of interest of this article includes mainly names belonging to the old onymic layer. Proper names arise from the lexicon of a given language, which is why my analysis is based on lexical and semantic methodology. My point of departure is the meaning (often reconstructed) of appellative lexical units, including their semantic modifications in the proprial layer. I interpret proper names on the basis of findings regarding their origin and motivation. The first names motivated by the lexeme świnia were associated with the economic organization of the Piast state. In the article I present the history of their creation. I go on to discuss the other lexemes which became the basis of many names belonging to different naming categories. The presence of etymons of interest to us in so many proper names during the Middle Ages allows us to draw the conclusion that pigs played an extremely important role in the lives of our ancestors.
The article directly and indirectly refers to anthropological and philosophical texts which strive to discover and present the gender factor as important in the light of the humanities. The author refers to “Literackie nie-nazywanie. Onomastykon polskiej prozy współczesnej” (Literary Not-naming. Onomasticon of the modern Polish prose) by Magdalena Graf and indicates the femininity factor as a relevant one also in onomastics.
The article is an attempt to reflect upon the way in which some terms coming from modern anthropology (local knowledge, thick description) can be used in studies regarding proper names in the cultural and social perspective. This anthropological way of thinking has been presented in Artur Rejter’s new book “Proper Names in (Con)texts of Culture”. The author of the article shows that studying culture through proper names must entail the widening of the variety of scientific methods and strategies and adding those used in social studies and humanities.
This article is an analysis, based on school textbooks, of the norms governing literacy practices in elementary education. These latter are treated as a kind of ritual: the symbolic behaviour impacting not so much the manner of the mental representation of reality as the corporeal-perceptive organization of experience. The aim of the article is to show that (1) contrary to classic literacy theory, writing is not always a tec because in many situational and institutional contexts writing practices are not instrumental but ritual practices, and (2) writing is not solely a tool of the intellect corresponding to a set manner of conceptualizing the world, language, and the self, but also a kind of social tool for the discipline of the body: the acquiring of a certain corporeal-perceptive disposition.