Meaning in Culture

Meaning in Culture PDF Author: F. Allan Hanson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136540881
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Get Book

Book Description
Meaning in Culture discusses the question of whether 'culture' refers to some superorganic entity that exists in its own right, or is only convenient short-hand for the shared beliefs and behaviour of human individuals. It also investigates the problem of relativism and explores the question of whether anthropology and the other social sciences are really scientific. First published in 1975.

Meaning in Culture

Meaning in Culture PDF Author: F. Allan Hanson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136540881
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Get Book

Book Description
Meaning in Culture discusses the question of whether 'culture' refers to some superorganic entity that exists in its own right, or is only convenient short-hand for the shared beliefs and behaviour of human individuals. It also investigates the problem of relativism and explores the question of whether anthropology and the other social sciences are really scientific. First published in 1975.

The Meaning of Culture

The Meaning of Culture PDF Author: John Cowper Powys
Publisher: Pomona Press
ISBN: 1443734810
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book

Book Description
'Mr. Powys is to be congratulated on having written a book of the kind that most needs writing and most deserves to be read...Here in a dozen chapters of eloquent and glowing prose, Mr. Powys describes for every reader that citadel which is himself, and explains to him how it maybe strengthened and upheld and on what terms it is most worth upholding.. The virtue of his book is that it is freshly and clearly focussed to meet the present situation to encourage and establish developing experience in growing minds' Manchester Guardian

Culture as a System

Culture as a System PDF Author: David B. Kronenfeld
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351972715
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book

Book Description
A particular culture is associated with a particular community, and thus has a social dimension. But how does culture operate and how is it to be defined? Is it to be taken as the behavioral repertoire of members of that community, as the products of their behavior, or as the shared mental content that produces the behavior? Is it to be viewed as a coherent whole or only a collection of disparate parts? Culture is shared, but how totally? How is culture learned and maintained over time, and how does it change? In Meaning and Significance in Human Engagement, Kronenfeld adopts a cognitive approach to culture to offer answers to these questions. Combining insights from cognitive psychology and linguistic anthropology with research on collective knowledge systems, he offers an understanding of culture as a phenomenon produced and shaped by a combination of conditions, constraints and logic. Engagingly written, it is essential reading for scholars and graduate students of cognitive anthropology, linguistic anthropology, sociology of culture, philosophy, and computational cognitive science.

Meaning and Method

Meaning and Method PDF Author: Isaac Reed
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317256239
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book

Book Description
Culture is increasingly important to American social science, but in what way? This book addresses the core issues of the sociology of culture-questions about the social role of meaning, along with those about the methods sociologists use to study culture and society-in a manner that makes clear their relevance to sociology as a whole. Part I consists of essays by leading cultural sociologists on how the turn to culture has changed the sociological study of organizations, economic action, and television, and concludes with Georgina Born's methodological statement on the sociology of art and cultural production. Part II contains a highly original, and at times heated, debate between Richard Biernacki and John H. Evans on the appropriateness of abstract and quantifiable coding schemes for the sociological study of culture. Ranging from the philosophy of science to the concrete, practical problems of interpreting masses of cultural data, the debate raises the controversy over the interpretation of culture and the explanation of social action to a new level of sophistication.

A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning

A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning PDF Author: Claudia Strauss
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521595414
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book

Book Description
Reviews a range of current psychological theories of cultural meaning.

Acts of Meaning

Acts of Meaning PDF Author: Jerome Bruner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674253051
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
Jerome Bruner argues that the cognitive revolution, with its current fixation on mind as “information processor,” has led psychology away from the deeper objective of understanding mind as a creator of meanings. Only by breaking out of the limitations imposed by a computational model of mind can we grasp the special interaction through which mind both constitutes and is constituted by culture.

Meaning, Life and Culture

Meaning, Life and Culture PDF Author: Helen Bromhead
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1760463930
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 534

Get Book

Book Description
This book is dedicated to Anna Wierzbicka, one of the most influential and innovative linguists of her generation. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies, as well as her home base of linguistics. She is best known for the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to meaning—a versatile tool for exploring ‘big questions’ concerning the diversity and universals of people’s experience in the world. In this volume, Anna Wierzbicka’s former students, old and current colleagues, ‘kindred spirits’ and ‘sparring partners’ engage with her ideas and diverse body of work. These authors cover topics from the grammar of action verbs to cross-cultural pragmatics, and over 30 languages from around the world are represented. The chapters in Part 1 focus on the NSM approach and cover four themes: lexico-grammatical semantics, cultural keywords, semantics of nouns, and emotion. In Part 2, the contributors connect with a meaning-based approach from their own intellectual perspectives, including syntax, anthropology, cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics. The deep humanistic perspective, wide-ranging themes and interdisciplinary nature of Wierzbicka’s research are reflected in the contributions. The common thread running through all chapters is the primacy of meaning to the understanding of language and culture.

Everyday Culture

Everyday Culture PDF Author: David Trend
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317260287
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book

Book Description
Everyday Culture examines the confluence of cultural and material possibility--the bringing together of thought and action in daily life. David Trend argues that an informed and invigorated citizenry can help reverse patterns of dehumanization and social control. The impetus for Everyday Culture can be described in the observation by Raymond Williams that the "culture is ordinary," and that the fabric of meanings that inform and organize everyday life often go undervalued and unexamined. Everyday Culture shares with thinkers like Williams the conviction that it is precisely the ordinariness of culture that makes it extraordinarily important. The ubiquity of everyday culture means that it affects all aspects of contemporary economic, social, and political life.

Meaning in Action

Meaning in Action PDF Author: Rein Raud
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509511288
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
In this important new book Rein Raud develops an original theory of culture understood as a loose and internally contradictory system of texts and practices that are shared by intermittent groups of people and used by them to make sense of their life-worlds. This theory views culture simultaneously in two ways: as a world of texts, tangible and shareable products of signifying acts, and as a space of practices, repeatable activities that produce, disseminate and interpret these clusters of meaning. Both approaches are developed into corresponding models of culture which, used together, are able to provide a rich understanding of any meaning in action. In developing this innovative theory, Raud draws on a wide range of disciplines, from anthropology, sociology and cultural studies to semiotics and philosophy. The theory is illustrated throughout with examples drawn from both 'high' and popular culture, and from Western and Asian traditions, dealing with both contemporary and historical topics. The book concludes with two case studies from very different contexts – one dealing with Italian poetry in the 13th century, the other dealing with the art scene in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. This timely and original work makes a major new contribution to the theory of culture and will be welcomed by students and scholars throughout the social sciences and humanities.

Subjective Meaning and Culture

Subjective Meaning and Culture PDF Author: Lorand B. Szalay
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040025528
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 181

Get Book

Book Description
Originally published in 1978, Subjective Meaning and Culture presents a framework and a method for the comparative study of the perceptions, attitudes, and cultural frames of reference shared by groups of people. The framework is the notion of subjective meaning, and the method is that of word associations. The authors present a detailed account of some particular cross-cultural and intergroup comparisons using the word-association technique described in this volume. However, rather than emphasize comparisons they focus on the technique itself as a method in the investigation of subjective meaning and with it subjective culture. Their purpose was to introduce a research capability which offered new kinds of information and made critical aspects of subjective meaning accessible to empirical investigation. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.