Search Results (13)

This paper critiques the discursive knowledge productions in V. S. Naipaul’s Among the Believers by challenging the authority of its purported firsthand observations of practising Muslims across four Muslim-majority societies. It argues the book’s discursive knowledge production is not grounded in empirical ethnography but is instead manufactured through specific narrative and rhetorical strategies. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (deterritorialization), Homi Bhabha (mimicry and ambivalence), and Paul de Man (prosopopoeia), the study demonstrates how Naipaul constructs a civilizational hierarchy by positioning himself against anthropological knowledge, trivializing or appropriating peripheral writers, selectively manipulating canonical and non-canonical texts, and orchestrating encounters with interlocutors. The analysis examines how these techniques create a narrative backdrop for critiquing Islamic institutions and practices, including Sharīʿah, religious pedagogy, and educational systems such as the pesantren. Through Orientalist framing, selective historicism, and rhetorical ventriloquism, Naipaul consistently represents the Islamic world as a site of civilizational deficiency in contrast to his ideal of a Western ‘universal civilization’. The paper further engages the writings of key intellectuals—Geertz, Illich, Foucault, Iqbal, and Maududi—to counter Naipaul’s civilizational diagnosis and to foreground alternative internal critiques of modernity, politics, and education. It concludes that Naipaul’s treatment of Islam participates in a longer discursive tradition shaped by Enlightenment-derived narratives of cultural hierarchy rather than neutral ethnographic inquiry. Full article

The commercialization of poly(butylene succinate-co-adipate) (PBSA), a biodegradable and potentially fully biobased random copolyester, is still ongoing. Due to its high relevance as mono material or as blend component in flexible film applications, a sound understanding of compounding, further processing and film properties is necessary. In this work, PBSA, poly (lactic acid) (PLA) and blends at three different compositions thereof were processed into flat films and blown films, respectively. Investigating the films with X-ray diffraction (XRD), multivariate confocal Raman microscopy (CRM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed the semicrystalline order as well as the blend morphology. While PBSA is semicrystalline, PLA remains amorphous after the processing step. As imaged by CRM, flat films exhibit lamellar-like domains formed during uniaxial stretching and rapid cooling, whereas blown films show no pronounced preferential orientation. Tensile tests in both the machine and transverse directions demonstrate the versatility of PBSA and its blends in spanning a wide range of mechanical strength and flexibility, covering and partly exceeding the stiffness and strength ranges typically reported for commodity polyolefins while exhibiting reduced ductility. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) provide further insights into the thermal properties of the pure and blend materials. Full article

This article examines how ethnographic methodology and literary theory can advance research engines and artificial intelligence systems beyond the reductive computational approaches that dominate contemporary AI development. Drawing on recent Stanford research revealing fundamental gaps in large language models’ ability to distinguish factual knowledge from belief, I argue that contemporary AI systems enact what I term “abducted semantics”—appropriating the inferential logic of human meaning-making while systematically attenuating the culturally embedded, phenomenologically grounded capacities that generate authentic understanding. Through close analysis of Clifford Geertz’s thick description, Charles Sanders Peirce’s triadic semiotics, and canonical literary works—Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude—I demonstrate that human understanding operates through complex semiotic processes irreducible to pattern-matching and statistical prediction. The article proposes concrete interventions to transform research engines from tools of semantic extraction into technologies that preserve and enhance interpretive richness, arguing that ethnographic and literary methodologies offer essential correctives to the epistemological impoverishment inherent in current AI architectures. Full article

This study provides insight into the causes of inferior long-term stability of nanocomposites based on organic layered silicates (OLSs) used for cable mantles. A hierarchy was established by analyzing bentonite products and their respective polyolefin nanocomposites. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), gas adsorption, energy-dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), and infrared spectroscopy (IR) provided evidence for the adsorption of stabilizers onto the filler surface and thus their reduction in activity, promoting polymer oxidation. This behavior corresponds to the specific surface area of the incorporated OLS. Therefore, it can be stated that gas adsorption and XRD are especially useful for the evaluation of long-term photostability. It was revealed that photocatalytically active iron is of secondary importance since iron-rich bentonites still formed the most stable nanocomposite. This also applies to the Hofmann elimination products of the modifying agent, where higher contents do not accelerate the degradation process. No elimination products could be traced within the composites. Due to the polymer-filler interface being essential for long-term photostability, prior analysis of the filler surface properties can be used to estimate the stability of the respective nanocomposite as a rationale for product selection in the early stages of development. The reasons identified in this work for decreasing the long-term photostability of OLS nanocomposites compared with unfilled formulations is an important step toward increasing their stability. Full article

The academic discussion of charisma takes two major voices as the point of departure: Max Weber and St. Paul. In both areas, sociology and religion, charisma is seen as a quality of persons. My argument is that entire cultures can be suffused by this force, and that social life, education, and modes of expression can be bearers and transmitters of charismatic force. I approach the argument conceptually, drawing on a remarkable passage in Goethe’s autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit. What Goethe calls “the demonic” is charisma conceived as a force that can penetrate, unpredictably, either natural phenomena or persons. To these I add institution, cultures, and structures of government. The charisma of larger structures, like personal charisma, has a life-cycle, charisma in its cultural structuring being as unstable as in its personal embodiment. The idea opens cultural transformations to analysis. Clifford Geertz has provided a model. The sea-changes that transformed western European culture from the twelfth to the thirteenth century show us the end of a life-cycle of charismatic culture, and the transition to intellectual or textual culture. Charisma moved out of the realm of the lived and expressed social forms and into art and artifice, rationalizing philosophy, theology, liturgy and other forms of Christian discourse (sermons). Three voices from the later thirteenth century observe this development closely—the loss of charisma as a political–social–cultural force—and lament the loss. Full article

The Wrong Question? is the response by an anthropologist to a question posed by a philosopher concerning the intelligibility of alien forms of thought. I argue that it is wrong to describe the problem of intelligibility as one of logic or rationality. Indeed, foreign practices (no less than our own) may become intelligible only once they are not evaluated according to abstract criteria of rationality. To ask of a given practice or form of life whether it is rational is an error of grammar (nonsense) in Wittgenstein’s sense. I describe how intelligibility emerges over the course of ethnographic fieldwork but also argue that we must work on our own concepts in order to make foreign ones intelligible. The response draws from both Gadamer and Wittgenstein as well as anthropologists Geertz, Evans-Pritchard, and Lévi-Strauss. Following Cora Diamond, I suggest further that the ethical and rational dimensions of understanding another are indissociable. Full article

This paper explores the question of how religious symbolism functions to provide a more meaningful or enriched experience of life. It examines a common and highly influential view, referred to here as the “source model”, for which this function requires the addition to experience of transcendent meanings generated by rituals and other specially adapted kinds of symbolic activity. Using Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution and Clifford Geertz’s “Religion as a Cultural System” as representative examples, I critique a key premise of the source model, namely that the meaning-making function of religious symbolism evolved in response to a universal experience of life as problematic. I argue that the experience of life as problematic is a product of symbolism, not a precondition. Moreover, with respect to this experience, I propose that symbolism functions not to add meaning but to enhance meanings that are vaguely discerned in everyday life. I close with the suggestion that an enhanced experience of life as problematic is itself a kind of enriched meaning and an important source of the affective power of religious practice. Full article

Surface water samples were collected using a low-tech aquatic debris instrument (LADI) at six nearshore locations on the north and northwestern coasts of Iceland to investigate the prevalence of mesoplastic (5–10 mm) and microplastic (0.3–5 mm) in the region. This sampling strategy involved sampling each transect three times for a total of 18 samples collected in order to assess uncertainties related to heterogeneous distribution of plastic in surface waters. Samples in all six nearshore locations contained meso- and/or microplastic, though concentrations were highly variable. Visual, physical, and FTIR analyses were performed on 71 suspected plastic particles collected, confirming and identifying 40 of those particles as one of six types of plastic: polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polyester, low-density polyethylene (LDPE), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Lines originating from fishing gear were the most prevalent types of plastic detected across the samples. This study is among the first to quantify and identify microplastic particles collected in Icelandic nearshore surface waters. Full article

It has been suggested by some, since the time of William Wrede, that biblical theology should align itself with the scientific study of religion. More recently, these appeals have been linked to a concern for the relevance of the discipline within modern universities and amid a secular, Western world. However, the category “religion” is itself complicated, and the implications of its use are not innocent. This article investigates the socially constructed nature of religion and the political discourse that shapes it in order to assess how the appropriation of this constructed category pertains to the relevance of New Testament theology as a discipline in particular, as well as how this category has already shaped New Testament studies more generally. I suggest that, rather than aiding biblical theology’s relevance, this category obscures a larger discourse that has sought to order social and political space in the modern Western world and beyond and that relevance should be sought elsewhere, including in the dialogue on alternative conceptual constructs that center those stories and persons that have been traditionally marginalized. Full article

There is a divergence between religion and its modes of application, or religion and religiosity. This essay provides a critical analysis of Clifford Geertz’s book Islam Observed and tries to attempt the question of whether Islam is better understood exclusively as a set of socially conditioned symbols and practices. However, an anthropological interpretation solely based on symbols leaves much to be desired as it lends itself to a kind of radical relativism in which generalizable conclusions become impossible. The theological approach tends to bypass the role sociopolitical contexts play in sustaining, negotiating, and modifying religious doctrines. Islam has been studied from the perspectives of these two mutually exclusive methodologies. This study attempts to arrive at an interdisciplinary analysis in which theology and anthropology cooperate to formulate a comprehensive understanding of Islam as a social system sustained by specific practices and as a theological structure communicated through a dialogue between abstract doctrines and mundane rituals. Full article

3′,5′-Cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) is a ubiquitous second messenger which plays critical roles in cardiac function and disease. In adult mouse ventricular myocytes (AMVMs), several distinct functionally relevant microdomains with tightly compartmentalized cAMP signaling have been described. At least two types of microdomains reside in AMVM plasma membrane which are associated with caveolin-rich raft and non-raft sarcolemma, each with distinct cAMP dynamics and their differential regulation by receptors and cAMP degrading enzymes phosphodiesterases (PDEs). However, it is still unclear how cardiac disease such as hypertrophy leading to heart failure affects cAMP signals specifically in the non-raft membrane microdomains. To answer this question, we generated a novel transgenic mouse line expressing a highly sensitive Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based biosensor E1-CAAX targeted to non-lipid raft membrane microdomains of AMVMs and subjected these mice to pressure overload induced cardiac hypertrophy. We could detect specific changes in PDE3-dependent compartmentation of β-adrenergic receptor induced cAMP in non-raft membrane microdomains which were clearly different from those occurring in caveolin-rich sarcolemma. This indicates differential regulation and distinct responses of these membrane microdomains to cardiac remodeling. Full article

While the work of the Italian historian of religion, Ernesto de Martino (1908–1965), has frequently been compared to that of Mircea Eliade, Claude Lévi-Strauss, or Clifford Geertz, he has hardly received any attention in anglophone scholarship to date. Taking an all-but-forgotten controversy between de Martino and Eliade at a conference on parapsychology in France in 1956 as its starting point, the article fills part of this lacuna by first reconstructing the philosophical universe underlying the Italian thinker’s program of study. In the process, it introduces the reader to three Weimar scientists, who have never before been inserted within the canon of the study of religion, namely the parapsychologist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862–1929), the anthropologist Leo Frobenius (1873–1938), and the biologist and philosopher Hans Driesch (1867–1941). Contextualizing these thinkers within their historical context, it becomes clear that they were part of a larger scientific crisis that affected the Western world during the first half of the twentieth century. Finally, the article uncovers surprising affinities, particularly the fact that the Romanian thinker had his very own parapsychological phase during his youth. Full article

The aim of this essay is to introduce, contextualize, and provide rationale for texts published in the Humanities special issue, Histories of Ethos: World Perspectives on Rhetoric. It surveys theories of ethos and selfhood that have evolved since the mid-twentieth century, in order to identify trends in discourse of the new millennium. It outlines the dominant theories—existentialist, neo-Aristotelian, social-constructionist, and poststructuralist—while summarizing major theorists of language and culture (Archer, Bourdieu, Foucault, Geertz, Giddens, Gusdorf, Heidegger). It argues for a perspectivist/dialectical approach, given that no one theory comprehends the rich diversity of living discourse. While outlining the “current state of theory,” this essay also seeks to predict, and promote, discursive practices that will carry ethos into a hopeful future. (We seek, not simply to study ethos, but to do ethos.) With respect to twenty-first century praxis, this introduction aims at the following: to acknowledge the expressive core of discourse spoken or written, in ways that reaffirm and restore an epideictic function to ethos/rhetoric; to demonstrate the positionality of discourse, whereby speakers and writers “out themselves” ethotically (that is, responsively and responsibly); to explore ethos as a mode of cultural and embodied personal narrative; to encourage an ethotic “scholarship of the personal,” expressive of one’s identification/participation with/in the subject of research; to argue on behalf of an iatrological ethos/rhetoric based in empathy, care, healing (of the past) and liberation/empowerment (toward the future); to foster interdisciplinarity in the study/exploration/performance of ethos, establishing a conversation among scholars across the humanities; and to promote new versions and hybridizations of ethos/rhetoric. Each of the essays gathered in the abovementioned special issue achieves one or more of these aims. Most are “cultural histories” told within the culture being surveyed: while they invite criticism as scholarship, they ask readers to serve as witnesses to their stories. Most of the authors are themselves “positioned” in ways that turn their texts into “outings” or performances of gender, ethnicity, “race,” or ability. And most affirm the expressive, epideictic function of ethos/rhetoric: that is, they aim to display, affirm, and celebrate those “markers of identity/difference” that distinguish, even as they humanize, each individual and cultural storytelling. These assertions and assumptions lead us to declare that Histories of Ethos, as a collection, presents a whole greater than its essay-parts. We conceive it, finally, as a conversation among theories, histories, analyses, praxes, and performances. Some of this, we know, goes against the grain of modern (Western) scholarship, which privileges analysis over narrative and judges texts against its own logocentric commitments. By means of this introduction and collection, we invite our colleagues in, across, and beyond the academy “to see differently.” Should we fall short, we will at least have affirmed that some of us “see the world and self”—and talk about the world and self—through different lenses and within different cultural vocabularies and positions. Full article