The Logic Of Writing And The Organization Of Society

Author is particularly concerned with ancient Near East and contemporary West Africa.

Orientalism and Religion offers us a timely discussion of the implications of contemporary post-colonial theory for the study of religion. Richard King examines the way in which notions such as mysticism, religion, Hinduism and Buddhism are taken for granted. He shows us how religion needs to be reinterpreted along the lines of cultural studies. Drawing on a variety of post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers, such as Foucault, Gadamer, Said, and Spivak, King provides us with a challenging series of reflections on the nature of Religious Studies and Indology.

Inspired by the seminal work of Jack Goody, a historical anthropologist specializing in the study of social structure and change, Technology, Literacy, and the Evolution of Society gathers diverse perspectives of 20 distinguished historians, anthropologists, psychologists, and educators to address the role of technologies in social stability and change in traditional and modern societies. In this interdisciplinary text, scholars examine the ways in which local languages and cultural traditions, modes of production and communication, patterns of local knowledge and authority affect how people and cultures resist or accommodate demands for such change. With work from acclaimed contributors, this pioneering volume is the first analysis of the influence of Jack Goody. It provides a thorough look at the relations between societies of different practices, customs, and values, determining the mechanisms behind sociocultural stability and change. Technology, Literacy, and the Evolution of Society is intended for graduate students and academics in history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and education, as well as academics and all others interested in pursuing the directions and implications of the work and influence of Jack Goody.

The volume brings together essays that explore the topic of memory and remembrance in the ancient world, taking into account the Hebrew Bible, ancient Judaism, the classical world, the New Testament and Early Christianity . The essays, which focus on a wide range of sources from antiquity, open up new questions about the social and religious function of memory. As a collection, they demonstrate how much social memory theory can contribute to the understanding of the ways ancient texts were, on the one hand, shaped by conventions of memory and, on the other hand, participated in and contributed to evolving strategies for reading 'the past'.Contributors:Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Stephen C. Barton, Benjamin G. Wold, Joachim Schaper, Erhard Blum, Hermann Lichtenberger, William Horbury, John M.G. Barclay, Doron Mendels, Anthony Le Donne, James D.G. Dunn, Martin Hengel, Ulrike Mittmann-Richert, Anna Maria Schwemer, Hans-Joachim Eckstein, Markus Bockmuehl

Brings together the work of leading international accounting academics and social scientists. Explores a range of intellectual traditions in accounting research, and their implications for the social sciences more widely.

In 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon acquired a painting called The Flight into Egypt which was attributed to the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Thought to have been painted in 1657, the painting had gone missing for more than three centuries. Several versions were rediscovered in the 1980s and one was passed from hand to hand, from a family who had no idea of its value to gallery owners and eventually to the museum. A painting that had been sold as a decorative object in 1986 for around 12,000 euros was acquired two decades later by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for 17 million euros. What does this remarkable story tell us about the nature of art and the way that it is valued? How is it that what seemed to be just an ordinary canvas could be transformed into a masterpiece, that a decorative object could become a national treasure? This is a story permeated by social magic the social alchemy that transforms lead into gold, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the profane into the sacred. Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece. Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price. He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvass to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes – with its distinctive institutions and experts – that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world. For the social magic that can transform a painting from a simple copy into a masterpiece is similar to the social magic that is present throughout our societies, in economics and politics as much as art and religion, a magic that results from the spell cast by power on those who tacitly recognize its authority. By following the trail of a single work of art, Lahire interrogates the foundations on which our perceptions of value and our belief in institutions rest and exposes the forms of domination which lie hidden behind our admiration of works of art.

The importance of records in modern society is explored by re-examining some of the historical antecedents for critical functions in the modern records professions. The motivation for writing this book comes from a conviction of the importance of records and records professionals in organizations and society, as well as the need to possess a stronger sense of the events, trends, people, debates, and controversies producing the modern records professions. Archivists and records managers have tended to discount the importance of their historical antecedents, ignoring the fact that many of the current debates and issues before the profession are not new but embedded in the historical evolution of the records professions. Re-examining some of the historical origins helps records professionals to re-examine their mission to manage records for the benefit of organizations and of all of society. Such re-evaluation also helps to remind records professionals and others that the concerns generated by new electronic recordkeeping technologies are not new at all but built deep within the fabric of traditional records creation and administration.