1,720,968 research outputs found
Possessed by a slave, not slavery
Get PDFUIDB/04038/2020 UIDP/04038/2020 DL 57/2016/CP1349/CT0008The present paper is divided into three large steps around the themes of spirit possession and the historical imagination of slavery in Cuba. These three steps reflect both ethnographic dimensions of these themes and broader theoretical approaches towards them. The last step, ‘apomimesis’, is the one proposed by the author, not by way of replacement but displacement. The first step, ‘formulaic’ historical imagination, covers the ground of a direct expression of slavery as historical trauma through spirit possession. The second step, ‘mimesis’, displaces the first by adding into it the possibility of reversal, of empowerment, the slave becoming an antislave. The third creates another simultaneous condition. Through the negative dialectics of apomimesis the nonslave emerges.publishersversionpublishe
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
the exchange of ‘affinity’ in Cuba
No full textUID/ANT/04038/2013
SFRH/BPD/76656/201In Cuba one might encounter a lively exchange occurring between the living and the dead (los muertos), one which is often described in terms of ‘affinity’. This involves a reciprocity among the biographies of the former, the past (biographies) and present condition (‘necrography’) of the latter, who are not in the least limited to ancestors or previously intimate to the living persons. The intensification of such exchange takes place within a dynamic and multiple field of identifications and differentiations, wherein the dead slowly become dead in a parallel process of un-becoming living, through becoming ‘affinity’ muertos of their living counterparts. This could be said to be the point of what is going on, but things, when they get so radically mobilised through exchange, might also go beyond the point of conclusion.publishersversionpublishe
The Island of Crossed Destinies : human and other-than-human perspectives in Afro-Cuban divination
Get PDFThis thesis focuses on the significance and articulation of divinatory practices in
Cuba a place where a number of different religious traditions (mainly of African
and European origins) have come to coexist. Reflecting on the particularities of my
ethnography, I concentrate on three such traditions: Ocha/Ifá, Palo Monte and
Espiritismo. However, rather than engaging with them as different ‘traditions’ or
assuming their syncretic character, I attempt to explore the way in which they
constitute distinct but related perspectives on human destiny or, as my friends and
informants put it, on people’s ‘path’ (camino) perspectives, that is, which
continuously constitute and recalibrate each other.
Echoing the work of authors such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, I try to
illustrate the nature of these perspectives by bringing to the fore the ways in which
different divinatory practices instantiate and embody the efficacy or ‘point of view’
of different ‘other-than-human’ beings be they deities or the dead. Thus, while in
the case of Ocha/Ifá and its oracles, I concentrate on the relation between ‘humans’
and the orichas (deities), my discussion of divinatory practices within Palo Monte
and Espiritismo places the emphasis on the relation between ‘humans’ and various
kinds of the dead (muertos).
Treating these relations as an exchange of perspectives between ‘humans’
and ‘other-than-human’ entities, I argue for the need to focus on ‘ontology’ and the
indigenous understanding of these entities’ ‘nature’ in order to avoid both
‘reductionist’ and ‘constructivist’ renderings of divination; in other words, to avoid
the theoretical limits of ‘syncretic’ or ‘purist’ readings of the (Afro-)Cuban spirit
world and its efficacy. This emphasis on ‘ontology’ leads me to construe divination
as ‘perspectivism’ and to treat it as both a theoretical strategy and an ethnographic
challenge
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