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An Inquiry into Social Aspects of Coevolution of Objects and Practices from Prayer Beads to Digital Counters
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An Inquiry Into Social Aspects of Objects: Evolution of Prayer Beads Into Digital Counters
No full textThis paper reviews the study which focused on the use of prayer beads. Prayer beads, which are the objects used for counting prayers, are evolving into digital counters, during the last decade in Turkey. Focusing on this evolution, the current study aims to explain social and cultural aspects of using a product. For this purpose, first a brief theoretical framework on material culture of consumption and everyday life is provided within the specificity of how Islam informs these in Turkish context. A brief history of prayer beads is given based on the field study. The field study is composed of semi-structured interviews with tarika members and regular attendants of a mosque, and observations in these fields which elaborates on the meaning of objects and daily practices, the co-evolution of objects and practices, how social, cultural, and religious values inform the use and appropriation of objects
Materials as temporally specific phenomena: Specialization and compromise in bioplastics production
Get PDFThis article concerns itself with the materials' - matter, substance - of material culture. More specifically, it explores the making of bioplastics, by taking account of bioplastics' relationships with the products into which they are made. The author focuses on the processes of bioplastics' industrial production and manufacturing into bioplastic products, in and through which bioplastics come to be as they are in our daily lives, and as places where material-product relationships are formed. Her analysis of these processes shows that making of bioplastics is a specialization towards products by achieving compromises among the capacity of materials, conventions about the particular product and its production route, and various interests of the stakeholders involved. As such, she conceptualizes materials as temporally specific phenomena and aims to show that attending to material-product relationships points out new sets of relationships in the make-up of materiality and opens up new pathways of enquiry for material culture studies
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
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