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This thesis discusses the value and meanings of cultural artifacts from the Akan material culture known as gold weight. Before colonial contact, the gold weights were essential objects in the everyday lives of the Ashanti, also known as the Akan people of Ghana, West Africa. The weights were called abrammuo in the Akan language, made of brass alloy mounted with geometrical motifs and figurative symbols. The abrammuo, as a set of miniature weights, were kept in the futuo, a leather bag that also contains additional apparatus such as brass spoons, scales, brushes, feathers, gold pans, etc. According to Garrard (1980), "as long as gold dust remained a currency in Akan society, gold weights has been significant for weighing gold at the market or during social, and political arrangements such as birth, rites of passage, deaths, and funerals, during marriage or for state fines and toll purposes" (Garrard 1980,171-176). In other contexts, the gold weights played the role of an agent of social, economic and political stability among the Akan and within the gold trade system network. With the fall of the Ashanti kingdom to British colonialism, a significant number of weights lost their primary functions and found their way into a net of western art collectors, private art galleries, and museum collections. I argue that the value (s) embedded in the weights in traditional Ashanti culture were traded for a western canon of artistic and aesthetic values. My inquiry focuses on the changing meaning and significance of the gold weights through western museum representation and exhibition.Keywords: colonialism, materialism, cultural artifacts, material culture, Akan, gold trade, gold weights and value theory, museum studies

L'archéologie comme instrument de politique et de culture. le cas du duché de parme et Plaisance à l'époque des Bourbons.

L'archéologie comme instrument de politique et de culture. le cas du duché de parme et Plaisance à l'époque des Bourbons.

El artículo estudia las reacciones y debates sobre la «cuestión juvenil» en el seno de Vie Nuove, un semanario ligado al Partido Comunista Italiano durante los años '60s. Considera que las reacciones de los editores cambiaron en el lapso de pocos años. Mientras que en un principio la continuidad generacional era sinónimo de virtud política, posteriormente se comenzó a discutir acerca del valor de actitudes rupturistas por parte de los jóvenes. El artículo enfatiza la heterogeneidad de las posiciones al interior de este grupo de comunistas italianos, y su interés pero también dificultad para entender las nuevas culturas juveniles. ; The article studies the responses to the «youth question» within Vie Nuove, a weekly linked to the Italian Communist Party during the 1960s. It shows that the editors' reactions changed within a short period of time. While during the first years the journal focused on generational continuity as synonym of political virtue, later on it started to discuss about the merits of more iconoclastic attitudes by young people. The article stresses the heterogeneity of positions within this group of Italian communists, and their interest, and difficulty, to understand the new youth cultures. ; Fil: Pasqualini, Mauro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones Sociales. Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social. Centro de Investigaciones Sociales; Argentina

"Approaches to the Study of Intercultural Transfer" presents a collection of compelling case studies in the areas of social reform, museums, philanthropy, football, nonviolent resistance and holiday rituals such as Christmas that demonstrate key mechanisms of intercultural transfers. Each chapter provides the application of the intercultural transfer studies paradigm to a specific and distinct historical phenomenon. These chapters not only illustrate the presence or even the depth and frequency of intercultural transfer, but they also reveal specific aspects of the intercultural transfer of phenomena, the role of agents of intercultural transfer and the transformations of ideas transferred between cultures thereby contributing to our understanding of the mechanisms of intercultural transfers.

Cultural sociology - or the sociology of culture - has grown from a minority interest in the 1970s to become one of the largest and most vibrant areas within sociology globally. In The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Sociology, a global range of experts explore the theory, methodology and innovations that make up this ever-expanding field. The Handbook's 40 original chapters have been organized into five thematic sections: Theoretical Paradigms Major Methodological Perspectives Domains of Inquiry Cultural Sociology in Contexts Cultural Sociology and Other Analytical Approaches Both comprehensive and current, The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Sociology will be an essential reference tool for both advanced students and scholars across sociology, cultural studies and media studies. -- Provided by publisher

Introduction: The linguist's view of television / Kristy Beers Fägersten -- Watching the detective: Sherlock and spoken television discourse / Kay Richardson -- Dealers and discourse: sociolinguistic variation in The wire / Joe Trotta -- "Back in St. Olaf ... ": regional variation in The Golden Girls / Jean Ann -- SaMANtha: language and gender in Sex and the city / Kristy Beers Fägersten and Hanna Sveen -- The pragmatics explication: making sense of nerds in The big bang theory / Matthias Eitelmann and Ulrike Stange -- Cunning linguistics: the semantics of word play in South Park / Michael Percillier -- Word formation in HIMYM / Jessie Sams -- What's the deal with morphemes? doing morphology with Seinfeld / Kristy Beers Fägersten -- Channel surfing: tuning into the sounds of English / Kristy Beers Fägersten -- Syntax in Seattle / Güliat Aygen -- I'm learneding! first language acquisition in The Simpsons / Kristy Beers Fägersten -- Lost and language found / Kristy Beers Fägersten and Ilaria Fiorentini -- The one based on 738,032 words: language use in the Friends-corpus / Paulo Quaglio -- Appendix A: WMatrix grammatical tags -- Appendix B: WMatrix semantic tags -- Glossary -- Contributors

Biographical note: Gesine Müller (PD Dr.) lehrt Romanistik an der Universität Potsdam und leitet dort die Nachwuchsforschergruppe »Transkoloniale Karibik« (DFG). Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Karibikforschung, lateinamerikanische Gegenwartsliteraturen sowie Transferforschung. Natascha Ueckmann (PD Dr.) lehrt Romanistik an der Universität Bremen. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Karibik- und Diasporaforschung, Postkoloniale Literatur- und Kulturtheorien, Literatur und Film, Gender Studies sowie Reiseliteratur. Sie ist eine der Sprecherinnen des Instituts für Postkoloniale und Transkulturelle Studien (INPUTS) der Universität Bremen.

Geld ist heute ein sachlich, zeitlich und sozial ubiquitäres Phänomen. Es fällt schwer – trotz sich verstetigender Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrisen in der jüngeren Vergangenheit –, sich Geld wegzudenken oder sich auch nur ein anderes Geld(-system) zu denken. Diese Ubiquität steht im Kontrast zu einer hochgradig selektiven wissenschaftlichen Behandlung, die es verunmöglicht, den kultur-evolutionären Stellenwert des Geldes adäquat abzuschätzen. Die neoklassische Ökonomik ist durch eine (seit Adam Smith kolportierte) tauschtheoretische Engführung von Geld limitiert. Geld gilt dort sowohl strukturell als auch verteilungspolitisch weithin als neutral, also nicht als evolutionärer Mechanismus aus eigenem Recht. Die Neue Wirtschaftssoziologie hat zwar zu Recht den Modellplatonismus der Mainstream-Ökonomik kritisiert und auf die soziale Einbettung der Wirtschaft hingewiesen. Sie hat es in diesem Zuge aber nicht zu einer eigenständigen Geldtheorie gebracht. Das Buch präsentiert Überlegungen zu einer interdisziplinär informierten soziologischen Geldtheorie in kultur-evolutionärer Absicht. In zwei historischen Studien (zu Mesopotamien ab dem vierten Jahrtausend v.u.Z. sowie zum Griechenland des ersten Jahrtausends v.u.Z.) werden die koevolutionären Prozesse von Geldentwicklung, Schriftentwicklung und Rationalitätsentwicklung detailliert rekonstruiert. Einer solchen Forschungsperspektive gelingt es, die in der Soziologie etablierte problematische Dichotomie von Einbettungs- und Ausdifferenzierungsparadigmen durch eine integrative Perspektive zu überwinden und aufzuheben. Der Autor PD Dr. Hanno Pahl arbeitet am Lehrstuhl für Medienkulturwissenschaft der Universität Bonn.

The Americas offer a peculiar stage for translocal methodologies. If we agree that the products of Chinese American culture—which, in the course of the last 170 years of interaction, has evolved into a unique, American, phenomenon—can not be labeled as "Made in China," then contemporary Chinese medicine in the Americas cannot legitimately be perceived solely as an 'import.' Beyond doubt, phenomena such as the emergence of the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine at the California Institute of Integral Studies testify to the fact that the once 'exotic' forms of therapy are now being granted a status parallel to those developed throughout the history of Western medicine. Increasingly, as translocal, they are becoming recognized as non-foreign elements of the glocal culture. Similarly, the exploration of the physical world, which, to an experienced dancer of Bharatanatyam, Odissi, or any other of the dominant forms of the classical Indian dance is an obvious function of his or her own experience of the 'body-in-the-world,' has, translocally, opened up an altogether new space of profound understanding of ourselves in our environment. It is not about the fashionable, politically correct, 'openness to other cultures'; it is about the opening up to a parallel meditative experience of the "bodymind," which neither excludes nor isolates the sphere of emotions from the reality of what-is-being-experienced. Or, to express it in terms more easily comprehensible to a Western reader, dance may prove to be a methodology (not just a method) serving the purpose of a more profound understanding of the complexity and unity of the universe, and a language to express this understanding. Making the most of available traditions might produce much greater benefits than remaining locked within just one, Western, Anglonormative, library of concepts. In the context of the ongoing debate on transnational American Studies, the article offers an insight into how the worldwide studies of the Americas and translocality intersect, and how such a perspective may contribute to the multifaceted process of the decolonization, understood both literally and intellectually.

Intro -- Body Part Terms in Conceptualization and Language Usage -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Previous studies on embodiment and body part terms -- 2. An overview of the volume -- References -- Part 1. General and Contrastive Studies -- Linguistic embodiment in linguistic experience: A corpus-based study -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Language and thought in metaphor studies -- 3. A corpus-based study of Chinese body-part terms for "face" and "heart" -- 3.1 The Chinese "face" -- 3.2 The Chinese "heart" -- 4. Conclusion -- References -- Polysemic chains, body parts and embodiment -- 1. Perceptual and action-based grounding of cognition -- 2. Intralingual and interlingual polysemic displacement and meaning reconceptualization -- 3. Metonymy -- 4. Metonymic grammaticalization displacement chains -- 5. Metaphoricity - polysemous extensions into other domains -- 5.1. Bi-directionality of body part names polysemies -- 5.1. Metaphtonymy -- 5.2. Complex blended portmanteau forms -- 6. Interlinguistic conceptual displacement -- 7. Cultural conceptualizations and re-conceptualizations -- 8. Typology of polysemic embodied extension basis -- 9. Body schema and the Embodiment Hypothesis -- References -- Internet sources -- Body-part terms as a linguistic topic and the relevance of body-parts as tools -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Origins and structures of simplex body-part terms -- 2.1. 'Borrowed, derived and metaphorical terms for body-parts' -- 2.2. 'Compound body-part terms' -- 2.3. 'Derivations denoting body-parts' -- 3. Body-parts of objects -- 4. Body-parts with tool-functions -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- Towards a semantic lexicon of body part terms -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Embodied cognition and linguistic embodiment.

"The Power of the In-Between: Intermediality as a Tool for Aesthetic Analysis and Critical Reflection gathers fourteen individual case studies where intermedial issues—issues concerning that which takes place in between media—are explored in relation to a range of different cultural objects and contexts, different methodological approaches, and different disciplinary perspectives. The cases investigate the intermediality of such manifold objects and phenomena as contemporary installation art, twentieth-century geography books, renaissance sculpture, media theory, and public architecture of the 1970s. They also bring together scholars from the disciplines of art history, comparative literature, theatre studies, musicology, and the history of ideas.
Starting out from an inclusive understanding of intermediality as "relations between media conventionally perceived as different," each author specifies and investigates "intermediality" in their own particular case; that is, each examines how it is inflected by particular objects, methods, and research questions. "Intermediality" thus serves both as a concept employed to cover an inclusive range of cultural objects, cultural contexts, methodological approaches, and so on, and as a concept to be modelled out by the particular cases it is brought to bear on. Rather than merely applying a predefined concept, the objectives are experimental. The authors explore the concept of intermediality as a malleable tool of research.
This volume further makes a point of transgressing the divide between media history and semiotically and/or aesthetically oriented intermedial studies. The former concerns the specificity of media technologies and media interrelations in socially, politically, and epistemologically defined space and time, and the latter targets formal considerations of media objects and its various meaning-making elements. These two conventionally separated fields of research are integrated in order to produce a richer understanding of the analytical and historical, as well as the aesthetic and technological, conditions and possibilities of intermedial phenomena.
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