This paper will discuss the relation between the concepts of nature and culture and their intricate interdependency, focusing on modernity. Moreover, it will analyze the dichotomy that has historically emerged and its...This paper will discuss the relation between the concepts of nature and culture and their intricate interdependency, focusing on modernity. Moreover, it will analyze the dichotomy that has historically emerged and its implications. Human beings have had different conceptions about what is natural and what is non-natural throughout their history. Before Modernity we did not conceive nature as being a different ontological reality, we did not perceive it as being separated from us. After modernity everything changed, and we began to see nature as a mere object. Nature became, then, a representation, like a painting on a wall. Our contemporary world vision, Weltanschauung, was formed mainly during the 16th and 17th centuries. There was, at that time, a considerable change in the way we perceived and described the world. This new mentality and this new form of representing the cosmos provided the basis for our new way of thinking. They were the substrate upon which our modern paradigm was erected. The world's conversion in an image only became a reality thanks to technology. But this change happened only because of the paradigm shift originated in the 17th century. Technique always has been a way to articulate how (and what) we think. With the Greek, technique (technd) was, at first, an extension of the physis. Thus, the technique was a way of being instead of a way of thinking. After the paradigm shift in the 17th century (a metaphysical change, in the very way we connected to the world), the human being left his former place. Perhaps would be even better if we talked about nature and culture as being as a hybrid. What, at the source, was natural, through the flows of production and consumption, undergoes transformations and becomes something that is not natural anymore but, at the same time, not completely artificial either. Our world, once divided between the social and the natural, becomes a space where a constant process, a continuous flow, is constantly happening. From that dichotomy between something good and something bad arises a dialectic, in which we no longer can see any division whatsoever.展开更多
In megacities, the phenomenon of the highrise buildings which add fashion elements into the body and facades seems as big sculptures. Architect composed their work by applying the cross-pollination of design method. T...In megacities, the phenomenon of the highrise buildings which add fashion elements into the body and facades seems as big sculptures. Architect composed their work by applying the cross-pollination of design method. They adopted the various elements to enrich their building's facade in order to look different. On the other hand, the traditional architecture expressed the tribe civilization by placing their proud artifacts into the building's facade. The purpose of this study is to find a new theory of architecture during their process of becoming of the architecture's form. The study applied a phenomenological investigation method of several highrise building's facade at Jakarta and several districts of Singapore, Brisbane and Melbourne. The study result is a new theory named "the fashion-architecture" is a building composed by adopting the cross-pollination of design method. To enrich the building's facade, architect adopted anything including the fashion's design elements: accessories, millineries, and cosmetics also reflected by the traditional architecture. Their fashion-architecture works are reflecting the tribe civilization into a contemporary architecture design.展开更多
This paper looks for deepening the connections among peace, intercultural dialogue, and communalism in the light of Ubuntu, an ethical concept that emphasizes the alliances constructed between people and the relations...This paper looks for deepening the connections among peace, intercultural dialogue, and communalism in the light of Ubuntu, an ethical concept that emphasizes the alliances constructed between people and the relations established by them, and is seen as fundamental to the African thought of the groups that adopt Bantu languages. It develops an original exercise in diatopical hermeneutics--a methodology proposed by Raimon Panikkar, taking as the main goal to approach the Western ethical and political thought to the epistemic and ontological category of Uhuntu, recognized in the Zulu maxim umuntu n#umuntu npabantu (a person is a person through other persons). It chooses as the basis of such study some contemporary thinkers as L^vinas, Bauman, Ramose, Chuwa, Kunene, and Nussbaum, who show a common concern with reverting a context of war and disregard of the integrity of human beings, connected to an ethics of alterity, zealous of the values of conviviality and respect for the cultural differences. It reveals the political dimension of Ubuntu and the impacts of this conception on the process of facing the problems of human rights in post Apartheid South Africa. Grounded on such transdisciplinary reflexion, it tries to point through a path to the implementation of policies for peace based on interculturality and communalism within different cultures.展开更多
Over the last decades the cultural, social and political landscapes of diversity are changing radically, but we do not even have the language through which contemporary superdiversity in the world can be described, co...Over the last decades the cultural, social and political landscapes of diversity are changing radically, but we do not even have the language through which contemporary superdiversity in the world can be described, conceptualized, understood, explained and researched. Many of the social thoughts and political actions on issues of diversity are now dominated by methodological nationalism and multiculturalism which, however, have to be called into question. As opposed to methodological nationalism, methodological cosmopolitanism is a promising lens through which to look at questions of diversity. And it is essential to draw an essential distinction between "cosmopolitanism" in a normative philosophical sense and "cosmopolitanization" as a structural phenomenon and as a social scientific research programme. Philosophical and normative cosmopolitanism can be combined with cosmopolitan social science to create a cosmopolitan realism.展开更多
A common symptom of the blanket coverage of Western literary theory was the way Chinese intellectuals "kept harping on Greece," to the neglect of their own literature's distinctive features. Even worse were attempt...A common symptom of the blanket coverage of Western literary theory was the way Chinese intellectuals "kept harping on Greece," to the neglect of their own literature's distinctive features. Even worse were attempts to force Chinese literature into the Procrustean bed of Western literary propositions. How can Chinese literary theory be used more effectively to interpret native literature and culture, or Chinese experience? How can it throw off Western theoretical models and become a component of the Chinese nation's own narrative? Reconstruction of the discourse system of Chinese literary theory must be a high priority. It is a complex project, one that necessarily entails stepping on to the discourse platform of modernity, accepting various kinds of open dialogue, and thence envisioning a new form of discourse system set amid multilayered overlapping perspectives and even the challenge of different ideas.展开更多
This paper investigates developmental patterns of metadiscourse use in Chinese students’EAP writing in an English medium university,in comparison with English majors’EFL writing in mainstream state universities and ...This paper investigates developmental patterns of metadiscourse use in Chinese students’EAP writing in an English medium university,in comparison with English majors’EFL writing in mainstream state universities and L1 student writing in UK universities.Taking a longitudinal and cross-contextual perspective,the study explores corpora of L1 and L2 student writing gathered from three sources:EAP essays written by Chinese undergraduate students at an English Medium Instruction(EMI)university;argumentative essays written by English majors in the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners(WECCL);and academic essays of English L1 students from the British Academic Written English(BAWE)corpus.Hyland’s(2005 a)model of metadiscourse was adopted to identify interactive and interactional devices in each corpus,and results were compared between different levels as well as across the corpora to reveal developmental features.Findings show marked differences in metadiscourse use between Chinese EMI students’EAP essays and English major students’EFL essays in mainstream state universities,whereas a similar pattern of use occurred in EAP essays and English L1 student academic essays.Significant changes were also found between different year levels in two L2 essay corpora.The findings suggest that metadiscourse use in L2 writing had developmental trajectories distinctive to different institutional contexts,with EAP instruction in the EMI institution having mixed effects on Chinese students’awareness and use of metadiscourse in essay writing.展开更多
文摘This paper will discuss the relation between the concepts of nature and culture and their intricate interdependency, focusing on modernity. Moreover, it will analyze the dichotomy that has historically emerged and its implications. Human beings have had different conceptions about what is natural and what is non-natural throughout their history. Before Modernity we did not conceive nature as being a different ontological reality, we did not perceive it as being separated from us. After modernity everything changed, and we began to see nature as a mere object. Nature became, then, a representation, like a painting on a wall. Our contemporary world vision, Weltanschauung, was formed mainly during the 16th and 17th centuries. There was, at that time, a considerable change in the way we perceived and described the world. This new mentality and this new form of representing the cosmos provided the basis for our new way of thinking. They were the substrate upon which our modern paradigm was erected. The world's conversion in an image only became a reality thanks to technology. But this change happened only because of the paradigm shift originated in the 17th century. Technique always has been a way to articulate how (and what) we think. With the Greek, technique (technd) was, at first, an extension of the physis. Thus, the technique was a way of being instead of a way of thinking. After the paradigm shift in the 17th century (a metaphysical change, in the very way we connected to the world), the human being left his former place. Perhaps would be even better if we talked about nature and culture as being as a hybrid. What, at the source, was natural, through the flows of production and consumption, undergoes transformations and becomes something that is not natural anymore but, at the same time, not completely artificial either. Our world, once divided between the social and the natural, becomes a space where a constant process, a continuous flow, is constantly happening. From that dichotomy between something good and something bad arises a dialectic, in which we no longer can see any division whatsoever.
文摘In megacities, the phenomenon of the highrise buildings which add fashion elements into the body and facades seems as big sculptures. Architect composed their work by applying the cross-pollination of design method. They adopted the various elements to enrich their building's facade in order to look different. On the other hand, the traditional architecture expressed the tribe civilization by placing their proud artifacts into the building's facade. The purpose of this study is to find a new theory of architecture during their process of becoming of the architecture's form. The study applied a phenomenological investigation method of several highrise building's facade at Jakarta and several districts of Singapore, Brisbane and Melbourne. The study result is a new theory named "the fashion-architecture" is a building composed by adopting the cross-pollination of design method. To enrich the building's facade, architect adopted anything including the fashion's design elements: accessories, millineries, and cosmetics also reflected by the traditional architecture. Their fashion-architecture works are reflecting the tribe civilization into a contemporary architecture design.
文摘This paper looks for deepening the connections among peace, intercultural dialogue, and communalism in the light of Ubuntu, an ethical concept that emphasizes the alliances constructed between people and the relations established by them, and is seen as fundamental to the African thought of the groups that adopt Bantu languages. It develops an original exercise in diatopical hermeneutics--a methodology proposed by Raimon Panikkar, taking as the main goal to approach the Western ethical and political thought to the epistemic and ontological category of Uhuntu, recognized in the Zulu maxim umuntu n#umuntu npabantu (a person is a person through other persons). It chooses as the basis of such study some contemporary thinkers as L^vinas, Bauman, Ramose, Chuwa, Kunene, and Nussbaum, who show a common concern with reverting a context of war and disregard of the integrity of human beings, connected to an ethics of alterity, zealous of the values of conviviality and respect for the cultural differences. It reveals the political dimension of Ubuntu and the impacts of this conception on the process of facing the problems of human rights in post Apartheid South Africa. Grounded on such transdisciplinary reflexion, it tries to point through a path to the implementation of policies for peace based on interculturality and communalism within different cultures.
文摘Over the last decades the cultural, social and political landscapes of diversity are changing radically, but we do not even have the language through which contemporary superdiversity in the world can be described, conceptualized, understood, explained and researched. Many of the social thoughts and political actions on issues of diversity are now dominated by methodological nationalism and multiculturalism which, however, have to be called into question. As opposed to methodological nationalism, methodological cosmopolitanism is a promising lens through which to look at questions of diversity. And it is essential to draw an essential distinction between "cosmopolitanism" in a normative philosophical sense and "cosmopolitanization" as a structural phenomenon and as a social scientific research programme. Philosophical and normative cosmopolitanism can be combined with cosmopolitan social science to create a cosmopolitan realism.
文摘A common symptom of the blanket coverage of Western literary theory was the way Chinese intellectuals "kept harping on Greece," to the neglect of their own literature's distinctive features. Even worse were attempts to force Chinese literature into the Procrustean bed of Western literary propositions. How can Chinese literary theory be used more effectively to interpret native literature and culture, or Chinese experience? How can it throw off Western theoretical models and become a component of the Chinese nation's own narrative? Reconstruction of the discourse system of Chinese literary theory must be a high priority. It is a complex project, one that necessarily entails stepping on to the discourse platform of modernity, accepting various kinds of open dialogue, and thence envisioning a new form of discourse system set amid multilayered overlapping perspectives and even the challenge of different ideas.
基金supported by Research Development Fund of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and Jiangsu Ministry of Education Philosophy and Social Sciences Funding Scheme.
文摘This paper investigates developmental patterns of metadiscourse use in Chinese students’EAP writing in an English medium university,in comparison with English majors’EFL writing in mainstream state universities and L1 student writing in UK universities.Taking a longitudinal and cross-contextual perspective,the study explores corpora of L1 and L2 student writing gathered from three sources:EAP essays written by Chinese undergraduate students at an English Medium Instruction(EMI)university;argumentative essays written by English majors in the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners(WECCL);and academic essays of English L1 students from the British Academic Written English(BAWE)corpus.Hyland’s(2005 a)model of metadiscourse was adopted to identify interactive and interactional devices in each corpus,and results were compared between different levels as well as across the corpora to reveal developmental features.Findings show marked differences in metadiscourse use between Chinese EMI students’EAP essays and English major students’EFL essays in mainstream state universities,whereas a similar pattern of use occurred in EAP essays and English L1 student academic essays.Significant changes were also found between different year levels in two L2 essay corpora.The findings suggest that metadiscourse use in L2 writing had developmental trajectories distinctive to different institutional contexts,with EAP instruction in the EMI institution having mixed effects on Chinese students’awareness and use of metadiscourse in essay writing.