Introduction If one is to investigate the academic circles today, s/he can soon realize that every academic field is being divided into further specializations and each researcher is asked to narrow down their focus and to do a more meticulous study. This is something which I have personally become conscious of as an anthropology student—seeing that a major difference between... Continue Reading →
“Nothing is true, everything is permitted” was supposedly the last words of the founder of a 12th-century Persian assassin group called Hashashin. It is a quote that has inspired thinkers like Nietzsche to include it in his work and regard it as the freedom of the spirit (1989). Although such a way of thinking argues that a “truly free individual” would not conform to social moral obligations due to a supposed contradiction between one’s “true... Continue Reading →
In his writing The Cultural Limits of Legal Tolerance, Benjamin L. Berger examines the idea of multiculturalism and pluralism in the context of Canadian law. Although, like most other liberal democracies, there is a claim of ideas of religious pluralism, religious freedom, and multiculturalism being inherent in the democratic identity of Canada; the law’s approach... Continue Reading →
Mahmood, S. (2012). Politics of piety: the islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press. This thought-provoking yet complicated book is a groundbreaking analysis of the complex relationship between religious practices and beliefs of (some) Muslim women and modern secular liberal discourses on feminism and other issues. The ethnography, published in 2004 by... Continue Reading →
Foucault states that power’s success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms (1978: 86). But what happens when power, acquired with means of violence, not only hides itself but is applauded by masses? What if violence becomes a trait of an identity that is celebrated? The documentary ‘The Act of Killing’ precisely... Continue Reading →
A common way of describing the Enlightenment period centers around the discourse of “rationalization”. It is assumed that it is by abolishing the orders of the Church that the individuals empowered themselves via exercising their reason and purging the bigotry that was accumulated throughout the Dark Ages of Europe. For such reasons, when one speaks... Continue Reading →
If we are to investigate discourses of economics brought by people of varying intellectual backgrounds such as anthropology, sociology, history, and economics, we can see how some thinkers have looked into structures, some have investigated morality, some have examined cultures, and some have examined pure numbers. After having an (superficial) exposure to such different views on a very human aspect of... Continue Reading →
One of Wittgenstein's personal notes, taken from the book Culture and Value, states: "I realize then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value, yet the fact remains that I have no sympathy for the current of European civilization and... Continue Reading →
In his work called Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein ends his book with the stunning phrase: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent". Although this phrase of his has deeply affected me and my thinking, it is quite ironic that what I am doing right now contradicts with the literal meaning of the phrase, that... Continue Reading →
In the previous post of this series, we entered into the office and made a distinction between "peculiar" and "out of context" occupations. We defined "peculiar" jobs as those that are particularly useful to and designed for the site that it works for, such as a curator or an archivist. On the other hand, we... Continue Reading →
