Chiroptophobia, or the fear of bats, which encompasses negative perceptions of bats as disease vectors, pests, or harmful creatures associated with evil spirits, represents an important barrier to ...bat conservation globally. Derived largely from the influence of Western cultural perceptions, it ignores the diverse cultural perceptions of bats from other regions, which have been largely overlooked. To better understand local beliefs and cultural perceptions regarding bats across the Asia-Pacific region, and how they may help design culturally grounded conservation strategies, we conducted a review of publications in the English-language literature documenting cultural value of bats in Asia-Pacific traditions. We discovered 119 bat cultural values in 60 different cultures from 24 countries across the region and found a wide spectrum of reports, which we categorized according to five wildlife value categories and further categorized these values according to positive, neutral, and negative. We found that 62% of the cultures had only positive values, 8% had only neutral values, while 10% had only negative values. This suggests that the Asia-Pacific region and its cultures contain far more positive associations with bats than most Western societies and, as such, offer promising examples and opportunities to promote human-bat coexistence. However, we also discuss how local belief systems may not always align with daily practices or conservation objectives. We suggest employing targeted, culturally grounded and locally contextualized outreach strategies in order to carry out more effective bat conservation and education in Asia-Pacific countries.
Named by its authors "schizoanalysis", the critique of interpretation developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980) - the two volumes of their ...work Capitalism and Schizophrenia - is a radical one. Exposed as a dead-end street, that only keeps thought trapped in the tyrannical circle of the "Signifier", the interpretation, as the privileged expression of semiology - point out Deleuze and Guattari - corresponds to the "overcoding" made by the despotic political assemblage, which consists in the abolition of the old clanic-territorial relationships and the centralization of all social codes, followed by their subordination to a unique code, mirrored by the solar symbolism of the sovereign's power. In the same way as the imperial-despotic "social machine", which proclaims a transcendent unity as the absolute center of existence, the signifying semiotics - explain Deleuze and Guattari - is structured by removing out of the chain of signs a privileged object ("the despotic signifier"), which, in creating the illusion of a transcendence to which all the signs converge and from which all the signs seem to come, destroys the presignifying territorial semiotics through linearization and homogenization. Consequently, the interpretation is inevitably encumbered by all the shortcomings of the significant regime of signs: that is, above all, the rigid linearity of the system, in the perspective of which any deviation, as well as any tendency of detachment, diffusion or dispersion, appear, apriorically, as unjustified divisiveness, unnecessary detours and fateful dead ends. The "superliniarity" of semiology causes the interpretation to eliminate any autonomous "growth", to devalue any heterogeneity, and to consider any attempt to exit the system as counterproductive and "meaningless". At the same time, the process and the guiding vectors of interpretation are always aimed at a synthetic, hierarchical and systematizing approach, thus responding to the imperative of the despotic "machine" to appropriate all resources and to subordinate all the codes. The interpretative act is one of "overcoding", whose semioticdiscursive function is to (re)order all signs, as well as all the judgments and arguments, according to a "central idea", which is nothing but a representation, a projection of the "despotic signifier". The argumentation of Deleuze and Guattari denounces interpretative thinking, be it traditional or modern, as being not only an instrument of the imperial-despotic "social machine", but, moreover, as a faithful mirror of the state apparatus. The osmosis between thought and the state - evidenced and stimulated by the act of interpretation - is the very basis on which the symbolic power is built.
The following article is written after my first article on the subject of astronomical hypotheses in the Roman mysteries of Mithras. In the first article, I suggested that tauroctony symbology is not ...a map entirely derived from astronomical theology, and perhaps non-astrological mythological symbols and narratives are also applied. In this article, I have tried to survey the most important myths related to tauroctony in the Indo-European regions and to observe the hypotheses of modern Mithra researchers in explaining the motifs and mythological symbols of the tauroctony sculpture based on library data. In the end, I have concluded that, firstly, the Roman tauroctony’s sculpture, as was the habit of the Romans, does not only narrate one myth but compared to the previous myths, it narrates at least three tauroctony myths and borrows symbols from each of them: first the myth of the battle of Gilgamesh with the Bull of Heaven and its slaying, the second is the slaying of the Hadyusha by Saoshyanet and the third is the myth of the Gavaevodata. Also, in the part of Mithra's fight with the bull and its hunt, there are similarities with the myth of Hercules's battle with the Cretan bull.
Arbitrary symbolism is a linguistic doctrine that predicts an orthogonal relationship between word forms and their corresponding meanings. Recent corpora analyses have demonstrated violations of ...arbitrary symbolism with respect to concreteness, a variable characterizing the sensorimotor salience of a word. In addition to qualitative semantic differences, and concrete words are also marked by distinct morphophonological structures such as length and morphological complexity. Native English speakers show sensitivity to these markers in tasks such as auditory word recognition and naming. One unanswered question is whether this violation of arbitrariness reflects an idiosyncratic property of the English lexicon or whether word concreteness is a marked phenomenon across other natural languages. We isolated concrete and English nouns (N = 400), and translated each into Russian, Arabic, Dutch, Mandarin, Hindi, Korean, Hebrew, and American Sign Language. We conducted offline acoustic analyses of and concrete word length discrepancies across languages. In a separate experiment, native English speakers (N = 56) with no prior knowledge of these foreign languages judged concreteness of these nouns (e.g., Can you see, hear, feel, or touch this? Yes/No). Each naïve participant heard pre‐recorded words presented in randomized blocks of three foreign languages following a brief listening exposure to a narrative sample from each respective language. Concrete and words differed by length across five of eight languages, and prediction accuracy exceeded chance for four of eight languages. These results suggest that word concreteness is a marked phenomenon across several of the world's most widely spoken languages. We interpret these findings as supportive of an adaptive cognitive heuristic that allows listeners to exploit non‐arbitrary mappings of word form to word meaning.
Efforts by many governments to mitigate climate change by increasing deployment of renewable energy technologies have raised the importance of issues of public acceptance. The ‘NIMBY’ (Not In My ...Backyard) concept, although popular, has been critiqued as an appropriate and valid way to explain local opposition. This study applies an alternative approach, empirically investigating the role of place attachment and place-related symbolic meanings in explaining public responses to a tidal energy converter in Northern Ireland, said to be the first grid-connected device of its kind in the world. 271 residents in two nearby villages completed questionnaire surveys, three months post-installation, following up preliminary qualitative research using focus groups. Although results indicated predominantly positive and supportive responses to the project, manifest by emotional responses and levels of acceptance, significant differences between residents in each village were also observed. Contrasting patterns of association between place attachment and emotional responses suggest that the project enhanced rather than disrupted place attachments only in one of the two villages. In regression analyses, place attachment emerged as a significant, positive predictor of project acceptance in both places, affirming its value in explaining public response. Place-related symbolic meanings also emerged as significant, with contrasting sets of meanings proving significant in each context. Implications of the findings for research on place attachment and responses to land-use changes, as well as for developers seeking to engage with residents affected by energy projects are discussed.
► The ‘NIMBY’ explanation for opposition to renewable energy is critiqued. ► An alternative approach draws on the concept of place attachment. ► This is applied to a case study of tidal energy in Northern Ireland. ► In regression analyses, place attachment predicted project acceptance.
RESUMO
Discorremos, neste artigo, sobre a forte presença da cultura francesa no imaginário da sociedade letrada do Rio de Janeiro na virada do século XX, processo aculturativo a que se deu o nome de ...“francesismo”. Essa configuração ideológico-cultural nos importa na medida em que, no mesmo contexto temporal, examinamos os fundamentos históricos do Simbolismo literário francês, apanhando-lhe as origens, desde Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), cuja poesia, impregnada de misteriosa harmonia e de efeitos sombrios, abalou o modelo parnasiano e a tirania da tradição. Com base nos periódicos da época, nos detemos nos embates entre simbolistas e decadentes em um momento em que a ideia de decadência tomava corpo no universo cultural da França fin-de-siècle. Por último, discutimos o Simbolismo no Brasil, sua recepção crítica – problema fundamental para nossa historiografia literária – destacando, brevemente, sua manifestação na poesia de Cruz e Sousa (1861-1898).
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Francesismo; Decadência; Simbolismo; Charles Baudelaire; Cruz e Sousa
Culture and identity in a society can be represented in the architecture and the meanings intertwined with it. In this sense, the architecture and design are the interface for transferring meaning ...and identity to the nation and future generations. Persian gardens have been evolved through the history of Persian Empire in regard to the culture and beliefs of the society. This paper aims to investigate the patterns of design and architecture in Persian gardens and the meanings intertwined with their patterns and significant elements such as water and trees. Persian gardens are not only about geometries and shapes; but also manifest different design elements, each representing a specific symbol and its significance among the society. This paper seeks to explore Persian gardens in terms of their geometric structure, irrigation system, network construction and pavilions alongside design qualities such as hierarchy, symmetry, centrality, rhythm and harmony. In thesecond stage, the paper investigates the fundamental symbols and their philosophy in the creation of Persian gardens and in relation to the architecture and design.
Products are often valued for what they mean to people. The theoretical dimension that describes the meaning of products is referred to as symbolism. Symbolism plays an important role in product ...evaluations in pre-use conditions. This paper suggests a framework for the analysis of this dimension in product evaluations. Symbolism comprises varying mixtures of pragmatic, product, and user symbolism. Pragmatic symbolism, which includes the product's instrumental benefits, affects product symbolism, or the overall impression of the product. Product symbolism, in turn, affects user symbolism, which refers to the self-image of the product's user. Our findings, based on exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, suggest that while symbolic value formation often occurs in a bottom-up process, from pragmatic considerations upon which the product's image is built that transfer to the user, it can also be in a top-down process for specific types of products whose design elements directly affect the user's self-image.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
Symbolism is not a unified dimension, but comprises three sub-dimensions.
Perceived usefulness and functional affordance positively affect the symbolic value of products.
For most product types, the image of the product positively affects the image of its user.
For most product types, the effect of product usefulness on user image is mediated by product image.
While symbolism is usually formed in a bottom-up process, it can also be formed in a top-down process.
A review essay of two recently published books, both of which consider the art historical legacy of the French poet, Stephane Mallarmé: Trevor Stark’s Total Expansion of the Letter: Avant-Garde, Art ...and Language After Mallarmé (MIT Press, 2020) and Andrei Pop’s A Forest of Symbols: Art, Science, and Truth in the Long Nineteenth Century (MIT Press, 2019). Pop and Stark advance sharply contrasting theses about what is often referred to as “the linguistic turn” in studies of Modernist art. Whereas Stark finds in Mallarmé a skeptical theory of language that now predominates in studies of early twentieth-century art, Pop turns to the poet precisely in order to reconsider the field’s commitments to re-describing pictures in linguistic terms.
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