Nieuwe aanwinsten Geesteswetenschappen: jan - mrt 2024

A landmark new history of the peasant experience, exploring a now neglected way of life that once encompassed most of humanity but is vanishing in our time. For over the past century and a half, and still more rapidly in the last seventy years, the world has become increasingly urban, and the peasant way of life--the dominant way of life for humanity since agriculture began well over 6,000 years ago--is disappearing. In this new history of peasantry, social historian Patrick Joyce aims to tell the story of this lost world and its people, and how we can commemorate their way of life. In one sense, this is a global history, ambitious in scope, taking us from the urbanization of the early 19th century to the present day. But more specifically, Joyce's focus is the demise of the European peasantry and of their rites, traditions, and beliefs. Alongside this he brings in stories of individuals as well as places, including his own family, and looks at how peasants and their ways of life have been memorialized in photographs, literature, and in museums. Joyce explores a people whose voice is vastly underrepresented in human history and is usually mediated through others. And now peasants are vanishing in one of the greatest historical transformations of our time. Enlightening, timely, and vitally important, this book commemorates an extraordinary culture whose impact on history--and the future--remains profoundly relevant

A panoramic cultural and legal history that traces the roots of antisemitism and racism to early Christian theology. Since the earliest days of Christianity, theologians expressed pervasive anxiety about Jews as equal members of society and, with European expansion in the early modern period, that anxiety extended to people of color. This troubling legacy still haunts us today. Christian Supremacy demonstrates how theological and legal frameworks created by the church centuries ago laid the seeds of antisemitism and anti-Black racism, and reveals why Christian identity lies at the heart of the world's violent white supremacy movements. In a powerful historical narrative spanning nearly two millennia, Magda Teter describes how Christian theology of late antiquity cast Jews as "children born in slavery," and how the supposed theological inferiority of Jews became inscribed into law, creating tangible structures that reinforced a sense of Christian domination and superiority. With the dawn of European colonialism, a distinct brand of European Christian supremacy found expression in the legally sanctioned enslavement and exploitation of people of color, later taking the form of white Christian supremacy in the New World. Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence ranging from the theological and legal to the philosophical and artistic, Christian Supremacy is a profound reckoning with history that traces the roots of the modern rejection of Jewish and Black equality to an enduring Christian heritage of exclusion, intolerance, and persecution"-- Provided by publisher."Appalling events in recent years have brought home to us the pervasiveness of white supremacist views, practices, and structures in both the United States and in Europe. This stunningly ambitious, sweeping cultural and intellectual history explores their Christian origins. It also argues for the enduring importance of these origins -- even if contemporary white supremacists do not always rely on explicitly religious rationales for their ideas. Magda Teter's book traces modern day anti-Jewish and anti-Black prejudice back to pervasive notions of Christian superiority developed in the early Christian church. She thus connects anti-Jewish sentiments with anti-Black racism, without arguing that these are the same thing or that one led to the other. Based on an examination of primary evidence across a wide geographical and historical array of sources-theological, legal, artistic, and philosophical-Teter shows how the Christian claim of superiority emerged in a theological context in antiquity and was later implemented in a legal and political context when Christianity became a political power. And in the early modern era, when Europeans expanded their political reach beyond Europe with the establishment of commerce-driven slaveholding empires, Christian claims were transformed decisively into a racialized sense of superiority that became institutionalized in law and politics

In the Arab world, people belong to kinship groups (lineages and tribes). Many lineages are named after animals, birds, and plants. Why? This survey evaluates five old explanations - "totemism," "emulation of predatory animals," "ancestor eponymy," "nicknaming," and "Bedouin proximity to nature." It suggests a new hypothesis: Bedouin tribes use animal names to obscure their internal cleavages. Such tribes wax and wane as they attract and lose allies and clients; they include "attached" elements as well as actual kin. To prevent outsiders from spotting "attached" groups, Bedouin tribes scatter non-human names across their segments, making it difficult to link any segment with a human ancestor. Young's argument contributes to theories of tribal organization, Arab identity, onomastics, and Near Eastern kinship

Waarom iedereen denkt objectief en rechtvaardig te zijn, maar niemand dat werkelijk is. Wetenschappelijk onderzoek laat zien dat we impliciet bevooroordeeld zijn. Blijkbaar kunnen we iemand onrechtvaardig behandelen zonder dat we dat willen, en zelfs zonder dat we het doorhebben. Onbewust maken we onderscheid tussen personen op basis van hun geslacht, huidskleur, lichaamsgewicht, seksuele oriëntatie of leeftijd. Hoe is dat mogelijk? Hoe kan ons zelfbeeld zo afwijken van ons gedrag?Onderzoekers beschouwen impliciete vooroordelen vaak als objecten die zich in onze onbewuste geest bevinden, en die nauwkeurig kunnen worden gemeten en onderzocht. Zo bekeken lijken impliciete vooroordelen een individueel probleem te zijn. Maar is het wel behulpzaam om je blik naar binnen te richten? Filosoof en psycholoog Lieke Asma pleit voor een radicaal ander perspectief. Alleen door onze aandacht te verplaatsen naar de wereld buiten ons kunnen we discriminatie leren herkennen en voorkomen. Lieke Asma (1984) is filosoof en psycholoog. In 2018 promoveerde ze aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam op een proefschrift over vrije wil en wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Ze werkt aan de Munich School of Philosophy, waar ze onderzoek doet naar impliciete vooroordelen, zelfontplooiing en handelen. Met haar debuut, 'Mijn intenties en ik. Filosofie van de vrije wil' (2021), haalde ze de shortlist van de Socratesbeker en van de Hypatia-prijs..

A social history of AI that finally reveals its roots in the spatial computation of industrial factories and the surveillance of collective behaviour.
What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest "to solve intelligence," a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks.
The Eye of the Master argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations, as it is found in Babbage's "calculating engines" of the industrial age as well as in the recent algorithms for image recognition and surveillance.
The idea that AI may one day become autonomous (or "sentient", as someone thought of Google's LaMDA) is pure fantasy. Computer algorithms have always imitated the form of social relations and the organisation of labour in their own inner structure and their purpose remains blind automation.
The Eye of the Master urges a new literacy on AI for scientists, journalists and new generations of activists, who should recognise that the "mystery" of AI is just the automation of labour at the highest degree, not intelligence per se.

Inspired by the exercises of Father Lafitau, a Jesuit priest and proto-ethnographer of the "New World" who compared the lives of the Iroquois to the ancient Greeks, Stephan Palmié embarks on a series of unusual comparative investigations. What do organ transplants have to do with ngangas, a complex assemblage of mineral, animal, and vegetal materials, including human remains, that serve as the embodiment of spirits of the dead? Where do genomics and "ancestry projects" converge with divination and oracular systems? What does it mean that Black Cubans in the US took advantage of Edisonian technology to project the disembodied voice of a mystical entity named ecué onto the streets of Philadelphia? Can we consider Afro-Cuban spirit possession as an extreme form of historical knowledge production? By writing about Afro-Cuban ritual in relation to Western scientific practice, and vice versa, Palmié hopes to challenge the rationality of Western expert practices, revealing the logics that bring together enchantment and experiment. Throughout, Palmié is also levelling a specific anthropological challenge: he takes issue with the much-discussed "ontological turn," especially with those thinkers who promote notions of radical alterity and utter incommensurability. Instead, Palmié suggests that radical comparison with "boundary objects" can offer something new to the ethnographic enterprise

Gathering together nearly 300 objects, including paintings, prints, scientific illustrations, textiles, sculpture, metalwork and furniture, "Making Her Mark" illuminates the astonishing diversity and breadth of female contributions to art of the pre-modern era (c. 1400-1800). In this important re-examination of early modern European art, an international team of scholars and curators assess the critical concepts that have shaped Western culture's understanding of what constitutes great art. In its recalibration of gender imbalances, this impressive volume offers an alternative view of the history of European art and sheds light on the collaborative nature of the creation of individual works and the interconnected histories of literature, politics, religion, science, and economics. Ambitious in its scope, "Making Her Mark" is a bold corrective to the assumption that female artists of the past were rare and that their work was unremarkable. The result is a dynamic introduction to scores of women artists whose names are entirely new and a long-overdue reassessment of the art, culture, and history of early modern Europe

Dröge neemt je mee naar een vergeten stuk geschiedenis

Wist je dat…
• de Verenigde Staten ooit een Nederlandstalige president hadden?
• de Amerikaanse uitdrukking okay een Nederlandse oorsprong heeft? Net als dope, decoy en spook.
• Nederlands eeuwenlang de gangbare taal was in delen van de staten New York en New Jersey?
• de laatste spreker van de tawl – de Amerikaanse versie van het Nederlands – pas stierf in 1962?

In De tawl duikt historicus Philip Dröge in de curieuze geschiedenis van Nederlandstalig New York en New Jersey. Philip doorkruist die gebieden op het meest Nederlandse vervoermiddel ter wereld, de fiets. Langs kleine paadjes, over hoge heuvels en aan de oevers van snelstromende rivieren vindt hij zelfs nu nog resten van het Nederlandstalige verleden.

De tawl is een geschiedenisboek, reisgids en road novel in één en biedt bovendien een kijk op het moderne Amerika. Een boek vol humor, inzicht en verrassende feiten over een onbekend deel van onze cultuur. Voor liefhebbers van geschiedenis, taal, Americana, reizen en geografie. Opgedist door de auteur die eerder al eens ‘meesterverteller’ werd genoemd door Trouw.

What do we do when we listen? The act of engagement with music in everyday life may seem simple on the surface but participation, interpretation, circulation and cultural production in the digital age are more complex and entangled than ever before. It is especially so in Japan, with its vast multimedia idol and vocaloid industries. This unique ethnographic work at the intersection of cultural, media and music studies covers a wide spectrum of music-related activities embedded in the daily lives of two Japanese cohorts. The varied case studies, including teen idol groups and virtual idols, aid the detailed examination of the relation between music, generation, and society.

Data has never mattered more. Our lives are increasingly shaped by it and how it is defined, collected and used. But who counts in the collection, analysis and application of data? This important book is the first to look at queer data - defined as data relating to gender, sex, sexual orientation and trans identity/history. The author shows us how current data practices reflect an incomplete account of LGBTQ lives and helps us understand how data biases are used to delegitimise the everyday experiences of queer people. Guyan demonstrates why it is important to understand, collect and analyse queer data, the benefits and challenges involved in doing so, and how we might better use queer data in our work. Arming us with the tools for action, this book shows how greater knowledge about queer identities is instrumental in informing decisions about resource allocation, changes to legislation, access to services, representation and visibility

Taking as her focus a body of writings in poetic, didactic, and legal modes that circulated in England's capital between the 1380s--just a generation after the Black Death--and the first decade of the English reformation in the 1530s, Amy Appleford offers the first full-length study of the Middle English "art of dying" (ars moriendi). An educated awareness of death and mortality was a vital aspect of medieval civic culture, she contends, critical not only to the shaping of single lives and the management of families and households but also to the practices of cultural memory, the building of institutions, and the good government of the city itself. In fifteenth-century London in particular, where an increasingly laicized reformist religiosity coexisted with an ambitious program of urban renewal, cultivating a sophisticated attitude toward death was understood as essential to good living in the widest sense. The virtuous ordering of self, household, and city rested on a proper attitude toward mortality on the part both of the ruled and of their secular and religious rulers. The intricacies of keeping death constantly in mind informed not only the religious prose of the period, but also literary and visual arts. In London's version of the famous image-text known as the Dance of Death, Thomas Hoccleve's poetic collection The Series, and the early sixteenth-century prose treatises of Tudor writers Richard Whitford, Thomas Lupset, and Thomas More, death is understood as an explicitly generative force, one capable (if properly managed) of providing vital personal, social, and literary opportunities.

Nostalgia has a bad reputation. Its critics dismiss it as mere sentimentality or, worse, a dangerous yearning for an imagined age of purity. And nostalgia is routinely blamed for trivializing the past and obscuring its ugly sides. In Yesterday, Tobias Becker offers a more nuanced and sympathetic view. Surveying the successive waves of nostalgia that swept the United States and Europe after the Second World War, he shows that longing for the past is more complex and sometimes more beneficial than it seems.The current meaning of "nostalgia" is surprisingly recent: until the 1960s, it usually just meant homesickness, in keeping with the original Greek word. Linking popular culture to postwar politics in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, Becker explains the shift in meaning. He also responds to arguments against nostalgia, showing its critics as often shortsighted in their own ways as they defend an idea of progress no less naïve than the wistfulness they denounce. All too often, nostalgia itself is criticized, as if its merit did not depend on which specific past one longs for.Taking its title from one of the most popular songs of all time, and grounded in extensive research, Yesterday offers a rigorous and entertaining perspective on divisive issues in culture and politics. Whether we are revisiting, reviving, reliving, reenacting, or regressing, and whether these activities find expression in politics, music, fashion, or family history, nostalgia is inevitable. It is also powerful, not only serving to define the past but also orienting us toward the future we will create