Tourist-Communicational Ecosystem in Cirandas of Manacapuru – Amazon

This article presents a partial report of a research on the Brazilian Amazon, entitled Ciranda de Manacapuru as a metaphor for the Amazon: signs of the touristic, communicational, and subjective ecosystem of the region. Ciranda de Manacapuru is a popular dance festival that takes place every year in August in the municipality of Manacapuru, located in the Metropolitan Region of Manaus, in the state of Amazonas, in northern Brazil. This is an event promoted by the State and local government with the participation of three ciranda associations: Flor Matizada, Guerreiros Mura, and Tradicional. This festival is considered the largest Festival of Cirandas in the state, attracting around 50,000 tourists every year. During the Covid19 pandemic, the festival was presented by social media platforms (2020 and 2021). In this cultural manifestation of the city, an important sign of local tourism can be seen, considering the various agents involved, which is capable of attracting a differentiated, expressive, and consumer public. In theoretical terms, the research is being developed with an ecosystemic-complex orientation, which has been marking the studies of AMORCOMTUR! – Study Group on Communication, Tourism, Amouroness, and Autopoiesis. The methodological strategy is the Cartography of Knowledge, qualitative, procedural, and multi-methodological, with development in five investigative paths: We-interlaces, Personal Knowledge, Theoretical Knowledge, Production Plant, and Intuitive Research Dimension. The preliminary results indicated the expressive power of the narratives produced in the Cirandas by the various subjects involved, which makes it possible to reflect on the Tourism-Communication Ecosystemic plot that is established, evaluating the interrelationship of the city of Manacapuru and the cultural manifestation of Ciranda as an autopoietic power.   CITE THIS PAPER: Baptista, Maria L. C.; Santos, Gernei G. (2023). “Tourist-Communicational Ecosystem in Cirandas of Manacapuru – Amazon” Journal of Social Sciences: Transformations & Transitions (JOSSTT) 3(06):27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.52459/josstt3627052

Weave of Knowledge: Sensitive "Com-Versations" for the Science of the New World

The present text has an essayistic character, with the proposal to present the theme Weave of Knowledge: sensitive “com-versations” for the Science of the New World. In this sense, it is guided by the thematic proposition and develops the narrative as sensitive “com-versations” between various studies carried out in the South of Brazil, intertwining with researchers from other Brazilian universities and more than 10 countries. The essay corresponds, especially, to theoretical-reflexive conversations, which give orientation to the dimensions: Weave of Knowledge and conversations, with an epistemological-theoretical, ecosystemic-complex-schizoanalytical approach. In this way, it instigates to understand and reflect on scientific signs for the New World, an expression used to represent the becoming, what is to come, in the contemporary scenario, due to the grandiosity of large-scale mutations, for Science, the Coexistence and the possibility of Survival on (and of) the Planet. In methodological terms, the production derives from the association between two authorial methodological strategies: Cartography of Knowledge and Rhizomatic Matrices, which allow the opening to produce Complex and Sensitive Science and, at the same time, for the maturing of the systematization of qualitative data. There is also an association with the assumption that the investigation results from a kind of investigative journey, an investigative journey, and that its result is, in this sense, a travel narrative, with characteristics of sensitive autotranspoietic narratives.   Bilingual Publication: The original version in Portugues is available in the PDF file

Robotopias: mapping Utopian perspectives on new industrial technology

Purpose This paper maps utopian theories of technological change. The focus is on debates surrounding emerging industrial technologies which contribute to making the relationship between humans and machines more symbiotic and entangled, such as robotics, automation and artificial intelligence. The aim is to provide a map to navigate complex debates on the potential for technology to be used for emancipatory purposes and to plot the grounds for tactical engagements. Design/methodology/approach The paper proposes a two-way axis to map theories into to a six-category typology. Axis one contains the parameters humanist–assemblage. Humanists draw on the idea of a human essence of creative labour-power, and treat machines as alienated and exploitative form of this essence. Assemblage theorists draw on posthumanism and poststructuralism, maintaining that humans always exist within assemblages which also contain non-human forces. Axis two contains the parameters utopian/optimist; tactical/processual; and dystopian/pessimist, depending on the construed potential for using new technologies for empowering ends. Findings The growing social role of robots portends unknown, and maybe radical, changes, but there is no single human perspective from which this shift is conceived. Approaches cluster in six distinct sets, each with different paradigmatic assumptions. Practical implications Mapping the categories is useful pedagogically, and makes other political interventions possible, for example interventions between groups and social movements whose practice-based ontologies differ vastly. Originality/value Bringing different approaches into contact and mapping differences in ways which make them more comparable, can help to identify the points of disagreement and the empirical or axiomatic grounds for these. It might facilitate the future identification of criteria to choose among the approaches

“Conversation” of Subjects, City and Tourism. Ropositions for Lovingness, Autopoiesis and the Reverse Side of Tourism

The text presents an experience report, with social actors of the third age, members of the Group Viver Bem, of the Serviço de Convivência e Fortalecimento de Vínculos do Centro de Referência de Assistência Social da cidade de Farroupilha/RS, who, through art workshops, they were invited to experience and produce narratives of place. This is a transdisciplinary study, from the perspective of ecosystem complexity. As a methodology, the research is based on the methodological strategy Cartography of Knowledge, proposed by Baptista (2014a), which seeks to break with the separation of subject and object in research, bringing differentiated proximity instruments for doing science. The combination of theoretical work and the various operational investigation procedures allows us to perceive some flags for the construction of lovingness and autopoiesis and what, in Amorcomtur!; we call’ the Reverse side of Tourism’, based on Baptista’s proposition, that is, Tourism guided by Ecosystem Responsibility and in line with the objectives of the 2030 Agenda. The results of the ongoing studies indicate that, in the Group Viver Bem, at that particular moment, the artistic production, entangled in a set of practices and social interactions, was necessary to change ways of living and interacting and this implied that the subjects (re)see, (re)organize, (re)build themselves, to (re)perceive in the relationships “between” the subjects with the city and tourism. It was also noticed that the “conversation” made possible the ‘recognition of the other as a legitimate other in coexistence’, enhancing the ethics of the relations and the ecosystem responsibility, expressed by the experiences, and transcribed in narratives.   Bilingual Publication: The original version in Portugues is available in the PDF file

'Open Marxism' against and beyond the 'Great Enclosure'? Reflections on How (Not) to Crack Capitalism

The main purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth discussion of John Holloway’s recent book, Crack Capitalism. To this end, the paper offers a detailed account of the key strengths and weaknesses of Holloway’s version of ‘open Marxism’. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on six significant strengths of Crack Capitalism: (1) its insistence upon the importance of autonomous forms of agenda-setting for both individual and collective emancipation; (2) its emphasis on the ordinary constitution of social struggles; (3) its fine-grained interpretation of the socio-ontological conditions underlying human agency; (4) its processual conception of radical social transformation; (5) its recognition of the elastic, adaptable, and integrative power of capitalism; and (6) its proposal for an alternative critical theory, commonly known as ‘open Marxism’ or ‘autonomous Marxism’. The second part of the study examines the principal weaknesses of Crack Capitalism: (1) the counterproductive implications of the preponderance of negativity, owing to a one-sided concern with critique, cracks, and crises; (2) conceptual vagueness; (3) an overuse of poetic and metaphorical language; (4) the absence of a serious engagement with the question of normativity; (5) a lack of substantive evidence; (6) a residual economic reductionism; (7) a simplistic notion of gender; (8) the continuing presence of various problematic ‘isms’; (9) the misleading distinction between ‘doing’ and ‘labour’; (10) a reductive understanding of capitalism; (11) an unrealistic view of society; and (12) socio-ontological idealis

Word: Beyond Language, Beyond Image

Words are everywhere. Ubiquitous, pervasive. Yet our relations with words are narrowly defined. How does the sound, feel, touch, taste, place, position, speed, and direction of words come to matter in their uses? Word begins from the premise that, if we consider words only in terms of language and as images, we overlook a range of bodily, sensory, affective and non-conscious relations with words. We overlook, too, their epistemological, methodological, experiential and political implications. This book seeks to redress this neglect by exploring words themselves in histories of language and contemporary theory, in print and typography, and through a series of empirical examples which include religion, embodiment, photography and performance. Word is a reminder that words live richly in the world. It is an invitation to recognise those non-linguistic word-relations that are already existing, and to bring new and generative encounters with words into being

Assembling the Plebeian Republic. Popular Institutions against Systemic Corruption and Oligarchic Domination

Democracy seems to be in crisis and scholars have started to consider the possibility that “the only game in town” might be rigged. This book theorizes the crisis of democracy from a structural point of view, arguing that liberal representative governments suffer from systemic corruption, a form of political decay that should be understood as the oligarchization of society, and proposes an anti-oligarchic institutional solution based on a radical interpretation of republican constitutional thought. If one agrees that the minimal normative expectation of liberal democracies is that governments should advance the welfare of the majority within constitutional safeguards, increasing income inequality and the relative immiseration of the majority of citizens would be in itself a deviation from good rule, a sign of corruption. As a way to understand how we could revert the current patterns of political corruption, the book provides an in-depth analysis of the institutional, procedural, and normative innovations to protect political liberty proposed by Niccolò Machiavelli, Nicolas de Condorcet, Rosa Luxemburg, and Hannah Arendt. Because their ideas to institutionalize popular power have consistently been misunderstood, instrumentalized, demonized, or neglected, part of what this project wants to accomplish is to offer a serious engagement with their proposals through a plebeian interpretative lens that renders them as part of the same intellectual tradition. In this way, the book assembles a “B side” of constitutional thought composed of the apparent misfits in a tradition that has been dominated by the impulse to suppress conflict instead of harnessing its liberty-producing properties. As a way to effectively deal with systemic corruption and oligarchic domination, the book proposes to follow this plebeian constitutionalism and instituionalize popular collective power. A proposed plebeian branch would be autonomous and aimed not at achieving self-government or direct democracy, but rather at an effort to both judge and censor elites who rule. The plebeian branch would consist of two institutions: a decentralized network of radically inclusive local assemblies, empowered to initiate and veto legislation as well as to exercise periodic constituent power, and a delegate, surveillance office able to enforce decisions and impeach public officials. The establishment of primary assemblies at the local level would not only allow ordinary people to push back against oligarchic domination through the political system but also inaugurate an institutional conception of the people as the many assembled locally: a political collective agent operating as a network of political judgment in permanent flow. The people as network would be a political subject with as many brains as assemblies, in which collective learning, reaction against domination, and social change would occur organically and independently from representative government and political parties

Cultural Techniques: Assembling Spaces, Texts & Collectives

Addressing cultural techniques from different disciplinary perspectives, this volume elaborates upon a concept originally developed in media studies. In a series of case studies, it reconstructs the basic operations of spatialization underlying more complex symbolic artefacts and articulations, which range from techniques of the body to landscapes, from paperwork to encyclopedias, from collections to collectives

Cultural Techniques

Addressing cultural techniques from different disciplinary perspectives, this volume elaborates upon a concept originally developed in media studies. In a series of case studies, it reconstructs the basic operations of spatialization underlying more complex symbolic artefacts and articulations, which range from techniques of the body to landscapes, from paperwork to encyclopedias, from collections to collectives