Bringing troubled water: quality of experience in a mobile media context

The ICT environment went through notable changes, which have had an irreversible and strong influence on both ICT innovation processes and the role of end-users. In this context, technology developers are increasingly expected to take users’ experiences with technology into account during the process of developing applications or frameworks. As technology is more and more embedded in users’ daily lives, they seek out those personalized values to satisfy their own, situational needs. As a result, a thorough insight in users’ expectations and experiences at various levels (both explicit and more latent) and in different contexts (eg. mobile) has become a crucial determinant for the successful development, introduction and adoption of new ICTs. To this end, our paper focuses on the increased importance of Quality of Experience (QoE). It provides a conceptual model for QoE and furthermore discusses the prevalent gap that still exists between QoE and Quality of Service (QoS). Our main objective is to present a new methodology for correlating user experience to QoS parameters. This methodology was tested in the context of an exploratory interdisciplinary study on QoE-measurement. This new approach goes beyond QoS-parameters and aims to also grasp the social and contextual dimensions of users’ experiences

Where did anthropology go?: or the need for 'human nature'

I was recently asked the question: “Where did anthropology go? ” by a psycholinguist from a famous American university. She was commenting on the fact that she had tried to establish contact with the anthropology department of her institution, hoping that she would find somebody who would contribute to a discussion of her main research interest: the relation of words to concepts. She had assumed that the socio- cultural anthropologists would have general theories or, at least, ask general questions, about the way children’s upbringing in different cultures and environments would constrain, or not constrain, how children represented the material and the social world. She was hoping for information about exotic societies in order to gain a broader cross-cultural perspective. She was hoping that her enquiry about a topic that is inevitable in any discussion about culture would be equally central to the three disciplines of psychology, linguistics and anthropology, and would therefore be an ideal ground for constructive co-operation, that is, one where the different parties could articulate and challenge the theories on which their different disciplines are built. In fact she found that nobody was interested in working with her, but what surprised her most was the hostility she perceived, caused, not only by the suggestion that cultural social anthropologists were interested in simple exotic societies, but even more by the idea that they might be interested in formulating and answering general questions about the nature of the human species and that, therefore, their work could be compatible with disciplines such as hers. The lack of any generalising theoretical framework within which her research interest might find a place is not surprising when we look at what kind of thing is done in many university departments under the label social or cultural anthropology. Take for example the interests listed on the web site of th

Paradigms of Society: A Critique of Theories of Caste Among Indian Muslims

This is an offprint version of the article published in European Journal of Sociology 26: 131-41, made available by permission of the publisher. The version made available in Digital Common was supplied by the author.Publisher's Versiontru

Fertility, Non-Altruism and Economic Growth: Industrialization in the Nineteenth Century

This paper presents a model of fertility, which is specific for the industrialization that took place during the nineteenth century and which was concurrent with the demographic transition that occurred over the period. While previous research on demographic transition assumed altruism as the main element explaining the increase in fertility rates, this paper does not, since altruism seems irrelevant over this period. The relationship between parents and children is part of a whole set of values and social norms that evolved over time and were affected by changes in the economic environment. In the nineteenth century, parental behavior was not compatible with altruism. I therefore present a model that suits the social norms of the nineteenth century. The value that seems to correspond to the legal system and social norms regarding the parent-child relationship of the period of industrialization is perpetuation. Due to a budget constraint on workers, perpetuation is displayed differently in different social classes. This paper will therefore focus on the interaction between the different social classes and show how industrialization is linked to demographic transition.altruism; social classes; demographic transition; capital; proletariat; fertility; growth.

HOW EUROPEAN HISTORIANS IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES TOLD THE HISTORY OF HUMAN MASS MIGRATIONS OR VÖLKERWANDERUNGEN

Historians’ interest in the history of human migrations is not limited to recent years. Migrations had already figured as explanatory factors in connection with cultural and historical change in the work of classical and ancient studies scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the writings of these scholars, migrations acted as historical landmarks or epochal thresholds and played a key role in the construction of geo‐historical areas. This model has been called “migrationism” and cannot be explained simply on the basis of the history of individual disciplines, but must be seen in its complex interaction with scientific and historical contexts. However, “migrationism” does not relate to fixed political and scientific positions or movements. For this reason, it cannot be explained adequately by using a historically or ideologically based approach. Relying on narratological approaches, this article examines migration narratives that historians of this period used to explain the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. Referring to contemporary historiographical representations of the ancient Near East, it distinguishes three main narratives that are still common today: narratives of foundation, narratives of destruction, and narratives of mixtures. In this sense, analyzing older migration narratives helps us to sharpen the critical view on the genealogy of our own views on the history—and present—of human migrations

STUDIUM NAD EUROCENTRYZMEM I DYFUZJONIZMEM W POŚWIĘCONYCH KOREI DZIENNIKACH ZAGRANICZNYCH PODRÓŻNIKÓW Z POCZĄTKU XX WIEKU

This paper deals with three different perspectives appeared in foreign visitors’ records on Korea in 1900s. Jack London was a writer who wrote novels highly critical of American society based on progressivism. However, when his progressive perspective was adopted to report the political situation of Korea in 1904, he revealed a typical perspective of orientalism. He regarded Korea and ways of living in Korea as disgusting and ‘uncivilized.’Compared with Jack London’s perspective, French poet Georges Ducrocq’s book was rather favorable. He visited Korea in 1901 and he showed affectionate attitude toward Korea and its people. However, his travel report, Pauvre et Douce Coree, can be defined as representing aesthetic orientalism. He tried to make all the ‘Korean things’ seem beautiful and nice, but it is true that this kind of view can also conceal something concrete and specific. This perspective at once beautifies Korea and also conceals the reality about Korea.E. Burton Holmes was a traveler and he often used his ‘motion-picture’ machine to record things he witnessed while travelling around worldwide countries. So, his report (travelogue) and motion picture film on Korea written and made in 1901 was based on close observation and rather objective point of view. Nonetheless, he couldn’t avoid the perspective of the colonizer’s model of the world, in other words, geographical diffusionism of western culture.본고는 20세기 초반 한국(대한제국)을 방문한 3명의 외국 작가의 글을 검토한다. 잭 런던의 직선적 진보의식에 기초한 오리엔탈리즘이 타자를 유럽(서구)중심의 기준에 맞춰 무한히 상대화하면서 스스로의 우월성을 강조한다면 조르주 뒤크로의 심미적 오리엔탈리즘은 타자의 구체적 상황과 갈등과 내적 변모 과정을 무화시키는 정서적 태도에 의존함으로써 타자를 항구적 불변의 지위에 두려한다. 그런가 하면 버튼 홈스는 사용하는 매체의 특징에 따라 객관적 관찰자의 시점을 유지하려는 노력을 기울인다. 그러나 그 역시 근대적 확산론의 전제를 수용하고 있다.잭 런던의 편협한 진보주의와 조르주 뒤크로의 복고적이고 심미화된 오리엔탈리즘, 그리고 버튼 홈스의 객관적 태도와 그것의 이면에 놓인 근대적 확산의 시계는 20세기 초 조선을 방문한 민간인 외국인들의 시선을 전형적 구도로 보여준다고 하겠다.Ten artykuł dotyczy trzech różnych perspektyw jakie pojawiły się w dokumentach zagranicznych gości na temat Korei w początkach XX wieku. Jack London był pisarzem, który pisał powieści bardzo krytyczne w stosunku do społeczeństwa amerykańskiego. Gdy jednak w 1904 roku przyjęto jego postępową perspektywę, opisując sytuację polityczną w Korei, ujawnił on typowy pogląd orientalizmu. Uważał, że Korea i sposób życia Koreańczyków są obrzydliwe i „niecywilizowane”. W porównaniu z punktem widzenia Jacka Londona, książka francuskiego poety Georgesa Ducrocqa przedstawiała Koreę raczej w korzystnym świetle. Odwiedził Koreę w 1901 roku i okazywał uczuciową postawę wobec Korei i jej mieszkańców. Jednak jego sprawozdanie z podróży, Pauvre et Douce Coree, można określić jako reprezentatywny orientalizm estetyczny. Starał się, by wszystkie „koreańskie sprawy” wydały się piękne i miłe, ale prawdą jest, że taki pogląd może ukryć coś konkretnego. Ta perspektywa od samego początku upiększa Koreę, a także w tym samym czasie ukrywa rzeczywisty obraz Korei. E. Burton Holmes był podróżnikiem i często używał swojego „aparatu fotograficznego” do nagrywania rzeczy, których był świadkiem podczas podróży po całym świecie. Tak więc jego reportaż (travelogue) i film fabularny o Korei z 1901 roku opierały się na ścisłej obserwacji i raczej obiektywnym punkcie widzenia. Niemniej jednak nie mógł on uniknąć perspektywy modelu kolonizatora świata, innymi słowy, geograficznego dyfuzjonizmu

Introduction: towards a cross-disciplinary history of the global in the humanities and the social sciences

The interdisciplinary analysis of historical and contemporary global issues with increasingly productive flows of theories, concepts, methods, and practices is a principal goal in global studies. However, within the humanities and the social sciences, the idea of the 'global' is often restrained by disciplinary boundaries, with scant dialogue and transference between them. The present special issue addresses this fundamental gap by historicizing the notion of the 'global' in an interdisciplinary dialogue, with approaches from history, sociology, anthropology, literary studies, art history, and media and communication studies. Our objective is to gain greater insights on the global approach from several disciplines and to let their borrowings and contributions emerge