Henri Matisse Drawing: An Eye-Hand Interaction Study Based on Archival Film.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) attached fundamental importance to his drawings, in particular to the famous Themes et Variations series. These were accomplished following a precise method, starting with arduous life studies and evolving into brilliant spontaneous drawings. A 1946 archival documentary film showing the artist drawing four portraits of his grandson Gerard was shot in such a way as to allow the present author to undertake a detailed eye-hand interaction analysis of the drawing process. It was found that Matisse’s temporal working rhythm and use of motor memory resulted in a more direct approach than that used by most painters. Taken together with remarks the artist made throughout his lifetime, these results provide a cognitive interpretation of his drawing method

The role of zooarchaeology in the interpretation of socioeconomic status: a discussion with reference to Medieval Europe

Social inequality is ubiquitous in human society, and the concept of social standing has been of fundamental importance throughout time (Price and Feinman 1995). The inference of social status has encountered problems in many areas of archaeology (see Orser 1990; Grenville 1997), and the use of zooarchaeology as part of an integrated approach may contribute to our understanding of important issues (Crabtree 1990). This paper reviews the various criteria used to infer socioeconomic status from faunal assemblages, taking examples from a variety of contexts, but concentrating primarily on medieval Europe, and England in particular. The problems associated with the application of zooarchaeological methods to this sphere of research are discussed, and some possible solutions proposed. It is suggested that zooarchaeology can play an important role in answering questions relating to socioeconomic standing, provided that it forms part of a wider archaeological strategy

Thoroughly modern Mannheim and the postmodern Weltanschauung.

There are a number of features of Mannheim’s method for the interpretation of weltanschauung that laid the foundations for his later sociology of knowledge and that could be considered as prefiguring the methodological principles of a postmodern world-view. Like postmodernists he stresses the significance of culture, and addresses the role of ideas and meaning in the form of society. His tripartite theory of meaning moves away from a determination of meaning by authorial intentions and towards the indeterminacy of documentary meaning. His theory of ‘relationism’ follows a similar pattern to the postmodernist concept of ‘difference’ and ultimately relies on immanent criteria of validity. Despite these continuities with postmodern perspectives I argue that Mannheim cannot be turned into a postmodernist because he seeks a foundation for meaning and its interpretation in historicism. Moreover, while his method analyses material objects and social subjects in the same way, he nonetheless maintains an ontological distinction between objects and subjects that distinguishes his approach from the hyperrealist perspective of postmodernism. If Mannheim cannot be claimed as a postmodernist before its time, his approach to analysing world-views reveals the modernist pretensions of theories that describe a postmodern weltanschauung as if the current epoch could be characterised in a unitary and coherent way

High altitude climbers as ethnomethodologists making sense of cognitive dissonance: ethnographic insights from an attempt to scale Mt Everest

This ethnographic study examined how a group of high altitude climbers (N = 6)drew on ethnomethodological principles (the documentary method of interpretation, reflexivity, indexicality, and membership) to interpret their experiences of cognitive dissonance during an attempt to scale Mt. Everest. Data were collected via participant observation, interviews, and a field diary. Each data source was subjected to a content mode of analysis. Results revealed how cognitive dissonance reduction is accomplished from within the interaction between a pattern of self-justification and self-inconsistencies; how the reflexive nature of cognitive dissonance is experienced; how specific features of the setting are inextricably linked to the cognitive dissonance experience; and how climbers draw upon a shared stock of knowledge in their experiences with cognitive dissonance

Remnants of the past, history and the present.

The article interprets that it is hardly surprising then that philosophers of history point to the slender relationship between the raw facts of the past and understanding the past. The latter is an act of interpreting fragments from the past and not infrequently these support several points of view. This question has particular significance at a time when historians are increasingly thinking about historical materials and evidence in radically new ways that are fundamentally changing the nature of history as an academic discipline. In the light of these changes, the first part of the article sketches three different sets of epistemological assumptions that operate in contemporary history; the second applies these assumptions to a more detailed analysis of four pieces of historical material. Reflecting on the analysis in part two, the conclusion discusses the complex relations between the present and the past

Część zamiast całości czyli sposób na cenzorów. "Szkoła podstawowa" Tomasza Zygadły – wzorcowy film kina „nowej zmiany”

Mikołaj Jazdon in his article presents an analysis and interpretation of a documentary that became a “trademark” of the young generation’s cinema from the decade of the Cinema of Moral Anxiety in Poland. Zygadło filmed the social behaviour of students in a Warsaw primary school to depict the fatal influence of the communist system on Polish youth, who were encouraged to tattle on each other. The method of portraying a social group from one place, as in Zygadłos Primary School, became popular among other documentary filmmakers from his generation. They began to shoot films about institutions like factories, schools or hospitals, focusing on the social relations between the people working there. These films were intentionally made as metaphors of Poland in the 1970s and of the rules operating in a country ruled by the Communist Party. The auteur strategy of depicting reality in a “pars pro toto” manner allowed documentary filmmakers to outwit the Party censors.Mikołaj Jazdon in his article presents an analysis and interpretation of a documentary that became a “trademark” of the young generation’s cinema from the decade of the Cinema of Moral Anxiety in Poland. Zygadło filmed the social behaviour of students in a Warsaw primary school to depict the fatal influence of the communist system on Polish youth, who were encouraged to tattle on each other. The method of portraying a social group from one place, as in Zygadłos Primary School, became popular among other documentary filmmakers from his generation. They began to shoot films about institutions like factories, schools or hospitals, focusing on the social relations between the people working there. These films were intentionally made as metaphors of Poland in the 1970s and of the rules operating in a country ruled by the Communist Party. The auteur strategy of depicting reality in a “pars pro toto” manner allowed documentary filmmakers to outwit the Party censors.