DO PALCO DAS (IN)DIFERENÇAS AOS BASTIDORES DA PÓS-MODERNIDADE: TEORIA HISTÓRICA E PRÁTICAS CONTEMPORÂNEAS

RESUMO: Na conturbada esteira epistemológica contemporânea, o presente ensaio crítico tem por objetivo problematizar o discurso de pesquisadores acadêmicos que se sustentam no pensamento relativista pós-moderno em seu estado mais dissimulado e radical. Na sua estrutura, o trabalho contextualiza historicamente o campo "pós" à luz das ideias de Perry Anderson. Num segundo momento, apresenta relatos vivenciados em distintas universidades brasileiras, sendo os quais iluminados e discutidos, essencialmente, pelas teorias de Terry Eagleton e David Harvey. Em síntese, argumenta-se na conclusão que as teorizações radicais "pós-modernas" tendem a se afastar da ideia de "respeito às diferenças", ao fomentar as desconstruções epistemológicas que encaminham teorias, práticas e valores, na direção de uma homogeneização "carismática", mas niilista e superficial

Familie und Schule: zwei Orte der Erziehung.

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Why Did Memetics Fail? Comparative Case Study

Although the theory of memetics appeared highly promising at the beginning, it is no longer considered a scientific theory among contemporary evolutionary scholars. This study aims to compare the genealogy of memetics with the historically more successful gene-culture coevolution theory. This comparison is made in order to determine the constraints that emerged during the internal development of the memetics theory that could bias memeticists to work on the ontology of meme units as opposed to hypotheses testing, which was adopted by the gene-culture scholars. I trace this problem back to the diachronic development of memetics to its origin in the gene-centered anti-group-selectionist argument of George C. Williams and Richard Dawkins. The strict adoption of this argument predisposed memeticists with the a priori idea that there is no evolution without discrete units of selection, which in turn, made them dependent on the principal separation of biological and memetic fitness. This separation thus prevented memeticists from accepting an adaptationist view of culture which, on the contrary, allowed gene-culture theorists to attract more scientists to test the hypotheses, creating the historical success of the gene-culture coevolution theory

Laughing when you shouldn't Being "good" among the Batek of Peninsular Malaysia

Batek people describe their many laughter taboos with utmost seriousness, and in ethical terms of good and bad. Despite this, people often get it wrong—sometimes laughing all the more when the taboos forbid it. Because laughter can be ambiguous and impossible to control, being wrong can be accepted without the need for discussion or reflection. People thus act autonomously while holding deeply shared ethical orientations. Here, ethics can be both culturally predefined and shaped by individuals, as when it comes to laughter people draw on individual and shared concerns in an ad hoc, flexible manner. Laughter's tangled contradictions thus demonstrate that people's understandings of being “good” are mutually implicated with their understandings of what it means to be a person in relation to others