From primitives to primates

Where do our images about early hominids come from? In this fascinating in-depth study, David Van Reybrouck demonstrates how input from ethnography and primatology has deeply influenced our visions about the past from the 19th century to this day – often far beyond the available evidence. Victorian scholars were keen to look at contemporary Australian and Tasmanian aboriginals to understand the enigmatic Neanderthal fossils. Likewise, today’s primatologists debate to what extent bonobos, baboons or chimps may be regarded as stand-ins for early human ancestors. The belief that the contemporary world provides ‘living links’ still goes strong. Such primate models, Van Reybrouck argues, continue the highly problematic ‘comparative method’ of the Victorian times. He goes on to show how the field of ethnoarchaeology has succeeded in circumventing the major pitfalls of such analogical reasoning. A truly interdisciplinary study, this work shows how scholars working in different fields can effectively improve their methods for interpreting the deep past by understanding the historical challenges of adjacent disciplines. Overviewing two centuries of intellectual debate in fields as diverse as archaeology, ethnography and primatology, Van Reybrouck’s book is one long plea for trying to understand the past on its own terms, rather than as facile projections from the present. David Van Reybrouck (Bruges, 1971) was trained as an archaeologist at the universities of Leuven, Cambridge and Leiden. Before becoming a highly successful literary author (The Plague, Mission, Congo…), he worked as a historian of ideas. For more than twelve years, he was coeditor of Archaeological Dialogues. In 2011-12, he held the prestigious Cleveringa Chair at the University of Leiden

The Promises and Pitfalls of the European Citizens' Initiative

Throughout the world, the idea of "democracy", the idea that the people should be governed by the people, remains a popular idea, enthusiastically embraced in many places by the opponents of autocratic regimes and safely protected in other places by the norms of political correctness. Nonetheless, the actual functioning of democratic regimes, based as it is in our country and elsewhere on the electoral process, seems to experience, if not a crisis, at least a deep malaise. And this malaise prompts a questioning of its foundations and a search for alternatives.Two such alternatives are provided by deliberative assemblies of randomly chosen citizens on the pattern of the G1000 experiment that took place in Brussels in 2011 and by the European Citizens' Initiatives launched in 2012. The 7th Re-Bel event organized on 24 May 2012 took these two interesting new experiments as the starting point of a reflection on the malaise of democracy and what to do about it.The present e-book includes a much enriched version of the two main presentations made on that occasion, respectively by Didier Caluwaerts (VUB) and Min Reuchamps (UCL) and by Kristof Jacobs (University of Nijmegen). These two pieces are preceded by a set of aphorisms on democracy by the historian and writer David Van Reybrouck, the mastermind of the G1000 and author of Tegen verkiezingen (De Bezige Bij, 2013, translated as Contre les élections, Actes Sud, 2014). They are followed by a commentary by Philippe Van Parijs, which benefited greatly from the discussion at the Re-Bel event and in particular from the contributions by Henri Monceau (Notre Europe), Charlotte Rive (European Commission), Jean-Pierre Rondas (ex VRT) and Daniel Van Lerberghe (Euractiv). And this commentary is in turn followed by an epilogue in the form of a letter in which David Van Reybrouck responds to Philippe Van Parijs's commentary

A sketchbook of Globalization

edition: 1status: publishe

Mag Europa leesbaar zijn?

status: publishe

Zoonation, A Global Zoo Expedition

Artist book by Filip Van Dingenen published as a part of the 'Zoonation' project which also included a website and an art project. On his many travels, Van Dingenen observed and analyzed the visual culture of the zoo from various historical, anthropological, typological and aesthetic angles. Zoonation studies the analogies between cultural science and artistic approaches to their subject. The book, designed by Luc Derycke, is a startling hybrid synthesis of a tourist guide for zoo visitors, a report of a cultural-historical expedition and a pseudo-scientific case study.edition: 1status: publishe

Huis 10. De gezamenlijke constructie van natuurlijke en sociale identiteiten tijdens archeologisch veldwerk

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe