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Validity in Interpretation

The object of interpretation is textual meaning in and for itself and may be called the meaning of the text. The object of criticism, on the other hand, is that meaning in its bearing on something else (standards of value, present concerns, etc.), and this object may therefore may be called the significance of the text. If textual meaning itself could change, contemporary readers would lack a basis for agreement or disagreement. No one would bother seriously to discuss such a protean object. The interpreter has to distinguish what a text implies from what it does not imply; he must give the text its full due, but he must also preserve norms and limits. For hermeneutic theory, the problem is to find a principle for judging whether various possible implications should or should not be admitted. By classifying the text as belonging to a particular genre, the interpreter automatically posits a general horizon for its meaning. The genre provides a sense of the whole, a notion of typical meaning components. Thus, before we interpret a text, we often classify it as casual conversation, lyric poem, military command, scientific prose, occasional verse, novel, epic, etc. The interpreter's job is to specify the text's horizon as far as he is able, and this means, ultimately, that he must familiarize himself with the typical meanings of the author's mental and experiential world. Hermeneutics must stress the reconstruction of the author's aims and attitudes in order to evolve guides and norms for construing the meaning of the text. Ambiguity or, for that matter, vagueness is not the same as indeterminateness. This is the crux of the issue. To say that verbal meaning is determinate is not to exclude complexities of meaning but only to insist that a text's meaning is what it is and not a hundred other things. Taken in this sense, a vague or ambiguous text is just as determinate as a logical proposition; it means what it means and nothing else.

Ambiguity or, for that matter, vagueness is not the same as indeterminateness. This is the crux of the issue.

Imagining Childhood

The images of children that abound in Western art do not simply mirror reality; they are imaginative constructs, representing childhood as a special stage of human life, or emblematic of the human condition itself. In a compelling book ranging widely across time, national boundaries, and genres from ancient Egyptian amulets to Picasso's Guernica, Erika Langmuir demonstrates that no historic period has a monopoly on the 'discovery of childhood'. Famous pictures by great artists, as well as barely known anonymous artefacts, illustrate not only Western society's perennially ambivalent attitudes to children, but also the many and varied functions that works of art have played throughout its history.

In a compelling book ranging widely across time, national boundaries, and genres from ancient Egyptian amulets to Picasso's Guernica, Erika Langmuir demonstrates that no historic period has a monopoly on the 'discovery of childhood'.

Frontiers in Social Movement Theory

Social protest movements such as the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement mobilize and sustain themselves in ways that have long been of interest to social scientists. In this book some of the most distinguished scholars in the area of collective action present new theories about this process, fashioning a rich and conceptually sophisticated social psychology of social movements that goes beyond theories currently in use. The book includes sometimes competing, sometimes complementary paradigms by theorists in resource mobilization, conflict, feminism, and collective action and by social psychologists and comparativists. These authors view the social movement actor from a more sociological perspective than do adherents of rational choice theory, and they analyze ways in which structural and cultural determinants influence the actor and generate or inhibit collective action and social change. The authors state that the collective identities and political consciousness of social movement actors are significantly shaped by their race, ethnicity, class, gender, or religion. Social structure--with its disparities in resources and opportunities--helps determine the nature of grievances, resources, and levels of organization. The book not only distinguishes the mobilization processes of consensus movements from those of conflict movements but also helps to explain the linkages between social movements, the state, and societal changes.

Carol McClurg Mueller The resource mobilization paradigm brought new life to
social movement research in the l970s, when it was widely recognized that the
work of McCarthy and Zald (l973, l977), Gamson (l968, l975), Ober- schall (l973),
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