Embedded and Re-purposed Technologies: Human Mobility Practices in Maasailand

This article analyses how cultural patterns and social organization shape the meaning-making of human mobility and technology, and vice versa. We extend the definition of mobile technologies from engineered devices with portable quality to tools supporting peoples’ customary mobile practices. Specifically, we analyse the embodiment of contemporary mobile technologies into Maasai culture. Mobile practices have socio-cultural, economic and political meanings. The very fabric of the culture through which mobile practices are negotiated here is cattle. In focus are the mobilities shaping Maasailand. We argue that, rather than causing radical cultural change, novel mobile technologies are embedded, rationalized and re-purposed. Furthermore, a local-to-global cooperation on indigenous rights is facilitated.     

米歇尔·马费索利和他的后现代性

长时间定义了现代性的统一社会正在分崩离析。社团分散,体制衰弱,意识形态崩溃,不可逆转的重大历史变局正在欧洲发生。而后现代性日益壮大,丰繁形式的社会性已经萌芽,世界的复魅开始发生。人们从一神论、基督教、资本主义、马克思主义、进步主义等整体性学说中松绑,开始获取新的经验并转向伦理的多样性。借助技术的革命,部落主义与游牧主义重获形式,充分展现出一种理性活力论。在这样的后现代性中,新的社会能量更加基于对世界的沉思,人们不再尝试用概念去理解和拘束涌现的事物,而只是陪伴与观察。社会学家应当对这样的变化做方法的研究,因为感情和感觉取代了理智的理想;亦应重视有机思想,因为它们从自身内部萌芽和发展。简言之,感情的逻辑将接替同一性的逻辑。不同于现代性主要采用分析或分类的方法研究社会现象,后现代性采用形式的方法,其中包括建立了社会现象的各因素之间的关系。世界的除魅已无可避免地要为当前社会价值的新变让位,而人们也必将从世界的复魅中获得更好的适应性。     

部落游牧性

与建立在独立个人契约联合基础上的、在近现代期间占有统治地位的社会组织相反,在当前,我们看到了原始型的(即古老的)形式的返回,它与原始社会的游牧生活和部落制重新连结。应当注意的是,这种返回并非是以一种循环的方式进行,而是螺旋形;这是因为它同时结合了传统的形式(部落)和技术的发展(互联网)。在这样的意义上,与马克斯.韦伯告诉我们的"世界的除魅"相反,我们看到一个真实的"世界的复魅"的诞生。     

Nomadictates: Staging Roots and Routes in The Essaouira Gnawa Festival

The aim of this paper is to study Moroccan music festivals, especially the Essaouira Gnawa festival, against the existing theories on globalization, while contributing new concepts (nomadictates, recurrents and exclusives, wes-turn/eas-turn modernity) aimed at overcoming the reductionism and totalitarianism of the cultural imperialism thesis with regard to artefacts and cultural texts. The grotesque circulation of western cultural artefacts is justifiably judged to be agonizing for cultural theorists who want to be sure that the unequal transmissions of products across the world will not harm the local cultural, linguistic, and economic capital of the less dominant other (Hall, 1992 Hall, S. (ed.) (1992). Encoding/decoding, Culture, media, language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972–79 (London: Routledge). [Google Scholar]). We will examine music and festivity in relation to world flows, while holding the argument that the appropriation of western artefacts locally has always been part of a not-so-novel process of mobility of what we call world cultural nomadictates (nomadic dictates). To drive this idea home, we will open the discussion at hand on to existing controversies around notions of place, authenticity, and circulation. The Essaouira festival of Gnawa music and the cosmopolitan Gnawa artist Hakmoun are employed as examples to cover the translocal dynamics of cultural nomadism, whereby humans and objects vacillate constantly between roots and routes.     

北方草原游牧业经济的发展轨迹与基本经验——人类第一次社会大分工的伟大成就

北方草原古族经过第一次社会大分工同其他人群分离之后,创造了与自然生态存在相适应的游牧生产方式和游牧文化,走过一条大传承小曲折的发展之路。他们在长期生产实践中逐步形成和取得本质认识的＂天人合一＂观念,深刻反映了人类的生产规模必须与自然资源的承载能力平衡才能使生产得到适度扩张又不损害自然生态的规律。生产水平发展到不能满足人类日益增长的物质需要而必须扩大生产规模时,人们必须遵照这一规律的要求,以科学的态度对自身和自然资源做＂固本培元＂的工作,改革自己的生产行为和生产模式,提高自然资源、自然生态的质量,使二者的力量对比在新的基础上取得新的平衡。