Design als ‘mediating interface’ Zur Zeugen‐ und Zeichenhaftigkeit des Radioapparates

Design as Mediating Interface: Historical Evidence and Symbolic Enunciation of the Radio Set. – Based on a case study on the invention of the radio station scale in the late 1920's and early 1930's, this article pleads for an interdisciplinary look at the importance of design as a mediating interface in the production‐consumption junction. In this cultural history perspective on technology, the material artifact matters both as a witness of and a sign for the symbolic meaning and appropriation of the technical object, which transgresses the functional logic of instrumental rationality. In presenting five different perspectives on design offering some alternative looks for a cultural history of technology, this theoretically inspired essay wants to sound the critical potential of a multilayered semantic approach to the radio apparatus as a prominent representation of a radical innovation in media technology.     

Experientia contra experientiam. Religiöse ‘innere’ und ‘äußere’ Erfahrung im Spätmittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit.

In the late Middle Ages there are two different conceptions of experience: a non-religious, exterior experience, derived from physical perceptions: the Aristotelian conception, and a religious, interior experience: the conception of monastic theology, represented by Bernhard of Clairvaux. In the transition from Middle Ages to modern times the distinction between exterior and interior experience is transferred into the religious experience.     

Comments On ‘Technological Choices in Ceramic Production’, Archaeometry, 42(1), 1–76, 2000

Sillar, B., and Tite, M. S., 2000, The challenge of ‘technological choices for materials science approaches in archaeology, Archaeometry 42 , 2–20. Livingstone Smith, A., 2000, Processing clay for pottery in northern Cameroon: social and technical requirements, Archaeometry 42 , 21–42. Sillar, B., 2000, Dung by preference: the choice of fuel as an example of how Andean pottery production is embedded within wider technical, social, and economic practices, Archaeometry 42 , 43–60. Pool, C. A., 2000, Why a kiln? Firing technology in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz (Mexico), Archaeometry 42 , 61–76.     

‘Bongo Bongo’ and reconfiguring the ‘other’ (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Fear of immigration has brought about a shift in UK politics. In this new climate, diversity is no longer welcome and the Home Office's message is clear: ‘go home or face arrest’. This editorial addresses the overlap between legal and ethnic categories in this politics of alterity and argues that what is at stake in these debates is nothing less than the reconfiguration of a fit‐and‐proper UK citizen.     

Being and ‘Non-Being’ in Ambonwari (Papua New Guinea) Ritual

By focusing on children involved in the ritual practices in Ambonwari village, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, this essay compares two types of ritual: that of healing and that of male initiation. Like other life crisis rituals both deal with two dimensions of the Ambonwari life-world, that is with the living and the dead and, in a broader sense, with people and spirits. Though both are based upon the same cosmology there are fundamental differences between them. First, healers in healing ceremonies treat uninitiated children as ‘non-beings’. From the perspective of Ambonwari ‘selves’ or ‘beings’, children belong to this domain. They exist as extensions of their parents or carers, from whom they cannot be separated conceptually. Second, by examining the Ambonwari concepts of negation I show that healers do not approach the domain of cosmological non-existence: they are not concerned with the cosmogony of the Ambonwari life-world. The male initiation rituals do just the opposite, however. It is only in the male initiation ritual, seen as a cosmogonic event, that young boys are cut off from their parents and ‘thrown’ abruptly into a state of becoming. Unlike the healing rites, these rituals treat young boys as both Ambonwari beginnings and Ambonwari beings. I argue that Ambonwari initiation rituals are not concerned with symbolic death followed by rebirth, but with states of being. Initiation means that death becomes possible for a child. The initiated boy will now be able to die as an Ambonwari being.