Social scientific approach Essay Example for Free

Social scientific approach Essay Topic: What according to Whitelam (1998), Dutcher-Walls (2009) and Steinberg (1995) is a social scientific approach to the OT? How does this approach help us understand Judges 9 better? Introduction: The aim of social scientific criticism, as a subfield of biblical exegesis, is to study the biblical materials as a reflection of their cultural setting. The meaning and/or the social background of the text are thus more fully illumined by the exercise of sociological and anthropological methods and theories. The era of modern social-scientific research began in the late 19th century with the work of Karl Marx, Auguste Comte, and Herbert Spencer. Their social theories created an atmosphere of curiosity about the human condition and advanced the evolutionary perspective that had taken hold with the writing of Charles Darwin. As sociology and anthropology emerged as separate sciences. Social scientific criticism is an interpretive method that uses heuristic models from the social sciences to understand the social context of ancient Israel and to interpret texts create within that context. From 1960’s there develops some of the Social groups, cultural relationships, patterns of behaviour, political structures which all of them are under the topic social criticism. As I have stated above that in 19th century many of the scholars were very much interested on the issue of social. In 1970 they were uses of the social criticism methods from variety of situations, and especial the one of sociology , which stress the life between social behavior of the people during the time of the old testament. Which has emerged is how scholars might have access to the ancient past and the multifaceted social world of ancient Palestine and the Mediterranean. The quest of the social world of the bible Those who were travelling from the east they reported about the culture that hey were seeing in different with the one of the western culture. Exactly after the important influence from the Palestine archeology of the nation , when they publish the thing. For the early scholar this things about the quest of the social world became an important thing for them to consider. For them to understand the west text, they reconstruct the history and the social , which is out of the bible. They tried to study in order to understand the social and political from the bronze age from Palestine , of the time of the roman empire. The bible and its social world In order to understand the different directions which now characterize the new quest, it is important to understand the convergence of a series of influential trends whose combined force has transformed biblical studies in the latter part of the twentieth century. It was the result of the convergence of new intellectual currents in psychoanalysis, linguistics and philosophy which helped undermine the authority and the stability of established disciplines and their previously thought assured results. The rise to prominence of newer literary studies within biblical studies was part of this general movement. The publication of Robert Alter;s The Art of Biblical Narrative and David Gunns The Fate of King Saul and The Story of King David had a profound effect on the way in which biblical narratives were read as artful constructions. Thus the books of Samuel, for instance, were increasingly understood as skilful and serious literature rather than primary sources for the monarchy of Saul and David. Many biblical books which had previously been considered to be historical, in the sense that they preserved a reasonably accurate picture of the history of ancient Israel or later communities, became the subject of detailed literary treatments. Furthermore, developments in historical studies in general, allied to increasing archaeological data from the region, raised serious questions about the world of ancient Palestine and the Mediterranean as it had been understood. The result was a general disillusionment with previous historical studies, which were seen to be too limited in scope or theologically motivated. The search for the social world of the Bible since the nineteenth century had been closely identified with the history of Israel through to the first century C E. The gradual and ever-increasing erosion of this history, its increasing divorce from the biblical texts was the catalyst for fresh attempts to explore and reconstruct the social world of ancient Palestine and the Mediterranean world. The appeal to the social sciences was an attempt to recover the many aspects of society which were not mentioned in the texts but which formed an essential element in the social world from which they emerged. The appeal to archaeology, sociology and anthropology, in particular, was seen as addressing some of the deficiencies in the biblical texts as sources for their own social world. This was paralleled by an increasing interest in the social production of the biblical literature, its ideological aspects, the factional disputes which lay behind it and the social and political world it represented or reflected. The trends and directions in current research which constitute the new search for the social world of the Bible are much too varied a phenomenon to be categorized by a single phrase such as the sociological approach. It is ironic that the new search for the social world of the Bible, initiated by Mendenhall and Gottwald, has resulted in a redefinition of the biblical period which has severely restricted its chronological limits. Earlier in the century, it was understood as stretching over two millennia from the early second millennium to the end of the first century CE. The impact of literary studies, which increasingly questioned the relationship of the complex of biblical narratives from Genesis to 2 Kings to history, has undermined confidence in the construction of vast periods of Israelite history. The result has been the loss of the Patriarchal and Conquest periods from many historical accounts and an increasingly fierce debate over the nature of the settlement and early monarchic periods. Ironically, therefore, the very search for the world of the Bible which informed many of these revisionist studies of the history of Israel has resulted in the removal of several centuries previously attributed to that world. The conviction that the Hebrew Bible was the product of the Persian and Hellenistic periods has underpinned this radical shift. R. P. Carroll states baldly what many biblical scholars have been coming to accept for a long time: The Hebrew Bible is the product of the second Temple period. This ought to be an uncontentious statement, but I imagine some unreconstructed biblical scholars may wish to contest it in favour of a First Temple period origin for the Bible with some appendices from the time of the second Temple. While I can see that there may be something to be said for the view that the Bible contains fragments of material from before the collapse of the temple in the sixth century, the claim that the Bible as we know it (i. . the fully redacted final form of the various books constituting it) comes from the Second Temple period seems to me ungainsayable. The implications of this conviction are highlighted by P. R. Davies when he writes of the desire to see the biblical period properly defined as the period in which the Bible was written or, more correctly, when the literature in its biblical form was compo sed, since by its very nature, the Bible, being a collection of scriptures, was not written, but ratified by consent or decree or both (and thus, of course, the term biblical authors is also misleading). The implication of this now widespread conviction, a return to the position of Wellhausen in many ways; is that if the Bible is the product of the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods, then the search for the social world of the Bible should be restricted to those periods. The key problem which has emerged, and which dominates all attempts to understand the social world of the Bible, is the complex relationship between texts and their social worlds. The legacy of literary studies has been to undermine confidence in the assumption that the world of the texts coincided with the views of the past they portrayed. However, dating the final form of these texts to the Persian and Hellenistic periods or first-century Roman Palestine does not solve the problem of their relationship to the socio-historical backgrounds or ideological influences which shaped them. The methodological problems have multiplied and sharpened on how to investigate periods where there is insufficient (literary) evidence, particularly for the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, and how to bridge the gap between text and social reality in the Persian to Roman periods. The biblical traditions can no longer be understood as simple reflections of earlier historical reality. Rather they offer a valuable insight into perceptions of that reality from particular points of view at the time of the writers. This is not to suggest that such texts may not preserve some authentic memories and information about the past but these are increasingly difficult to assess. The relationship between the text and society is considerably more complex than the common binary opposition between literature and society, text and context. For example, the social practices presented in a text may not correspond to any such practices in reality: they may be an attempt to subvert current social practices. How far a text subverts the dominant or some other perception of reality or represents a dominant view depends on its relationship to other pieces of literature, monuments, artefacts, etc. that can reveal important comparative information about social attitudes or perceptions of reality. Many New Testament scholars, in particular, have appealed to the social sciences in order to try to understand the implications of key concepts in New Testament literature in terms of its wider social setting. However, Carroll offers an important reminder of the inherent difficulties in such attempts to move from textual levels to social world. It is ironic that as the focal point of the social world of the Bible has shifted from the Iron Age to Persian, it has become evident that very little is known about the social and historical background of the Second Temple period. It is for this reason that scholars appeal to social-scientific studies and data in order to try to make sense of the fragmentary and partial textual and art factual data available. Carroll concludes that the gap between texts and the real world remains as unbridgeable as ever. 16 However, the biblical texts offer access to the privileged conception of reality of a literate stratum of society revealing little or nothing of the sub-literate culture, to use Eric Hobsbawms phrase, or the deep-seated movements of history. As such, the value of these texts as a source for the historian is not so much in terms of the past they purport to describe but as such an insight. They are important, therefore, as much for what they choose to leave out as for what they include. The multi-layered nature of the texts, their adaptability and vitality means that the historian needs to ask how they shaped and were shaped by their different contexts, what audiences they address, and what other possible constructions of the past they deny and thereby silence. The appeal to social scientific models and data drawn from social and cultural anthropology, sociology, economics, politics, archaeology or cultural studies has been instrumental in helping to uncover the social world of ancient Palestine and the Mediterranean. Society and history There are more inclusive history of Palestine, but though it cannot rely on the perspective of the elite. They were people of late bronze age and its transition was very much slow and poor. They were mixing up of the local , Palestine and Egyptian history and the society, were the interpretation of the text and the languages used sometimes were not that easy as they were staying together. The quest for the social world of the Bible has been one of the major goals of biblical scholarship since the early nineteenth century. Travellers reports from the Middle East of a culture radically different from that of the West; along with the increasing excitement of reports in the national press of archaeological discoveries in Palestine; captivated audiences across Europe and the USA. Such developments offered the prospect of revealing the world from which the Bible had emerged in the ancient past. Monumental works such as George Adam Smiths historical geography of Palestine brought alive an ancient landscape on which the biblical events were played out. At the same time; biblical scholars were trying to reconstruct the history and social contexts out of which the Bible arose in order to understand a foundational text for Western culture. The critical methods which emerged were designed to date and locate the biblical texts, or their constituent parts; in specific historical contexts in order to reveal their meaning.

Dionysus and the Unraveling of Ideologies in The Bacchae Essay

Dionysus and the Unraveling of Ideologies in The Bacchae    Some evaluations claim that the Dionysus appearing in The Bacchae is fairly true embodiment of the ideals of ancient Athens. He demands only worship and proper reverence for his name, two matters of honor that pervaded both the Greek tragedies and the pious society that viewed them. In other plays, Oedipus' consultations with Apollo and the many Choral appeals to Zeus reveal the Athenian respect for their gods, while Electra's need for revenge and Antigone's obligation to bury Polyneices both epitomize the themes of respect and dignity. Yet although Dionysus personifies these two motifs, his clashes with the rest of Athenian tradition seem to make him its true adversary. Dionysius distinctly opposes the usual views on gender, age, rationality and divinity, leaving the reader to wonder whether these contrasts were Euripidean attempts to illuminate specific facets of the culture itself. Examination of Dionysus's challenges should begin with The Bacchae's most obvious perversion of custom, the question of gender. As Dionysus indicates early in the play, the enraptured band of Bacchant followers is comprised only of females: "Every woman in Thebes-but the women only- / I drove from home" (35-36). Though Cadmus further illuminates the matter by raising the question, "Are we the only men / who will dance for Bacchus?" (195-196), the text offers no definitive explanation for why Dionysus calls solely upon the women. A superficial reading might suggest that Euripides attempted to portray the stereotypical "weaker sex" as the one "more susceptible to invasive passions than men, especially eros and daemonic possession," but more is probably at stake.   Ã‚  Ã‚   As Edith Hall ... ...ty since "things could happen in the real life of Athens which were virtually unthinkable in tragedy, and vice versa." Perhaps the safest assessment of Dionysus is that while not a direct opponent of the traditional ways, his presence, and especially his effect on other characters, serves to highlight many social norms. According to Bernad Knox, "From start to finish, Euripides was 'attempting to show citizens bred in the traditional views...that such conceptions of the gods should offend them.'" Perhaps we as readers will never fully understand the Dionysus that appears in this play, but a closing look at a remark of the Chorus may bring us a step closer to this understanding: --What is wisdom? What gift of the gods is held in honor like this: to hold your hand victorious over the heads of those you hate? Honor is precious forever. (877-881)

China in Africa Essay

In brief the NAI Policy Dialogue questions the World Bank recommendations for large scale agriculture to solve the productivity and equity problems in African agriculture. The whole issue of property rights is intimately linked to the question about agriculture and development. The contribution by Benjaminsen and Sjaastad on aspects of property rights formalization in Africa draws on recent processes in Mali and Tanzania. A general conclusion is that the formalization of property rights in rural areas is a very complex and problematic issue. There is a high risk of the process being co-opted by officials and a wealthy elite, if necessary provisions are not made. Finally, Kjell Havnevik draws our attention to the relationship between inequality and climate change. This contribution is based on a presentation he made in Berlin in June 2007. Decoding the evolving China–Africa relations is the theme of an article written by NAI Research Director Fantu Cheru. He suggests that policies and programmes to deal with the present imbalances between China and Africa require us to revisit and redefine the NEPAD agenda. A regional approach will, in his opinion, help African countries to negotiate from a stronger and better platform. During 2008 researchers at NAI will continue to devote attention to this topic. In our interview section we present one interview with Martha Qorro, professor in English language, on the question about the language of instruction in Tanzania. She is of the opinion that the best way to teach English is not to use it as the language of instruction. She also responds to the question why the question of language of instruction has become such a sensitive political issue in Tanzania. In our second interview Jerome Verdier, chairman of the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission, points to the fact that the TRC’s part of the conflict resolution is nothing new. Liberia has a history of resolving community conflicts at the round table. But in the past there were no prolonged conflicts, such as the recent 4 year period of massive human rights violation. In the research section we present the result of a conference which took place at NAI, Uppsala, in September 2007 regarding the ongoing discussions between EU and the ACP countries on Economic Partnership Agreements. The discussion at the conference highlighted the lack of connection between the poverty alleviation goal and the reality of the negotiations, despite numerous political declarations on both the EU and ACP sides. Key decisions on EPAs will soon be made by EU and ACP ministers. The Africa Europe Group of Interdisciplinary Studies, AEGIS, of which NAI is an active member, is presented through three contributions. Photo by Susanne Linderos News from the Nordic Africa Institute 3/2007First, we bring you an interview with the AEGIS Chair, Professor Patrick Chabal of King’s College, London.

Clara Han And Joao Biehl - 1415 Words

Within each statistic are hundreds or thousands of individuals. To some getting the perspective of the individual may seem counterproductive, the fear of the outlier is prominent; however, there is great value in the specific. Each individual is a microcosm into the world of the general. Clara Han and Joao Biehl have both validated this ideology (that the micro can give us perspective into the macro) with their studies of individual families and institutions within a society, and by doing so have shed light onto the structure of the appropriate culture and/or society. Clara Han conducted work in Chile by observing Sra. Flora and her family, who live in an impoverished neighborhood, for eight years. In her article Han, through her work, was able to convey the true emotional and physical struggles of not only Sra. Flora’s family, but all of the impoverished families in Chile. From her study Han was able to deduce certain social structures within the Chilean society. One of the most prominent messages from Han’s study was that families in poverty stick together. Family, to the poor, is the most important thing. That being said, often multiple generations will live in one household, especially if the other members are unemployed. (Han 2011: 7) Since there are many people living inside one house there has to be someone who is the center of the house, and person is the mother; when Sra. Flora gets sick and/or upset everything falls apart. (Han: 20) Sra. Flora rights the wrongs