Introduction: The Anthropology of Creations

Berghahn Books, 2007

Re[Ut'ICtS 2.'

This paper shows how humankind's creation in the image of God is expressed in three relationships: Worship, Fellowship and Stewardship. Together these three relationships provide the context and content for all of human culture.

2012

BFA Thesis in Visual Arts (Honors). Conceptual theory and influences behind body of work in visual arts/artist talk. The Archaeology of Being explores the nature of emergence—depicting the way being materializes from non-being (literally and metaphorically) through paint, print, and digital techniques. Drawing from philosophy, science and visual art, I attempt to unpack the point at which something takes form, in conversation with the semiotics of anthropology and Taoism. By carefully arranging visual components in layers, each piece offers a glimpse into the ethereal connection between form and the spark which initiates and combines. Through the layers themselves, I open dialogue with the nature of interconnection, analyzing the originating space where all substance takes root. Visual elements in the show can be viewed in their entirety, yet allow the viewer to peel back individual moments, offering a virtual archaeological dig of the combination and recombination of elements. As scholar Robert Wenger says, “Archaeological excavators and visual artists are involved in a process of image formation. They not only document and replicate the appearance of things, but also make ideas, concepts, and experiences visible." Moving beyond mimetic representation, the esoteric becomes visible within a new visual vocabulary. Pieces described in the paper can be viewed as images from the exhibition here: http://www.renadamsart.com/the-archaeology-of-being.html

Social Analysis, 2002

Whether implicitly or explicitly, convention is reinvented again and again in the course of action. Of course, since its continuance is predicated upon invention, it may often be reinvented in ways that depart somewhat from earlier representations. Most of these departures, whether gradual or precipitous, collective or individual, amount to mere alterations of imagery, like the cult ideologies of tribal peoples, or clothing styles in America. But when changes occur that serve to alter the distinction between what is innate and what is artificial, we can speak of a significant conventional change (Wagner 1981: 104-5). One of Roy Wagner's consistent positions is that meaning (or culture) does not simply exist as something out there in the world, but that it is elicited and created, something that people do and make. Anthropologists create culture as a more or less plausible account of what we think people are up to, and one of Wagner's complaints is that the anthropologist's success in this task often comes at the expense of recognizing the creativity of those we study. In our notions of culture-as-system we invent "rules" (conventions) and models of seamless wholes that leave precious little for people to do apart from being rule-abiding or occasionally deviant, when in fact they are improvising their way through life, making it up as they go along. Although this might sound a bit like Bourdieu's practice theory, Wagner sees something else at work, a flow of innovation that leverages meaning out of the dialectic between the realm of the innate and the realm of human responsibility and action. Discontinuous but constantly impinging on one another, these realms provide the dynamic that moves culture along. For Melanesianists of the day, this was powerful stuff, for it obviatedin dual the sense of doing away with while rendering obvious-what had for long seemed like a problem in the analysis of Melanesian cultures,

Dialectical Anthropology, 1985

Human children become cultural beings by learning to participate in the cultural activities and practices going on around them. Household pets grow up in the midst of these same cultural activities and practices, but they do not learn to participate in them in anything like the same way as human children. Even chimpanzees and bonobos raised in human homes and treated like human children still retain, for the most part, their species-typical social and cognitive skills without turning into cultural beings of the human kind. This difference suggests that humans are biologically adapted, in ways that other animal species are not, for becoming cultural beings by tuning in to what others around them are doing, and thereby learning from them. Moreover, on occasion, young children even create with others smallscale cultural activities and routines involving one or another form of collaboration, or even collaborative pretense. Such cultural creation would also seem to be unique to human beings, and of course cultural creation leads to ever new cultural environments in which human cognitive ontogeny takes place.

2011

Abstract: Meaning and culture mutually constitute each other. Culture rests on meaning, whereas meaning exists and is propagated in culture. The uniquely human quest for meaning transpires against the background of culture and is simultaneously recreating culture. The current chapter aims to explore different aspects of this dynamic relationship between meaning and culture. We begin by defining meaning and culture, and elaborating the nature of their intricate relationship.

2019

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead -his eyes are closed. … It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.

Georgina Tsolidis (Ed.), "Identities in Transition", Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford 2012.

In this essay I analyse and develop the concept of culture that has been elaborated by the German philosophical anthropology. The concept of culture proposed by the group of philosophers is strictly connected with the holistic understanding of man as at the same time a biological and a spiritual being. Everything that belongs to the phenomenon of man has to be considered in this double context. According to these philosophical anthropologists all human achievements result from a very particular position of man towards the world. Having in mind primarily the morphological aspect of human existence Arnold Gehlen defines man as an “undetermined being”. Helmuth Plessner in turn characterizes man as an “eccentric being”. Both authors pay special attention to the human ability to grasp boundaries of one’s own body and to consider oneself as a being detached from their surrounding environment. These particular abilities put man in the face of the open world. The openness is equivocal: on the one hand it offers huge amount of possibilities for action but on the other hand it deprives man of the animal confidence of action and forces them to make every decision at their own risk. In order to improve this uncertain position man is coerced into elaborating various cognitive and pragmatic tools (institutions). At the creation of these tools the crucial role plays the ability to take other perspective, which enriches interaction with both cognitive and normative dimension. The exchange of perspectives wouldn’t be possible if a particular external point of view weren’t assumed. The point of view is considered to be a dialectical interplay of individual and social perspective. The duality of structure, first described in the context of human anthropological structure, appears to be the pivotal aspect of culture and social reality alike. In the light of this duality culture turns out to be a dynamic system that is continuously negotiated and adapted for changing social conditions. Culture is driven by interactions as a result of which rules are absorbed, reproduced and modified. Such a model does not offer any opportunity of steering culture from above. Instead, it burdens every individual action with the responsibility for culture evolution.