• Title/Summary/Keyword: Subjective Culture

Search Result 344, Processing Time 0.023 seconds

The Paradox of Grant Allen's Physiological Reductionism (그랜트 알렌의 생리학적 환원주의의 역설)

  • Lee, Sungbum
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
    • /
    • v.44
    • /
    • pp.411-430
    • /
    • 2016
  • One of central issues in the Literature and Science discourses during the Victorian era is the relation of physiology to psychology. Many thinkers tackle the question of whether or not psychic phenomena can be reducible to their physiological bases. For instance, Victorian physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter claims that there should be a boundary between physiological and psychological qualities. Yet, his contemporary writer Grant Allen contends for the reduction of psychology into physiology. In the essay, I discuss Grant Allen's work Physiological Aesthetics (1877) so as to eventually problematize his physiological reductionism. I especially highlight the paradox of his physiological aesthetics. In order to clarify my argument, I introduce two concepts: evolutionary aesthetics and physiological reductionism. On the one hand, Allen argues for the development of aesthetic appreciation. The gradual evolution from gaudy to serene colors, for instance, reflects the fine differentiation of sensory organs. He believes that the existence of varied aesthetic pleasures corresponds to the evolution of sensory nerve structures. Nonetheless, Allen ironically gives more weight to the commonality of aesthetic experiences than to this teleological ordering of aesthetic experiences. He argues that there is no fundamental difference among humans in terms of their aesthetic assessments. Furthermore, there is even no essential distinction among plants, animals, and humans in light of their aesthetic appraisals, he states firmly. Although he asserts the gradual advance of aesthetic feelings caused by the intricacy of nervous systems, he simultaneously trivializes the evolution of aesthetic appraisal. In the essay, I highlight this paradox in Allen's physiological aesthetics. It should be underscored, lamentably enough, that Allen seeks biological purity by erasing fine lines among physiology, psychology, and sociality. He estranges aesthetic experiences from subjective variations and their socio-cultural contexts. He makes great efforts to eliminate individual differences and socio-cultural specificities in order to extremely biologize aesthetic experiences. Hence, Allen's physiological aesthetics is marked as the politics of physiological purification.

Improvement of State Ownership of Excavated Cultural Heritage System and Establishment of Policy Direction (발굴매장문화재 국가귀속제도의 정책 개선방안 연구)

  • Kim, Jong soo
    • Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
    • /
    • v.49 no.1
    • /
    • pp.22-43
    • /
    • 2016
  • State Ownership of Excavated Cultural Heritage System was originated from the legislations concerning cultural objects during the Japanese colonial period (1910~1945) and was succeeded by the present Buried Cultural Properties Act enacted in 2011. Despite the importance of the system that completes the outcomes of excavations and determines the state-owned cultural properties, the foundation of national heritage, it has been limitedly regarded as administrative area and neglected by the academic scholars or policy researchers. Recently the traditional culture has drawn increasing domestic interest and awareness that the cultural heritage contributes to building cultural identity and vitalizing tourism has led to increasing the demand of a local government's role in management of the state-designated cultural heritage and even fighting for hegemony in securing the cultural objects between the central and local governments. Despite the continuing efforts for improving the selection process of cultural heritage and its management institution, establishment of an advanced objective system has been requested. This paper is intended to suggest the policy direction through demonstrating the problem and assignment caused in the process of implementing the Buried Cultural Properties Act and reviews the State Ownership of Excavated Cultural Heritage System from the legal point of view accordingly. First, I suggest improving the selection process of the state-owned cultural properties. Even though current law states that Administrator of Cultural Heritage Administration reviews the research reports and selects the possible candidates for the state-owned cultural properties almost all the cultural objects listed on the reports are practically selected. In this regard, two possible resolutions can be made; newly establishing a separate process for selecting the state-owned cultural properties after publishing the report or adding the selection process of the state-owned cultural properties during the heritage selection meeting. Either way should contribute to strengthening the impartiality and objectivity of the policy. My second suggestion is improving the operating system of the heritage selection meeting in which the cultural properties to be listed on the reports are determined. Given the present extensive assessment criteria, there is much room for certain experts' subjective opinions. Therefore, in order to enhance the fairness and credibility of the heritage selection meeting, specifying the assessment criteria and advance review of the expert list are necessary. Third, this paper suggests increasing the local government's role in management of the state-owned cultural heritage and diversifying the heritage management institution. Development of a local self-governing system has led to the increased demand for delegating the authority of the state-owned heritage management to the local governments. Along with this, the gradual improvements of public museum management raises the need for expanding the cultural benefits through increasing the local government's role in management of the state-owned heritage. Considering the fact that overall majority of the art collections housed at national or public museums is owned by the central government, developing a variety of heritage contents and vitalizing the heritage tourism are crucial. The true meaning and value of the state-owned cultural heritage hidden at the storage of a museum can be found when they are shared together with the public.

Dutch Flower Still Life from the 17th Century to the Early 18th Century : A formal characteristics of Dutch Flower still life and its Relationship demand for artworks (17~18C의 네덜란드 꽃정물화 조형적 특성 연구 -네덜란드 꽃정물화의 조형적 특성과 미술수요의 관계를 중심으로-)

  • Lee, Ock Keun
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Floral Art and Design
    • /
    • no.44
    • /
    • pp.33-51
    • /
    • 2021
  • This thesis analyzes the formal characteristics of Dutch flower still life from the 17th century to the early 18th century and looks into the relevance with the Dutch art market from a macro perspective. The 17th Flower Still Life is to represent social hierarchy in that as the imported exotic, recherch items, the flowers were classified in the terms of their rarity and expensiveness. For this intriguing research, the subject is circumscribed to a vase of flowers, which is the quintessence of In the form of various Dutch Flower Still Life. Dutch society in the early 17th century was centered on the civilian class engaged in trade and commerce, which allowed them to purchase art works to show off their wealth, economic benefits and satisfaction of aesthetic tastes. Among them, the popularity of flower still life was related to the concentrated demand for rare flowers from the new continent. Accordingly, exact depiction and sense of the three dimensional manner were highly regarded in the early flower still life. For the tastes of the wealthy citizens who succeeded in business, the identity of flowers and the actual screen were considered as important. However, after the mid 17th century, economic growth in the Netherlands put an end, and the art market was also on a downward path. The demand class of flower still life has gotten farther away from the spirit of businessmen and has changed into city aristocrats who were stable rentiers. Their tastes laid emphasis on subjective sensibility, which meant that aristocratic, asymmetric, and dramatic chiaroscuro were preferred rather than being realistic. Furthermore, in the 18th century illusionistic realism was abandoned as an expression method of the planar characteristics and a new era in the floral still life was ushered with the reinforcement of decorative effect. From this perspective, it is not an exaggeration to say that romanticism, which is thought of as the beginning of Contemporary Art, originated from the aesthetic taste of Dutch civic culture.

A Study on the Relationship Between Online Community Characteristics and Loyalty : Focused on Mediating Roles of Self-Congruency, Consumer Experience, and Consumer to Consumer Interactivity (온라인 커뮤니티 특성과 충성도 간의 관계에 대한 연구: 자아일치성, 소비자 체험, 상호작용성의 매개적 역할을 중심으로)

  • Kim, Moon-Tae;Ock, Jung-Won
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
    • /
    • v.18 no.4
    • /
    • pp.157-194
    • /
    • 2008
  • The popularity of communities on the internet has captured the attention of marketing scholars and practitioners. By adapting to the culture of the internet, however, and providing consumer with the ability to interact with one another in addition to the company, businesses can build new and deeper relationships with customers. The economic potential of online communities has been discussed with much hope in the many popular papers. In contrast to this enthusiastic prognostications, empirical and practical evidence regarding the economic potential of the online community has shown a little different conclusion. To date, even communities with high levels of membership and vibrant social arenas have failed to build financial viability. In this perspective, this study investigates the role of various kinds of influencing factors to online community loyalty and basically suggests the framework that explains the process of building purchase loyalty. Even though the importance of building loyalty in an online environment has been emphasized from the marketing theorists and practitioners, there is no sufficient research conclusion about what is the process of building purchase loyalty and the most powerful factors that influence to it. In this study, the process of building purchase loyalty is divided into three levels; characteristics of community site such as content superiority, site vividness, navigation easiness, and customerization, the mediating variables such as self congruency, consumer experience, and consumer to consumer interactivity, and finally various factors about online community loyalty such as visit loyalty, affect, trust, and purchase loyalty are those things. And the findings of this research are as follows. First, consumer-to-consumer interactivity is an important factor to online community purchase loyalty and other loyalty factors. This means, in order to interact with other people more actively, many participants in online community have the willingness to buy some kinds of products such as music, content, avatar, and etc. From this perspective, marketers of online community have to create some online environments in order that consumers can easily interact with other consumers and make some site environments in order that consumer can feel experience in this site is interesting and self congruency is higher than at other community sites. It has been argued that giving consumers a good experience is vital in cyber space, and websites create an active (rather than passive) customer by their nature. Some researchers have tried to pin down the positive experience, with limited success and less empirical support. Web sites can provide a cognitively stimulating experience for the user. We define the online community experience as playfulness based on the past studies. Playfulness is created by the excitement generated through a website's content and measured using three descriptors Marketers can promote using and visiting online communities, which deliver a superior web experience, to influence their customers' attitudes and actions, encouraging high involvement with those communities. Specially, we suggest that transcendent customer experiences(TCEs) which have aspects of flow and/or peak experience, can generate lasting shifts in beliefs and attitudes including subjective self-transformation and facilitate strong consumer's ties to a online community. And we find that website success is closely related to positive website experiences: consumers will spend more time on the site, interacting with other users. As we can see figure 2, visit loyalty and consumer affect toward the online community site didn't directly influence to purchase loyalty. This implies that there may be a little different situations here in online community site compared to online shopping mall studies that shows close relations between revisit intention and purchase intention. There are so many alternative sites on web, consumers do not want to spend money to buy content and etc. In this sense, marketers of community websites must know consumers' affect toward online community site is not a last goal and important factor to influnece consumers' purchase. Third, building good content environment can be a really important marketing tool to create a competitive advantage in cyberspace. For example, Cyworld, Korea's number one community site shows distinctive superiority in the consumer evaluations of content characteristics such as content superiority, site vividness, and customerization. Particularly, comsumer evaluation about customerization was remarkably higher than the other sites. In this point, we can conclude that providing comsumers with good, unique and highly customized content will be urgent and important task directly and indirectly impacting to self congruency, consumer experience, c-to-c interactivity, and various loyalty factors of online community. By creating enjoyable, useful, and unique online community environments, online community portals such as Daum, Naver, and Cyworld are able to build customer loyalty to a degree that many of today's online marketer can only dream of these loyalty, in turn, generates strong economic returns. Another way to build good online community site is to provide consumers with an interactive, fun, experience-oriented or experiential Web site. Elements that can make a dot.com's Web site experiential include graphics, 3-D images, animation, video and audio capabilities. In addition, chat rooms and real-time customer service applications (which link site visitors directly to other visitors, or with company support personnel, respectively) are also being used to make web sites more interactive. Researchers note that online communities are increasingly incorporating such applications in their Web sites, in order to make consumers' online shopping experience more similar to that of an offline store. That is, if consumers are able to experience sensory stimulation (e.g. via 3-D images and audio sound), interact with other consumers (e.g., via chat rooms), and interact with sales or support people (e.g. via a real-time chat interface or e-mail), then they are likely to have a more positive dot.com experience, and develop a more positive image toward the online company itself). Analysts caution, however, that, while high quality graphics, animation and the like may create a fun experience for consumers, when heavily used, they can slow site navigation, resulting in frustrated consumers, who may never return to a site. Consequently, some analysts suggest that, at least with current technology, the rule-of-thumb is that less is more. That is, while graphics etc. can draw consumers to a site, they should be kept to a minimum, so as not to impact negatively on consumers' overall site experience.

  • PDF