TRANSCIENCE

Volume 11, Issue 2 (2020)

A World Of Our Own: A Pragmatic-Poietic, Transformative Perspective, Conversationally Developed
Jose Crisóstomo de Souza
This essay proposes our social, active-sensuous, creative, artefactual entanglement with the world as a guiding reference for understanding, in a new, interconnected way, action, reality, meaning, knowledge and normativity, in distinction from both a positivist realism, and a relativist, linguistic anti-representationalism. The non-representationalist practical-productive, transformative perspective which follows from it is based on notions such as 1) meaning-endowing, intentional activity, 2) reality and ourselves as material activity, 3) meaning and normativity as constituted in our practice of dealing purposefully with the world and people. Its unfolding, in a colloquial and exploratory way, follows five main steps: a) a critical presentation of the mentalist, representationalist side of traditional, dogmatic empiricism, b) a critical presentation of linguistic, relativist anti-representationalism, contrasted to the first, and here construed as overly linguocentric and disembodied, c) an outline of a material-creative pragmatism as practical-realist and transformative, and, in conclusion, d) the suggestion of a materialist-holistic, objectual understanding of world, culture and ourselves.

Special Contribution: A New Approach to Heritage Tourism in Southeast Asia
David Lempert
This article, in two parts, reports on a new model of heritage and eco-tourism that was pioneered in Southeast Asia (in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) from 2002 to 2016 and partly in Hungary in 2006 to 2008. Part I describes the approach and compares it to other forms of tourism and of government approaches to building tourism infrastructure. The approach expands the idea of heritage trails (walking and bicycling) to multiple periods and themes on the same landscape to raise questions on culture, history, and environment. In addition to tourism, the approach is educational and seeks to promote cross-cultural tolerance and environmental, cultural, and cultural heritage site protection. Part II describes the difficulties of implementing such an approach in four countries in Southeast Asia. Although the objectives of alternative forms of tourism that include environmental and heritage protection fit well within established international community laws and stated goals, the current neo-liberal, globalist homogenizing agenda in international development and the goal of elites in the region and globally to undermine minority identities, to protect the authority of elite rulers of nation-states, to promote a single ideology, and to suppress intellectual freedom, environmental protection, heritage protection, diversity, and individual expression, make it nearly impossible to promote any of the goals of such an approach.

The Epistemological Foundations of Scientific Knowledge
Gernot Saalmann
The text basically tries to make five points: All kinds of science share the same epistemological foundations. Science is not a search for (absolute) truth, but one for (situated) knowledge. Objectivity only is ever interpretive objectivity. A version of Pragmatism can best answer all epistemological questions. This particular Pragmatism has to be thought of as relational.

Bourdieu and the analysis of social classes in Mexico
Adrian Scholz Alvarado
The following article studies the reception of Pierre Bourdieu's scholarly work in the field of social stratification research in Mexico. With the new millennium, it can be observed that a renewed interest in stratification research arose in Mexico and Latin America. While there is in general great interest in the research work of the French sociologist, his theories and concepts do not enjoy the same relevance in the field of stratification research in Mexico. For instance, the argument of cultural heterogeneity of Latin American countries represents a serious challenge to the usefulness of Bourdieu's class analysis in this region (see García Canclini 1990). However, there are also promising connection points for a Bourdieusian class analysis in Mexican sociology. In this context, Saravís' (2016) class research in urban areas of Mexico and his concept of social fragmentation are central. By studying these concepts and Bourdieu's reception in Mexico it is the objective of this article to provide new incentives for research on social classes in Latin America and, furthermore, to promote a Trans-Atlantic dialogue with respect to research on social classes by focusing on a country in the global South.

Urban Redevelopment and the Structuring of Spatial Inequality in China
Zachary Lowell
Urban redevelopment in China has opened up new spaces for the articulation of social distinction, as well as new configurations of social inequality. This article offers a historical, conceptual and theoretical approach to understanding these configurations, based on the continuation of socialist-era inequalities and the emergence of new inequalities based on neoliberalism. Using insights from Pierre Bourdieu, I argue that suzhi, as well as the institutional legacies of the hukou and danwei systems, can help us understand how, and why, the benefits of redevelopment are unequally distributed amid changes to the built environment.

Review: A Time Known to All: Stephanos Stephanides and Ari Sitas
Susan Visvanathan
This essay concerns itself with the way in which two renowned poets, both of them Cypriots, involve the reader in journeys which become mental maps of the lands in which they have lived in, and the poetry that has become a palimpsest for further conversations. The concepts of time and place are further entrenched in biography, as they concern themselves not just with geographical arenas and habitats, but with a continuing sense of the sacred and the inviolate. Coming from territories identified with war, and reflecting on combustible boundaries, the two poets allow us to enter into a fragile world, peopled by their dreams. For both Stephanos Stephanides and Ari Sitas, the tactile sense of Nature, and their belief in the interrelatedness of dream time with real time, is presented powerfully. Cyprus emerges as a common ground of their belonging, as does their sense of being active agents of change, or political catalysts, in the practice of poetry.