Yamabe no Akahito (724-736)

Yamabe no Akahito (724-736)

Shinto Shrines

“Places of God”

Shintoism

“The way of “Kami” or divine (“superior”)

“Ethnic religion” of Japanese people

Origins: A set of “native” beliefs and myths.

Creation myth

“National Religion”

Japaneseeeeeeee!!!

Komainu: Stone dogs

First: "a" Second: “um”: “AUM”

Shi: Chinese guardian lions

“Influences”

Confucianism (5th century)

Chinese Taoism and Yin-Yang (harmony between two

forces of nature)

Practicing Shintoism through Buddhism (7th century)

By the 12th to 14th centuries Shinto-Buddhist practices

emerged

Reaction to do away with Buddhism

Yasukuni Shrine

Impurity of purism (13th century)

Origins

Can we speak of something “original” in history?

Original is always a copy of something

Everything is a copy of something

else (with a bit of change)

Some of the most celebrated works are

Original Copies

What about?

Da Vinci a genius?

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

Our thesis

Everything new is an

“original” of something

older

Spaghetti

Sicilian noodle

Making of the Modern World 13New Ideas and Cultural Contacts

Spring 2016, Lecture 2

Fall Quarter, 2011

All the lectures

http://roosevelt.ucsd.edu/mmw/cours

es/mmw13.html.

No Ted

No Podcast

Just come to class

2016 course reader

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme

Films reviews

History as Interrelated and

contingent, but never EVENLY

in process

How are high heel shoes designed?

Bunch of factors

Class and production: those who produce or/and sell it

(Emerging) Market (s): how it is presented, distributed

and consumed.

State: how governments allow such markets to grow

Material conditions (technologies) that allow such

invention to take place.

Contact (Tranregional) as a source of shaping new ideas,

new design ideas

Bandwagon effect

Groupthink phenomenon

Beliefs spread among individuals as more people come to

believe in that something. People “hop” on the bandwagon

regardless of its functionality.

Normative cultures (1990s)

Fads associated with an ethnic or racial

group (1990s)

Class, gender and race (2000s)

Subcultures (1980s)

Historical background

Long, MESSAY history of shoemaking

What if?

1. Contact

2. Conditional probabilities

3. Unintended consequences of Human action in

historical time

4. History is everywhere:

Decisions we make in a given situation is limited to the

decisions one has made in the past, though those decisions

may no longer appear pertinent in our present lives.

5. No End Game:

Historical processes do not progress steadily toward some

pre-determined outcome.

An objection!

“I was minorly surprised when you declared that

history should not be organized in chronological order.

You then justified this view by explaining that any person’s

choice could lead to a different future outcome, basically

the parallel universe argument. The first reading on “time”

is more than confusing.”

Blind Chance

“ I’m an engineering student. We solve problems. Once we

solved enough problems, we get to make something

awesome. That’s engineering in a nut shell. We don’t argue

for the sake of argue. We argue in order to validate

concepts, prove theories. We strive to rigorously prove

every concept so that they don’t fail us when implemented

into new technologies. In order to make a valid statement,

we must have a center argument, supporting data, rigorous

mathematical proof and conclusion drawn from all that

work.”

What is History?

1. I like this one…

History is does NOT Repeat!

But

NOT

TWICE!!!

(and not in the same exact way)

Weimar Republic

Stop saying that history repeats

Family resemblance

19th century revolutions

I like this one even more

2. History is NEVER self-evident like a problem to be

solved

Historical knowledge is ALWAYS mediated

by

what?

DISCOURSE (Language)

“Christopher Columbus Discovers America, 1492.”

Texas Public School Textbook

“The southern colonies’ cash crops required a great deal of

difficult work to grow and harvest. This meant a large

workforce was needed. By the 1700s enslaved Africans, rather

than indentured servants, had become the main source of

labor. African slaves brought with them knowledge that helped

turn the wild environment into profitable farms. Many had

previous experience raising cattle and knew the method for

clearing brush using fire.”

University of New South Wales

“settled” or “nomadic”

Capitan Cook “landed,” “invaded” or colonialized?

Myth

From myth to fabrication?

Media

Textbooks

Historical Representation:

Robert Doisneau's “The Kiss”