Books by Marius Ion Bența
Routledge, 2021
In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technol... more In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life.
Table of Contents:
Paul O’Connor, Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine?
Arpad Szakolczai, Chapter 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age
Tom Boland, Chapter 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market
Agnes Horvath, Chapter 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence
Daniel Gati, Chapter 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation?
Ray Griffin, Chapter 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void
Stephen Turner, Chapter 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal
Marius Ion Benta, Chapter 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics
Thomas S.J. Smith, Chapter 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0
Janos Mark Szakolczai, Chapter 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate
Paul O’Connor, Chapter 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena
Marius Ion Benta, Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social?
This work is a critical introduction to Alfred Schutz’s sociology of the multiple reality and a... more This work is a critical introduction to Alfred Schutz’s sociology of the multiple reality and an enterprise that seeks to reassess and reconstruct the Schutzian project. In the first part of the study, I inquire into Schutz’s biographical con- text that surrounds the germination of this conception and I analyse the main texts of Schutz where he has dealt directly with ‘finite provinces of meaning.’ On the basis of this analysis, I suggest and discuss, in Part II, several solutions to the shortcomings of the theoretical system that Schutz drew upon the sociological problem of multiple reality. Specifically, I discuss problems related to the struc- ture, the dynamics, and the interrelationing of finite provinces of meaning as well as the way they relate to the questions of narrativity, experience, space, time, and identity.
Routledge, 2018
Contemporary challenges related to walls, borders and encirclement, such as migration, integratio... more Contemporary challenges related to walls, borders and encirclement, such as migration, integration and endemic historical conflicts, can only be understood properly from a long-term perspective. This book seeks to go beyond conventional definitions of the long durée by locating the social practice of walling and encirclement in the broadest context of human history, integrating insights from archaeology and anthropology. Such an approach, far from being simply academic, has crucial contemporary relevance, as its focus on origins helps to locate the essential dynamics of this practice, and provides a rare external position from which to view the phenomenon as a transformative exercise, with the area walled serving as an artificial womb or matrix. The modern world, with its ingrained ideas of borders, nation states and other entities, often makes it is very difficult to gain a critical distance and detachment to see beyond conventional perspectives. The unique approach of this book offers an antidote to this problem. Cases discussed in the book range from Palaeolithic caves, the ancient walls of Göbekli Tepe, Jericho and Babylon, to the foundation of Rome, the Chinese Empire, medieval Europe and the Berlin Wall. The book also looks at contemporary developments such as the Palestinian wall, Eastern and Southern European examples, Trump’s proposed Mexican wall, the use of Greece as a bulwark containing migration flows and the transformative experience of voluntary work in a Calcutta hospice. In doing so, the book offers a political anthropology of one of the most fundamental yet perennially problematic human practices: the constructing of walls. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and political theory.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Introduction (Agnes Horvath, Marius Bența and Joan Davison)
Part I: Theorising Walling: Processes of Transformation in History
1. Walling Europe: The perverted linear transformation (Agnes Horvath)
2. The meaning and meaninglessness of building walls (Arpad Szakolczai)
3. Oppressive walling: Babel and the inverted order of the world (Marius Bența)
Part II Contemporary Examples for Transformations through Walling
4. Walling as encystation: A socio-historical inquiry (Glenn Bowman)
5. Border-crossing and walling states in humanitarian work in Calcutta (Egor Novikov)
6. Liminality and belonging: The life and the afterlives of the Berlin Wall (Harald Wydra)
7.The Great Wall of China does not exist (Erik Ringmar)
8. Breaching Fortress Europe: The liminal consequences of the Greek Migrant Crisis (Manussos Marangudakis)
9. Imaginary walls and the paradox of strength (Arvydas Grišinas)
10. Identities frozen, societies betrayed, communities divided: The US-Mexican Wall (Joan Davison)
Conclusion
Index
Routledge, 2018
This book offers a theoretical investigation into the general problem of reality as a multiplicit... more This book offers a theoretical investigation into the general problem of reality as a multiplicity of ‘finite provinces of meaning’, as developed in the work of Alfred Schutz. A critical introduction to Schutz’s sociology of multiple realities as well as a sympathetic re-reading and reconstruction of his project, Experiencing Multiple Realities traces the genesis and implications of this concept in Schutz’s writings before presenting an analysis of various ways in which it can shed light on major sociological problems, such as social action, social time, social space, identity, or narrativity.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction: realities just ‘real enough’
1. Theory and story: in-between encounters
2. Schutz’s methodological journey
3. The Schutzian FPM model
4. Revisiting the Provinces
5. The life of the provinces
6. Methods of experience
7. Experience as discourse
8. Ancient FPM portals: painted screens
Conclusion
Index
Sublim şi haos în oraşele Transilvaniei. Zece răspunsuri esenţiale de la un expert: Szabolcs Guttmann [Sublime and Chaos in Transylvanian Cities: Ten Essential Answers from an Expert: Szabolcs Guttmann]
Islamul vazut si trait de Calin Felezeu [The Islam, as Seen and Lived by Calin Felezeu]
Papers by Marius Ion Bența
Walling, Boundaries and Liminality
Schutz’s methodological journey
The life of the provinces
This book offers a theoretical investigation into the general problem of reality as a multiplicit... more This book offers a theoretical investigation into the general problem of reality as a multiplicity of 'finite provinces of meaning,' as developed in the work of Alfred Schutz. A critical introduction to Schutz's sociology of multiple realities as well as a sympathetic re-reading and reconstruction of his project, Experiencing Multiple Realities, traces the genesis and implications of this concept in Schutz's writings before presenting an analysis of the various ways in which it can shed light on major sociological problems, such as social action, social time, social space, identity, or narrativity. 4 Revisiting the provinces 4.1 Brief critique of the Schutzian model 67 4.2 The general FPM structure 70 4.3 The epochè of the natural attitude 73 4.4 Life-world resources 76 5 The life of the provinces 5.1 The universal projection 96 5.2 Connected realities 97 5.3 Morphology, constitution, and dynamics 107 6 Methods of experience 6.1 Behaviour, action, and experience 113 6.2 Biographical situation 115 7 Experience as discourse 7.1 Narrative tools 119 7.2 Paradigm and syntagm 122 8 Ancient FPM portals: painted screens Conclusion Index viii Contents
Corruption and the firefighter effect
Routledge eBooks, Nov 1, 2022
Oppressive walling
Routledge eBooks, Aug 6, 2018
Special Issue: Crisis, liminality and performance
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), May 1, 2020
When we discussed this special issue first almost a year ago, we considered that we were living t... more When we discussed this special issue first almost a year ago, we considered that we were living through a chronic liminal phase, the gradual and interminable de-structuring of society, expressed in global capitalism, immersive social media, relentless career work and identity-performances. Yet, as we arrive at publishing the special issue, we are confronted by an acute global crisis in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic<em>.</em> By the time this journal issue has been published, there is no doubt that this quickly evolving situation will have metamorphosed again, yet we simply cannot write about liminality and ignore the extra-ordinary situation we are in – thus, an editorial commentary is added below by Tom Boland on the pandemic as global liminality. Modernity is associated with ruptures, from the Reformation to the Revolutionary break with the <em>Ancien Regime</em>, to the long twentieth century of new beginnings, upheavals, and the repeated 'end of history'. Sociology in particular could be considered an attempt to grapple with these changes, as a sort of 'crisis science', yet perhaps the most fruitful perspectives for understanding these extraordinary breaks and breakdowns emerge from anthropology – liminality, schismogenesis, sacrificial crises, trickster logics – core concepts of the <em>International Political Anthropology</em> journal.
The smart womb
Routledge eBooks, Nov 9, 2021
List of acronyms Introduction: realities just 'real enough' PART I Chapter 1: Methodological prel... more List of acronyms Introduction: realities just 'real enough' PART I Chapter 1: Methodological preliminaries
Experiencing Multiple Realities
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Books by Marius Ion Bența
Table of Contents:
Paul O’Connor, Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine?
Arpad Szakolczai, Chapter 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age
Tom Boland, Chapter 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market
Agnes Horvath, Chapter 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence
Daniel Gati, Chapter 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation?
Ray Griffin, Chapter 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void
Stephen Turner, Chapter 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal
Marius Ion Benta, Chapter 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics
Thomas S.J. Smith, Chapter 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0
Janos Mark Szakolczai, Chapter 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate
Paul O’Connor, Chapter 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena
Marius Ion Benta, Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social?
Table of Contents:
Preface
Introduction (Agnes Horvath, Marius Bența and Joan Davison)
Part I: Theorising Walling: Processes of Transformation in History
1. Walling Europe: The perverted linear transformation (Agnes Horvath)
2. The meaning and meaninglessness of building walls (Arpad Szakolczai)
3. Oppressive walling: Babel and the inverted order of the world (Marius Bența)
Part II Contemporary Examples for Transformations through Walling
4. Walling as encystation: A socio-historical inquiry (Glenn Bowman)
5. Border-crossing and walling states in humanitarian work in Calcutta (Egor Novikov)
6. Liminality and belonging: The life and the afterlives of the Berlin Wall (Harald Wydra)
7.The Great Wall of China does not exist (Erik Ringmar)
8. Breaching Fortress Europe: The liminal consequences of the Greek Migrant Crisis (Manussos Marangudakis)
9. Imaginary walls and the paradox of strength (Arvydas Grišinas)
10. Identities frozen, societies betrayed, communities divided: The US-Mexican Wall (Joan Davison)
Conclusion
Index
Table of Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction: realities just ‘real enough’
1. Theory and story: in-between encounters
2. Schutz’s methodological journey
3. The Schutzian FPM model
4. Revisiting the Provinces
5. The life of the provinces
6. Methods of experience
7. Experience as discourse
8. Ancient FPM portals: painted screens
Conclusion
Index
Papers by Marius Ion Bența