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Semiotics of Culture and Beyond

Irene Portis-Winner author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Peter Lang Publishing Inc

Published:30th Dec '13

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Semiotics of Culture and Beyond cover

The term «semiotics of culture» was first advanced by Jurij Lotman of the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics. Semiotics of culture refers to the study of communication through signs including by implication non-human communication, which includes biosemiotics as pioneered by Kalevi Kull in the Moscow-Tartu school. This area of study has turned away from positivism and views culture as essentially integrated in spite of inner tensions and conflicts. Semiotics of culture is interdisciplinary, rejecting false boundaries between disciplines.
This volume discusses the major founding scholars of this field, including Charles Sanders Peirce, Roman Jakobson, Jurij Lotman, and Mikhail Bakhtin who established dialogue as the basis of all human communication. The concepts of self and other – thus, of identity – are focal investigations in ethnic studies. More contemporary figures, Eric Wolf, Kalevi Kull, and filmmaker Jean Rouch also feature in the book. Franz Boas is treated here as a pioneer in American anthropology who prefigured the semiotics of culture. His approach was fundamental to the anthropologist Eric Wolf, who abandoned the misconception of fixed, timeless culture and established the importance of historical context in his study of power.
Because semiotics of culture comprises an extremely broad area of scholarship that touches upon all human and nonhuman behavior, this book will be appropriate for a variety of courses in the humanities and social and natural sciences.

«Semiotics of culture has been formulated as a discipline by Juri Lotman and his colleagues of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics. Irene Portis-Winner together with Thomas Winner introduced this field in America. Her contribution in advancing the semiotic approach in anthropology and studying its history is fascinating – systematic, insightful, and creative. She has become a classic author in the field.» (Kalevi Kull, Chair of the Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu)

ISBN: 9781433124518

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 450g

243 pages

New edition