Global imaginations

Session title: ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMAGINATIONS OF RELIGION

Generational research: between historical and sociological imaginations

In an overview of the history of post war British sociological research Mike Savage traces a transition from what he describes as a ‘gentlemanly sociology’ – normative in intention drawing on narrative and secondary sources – to a technical and empirical project employing the new methods of the interview and the survey. The latter, he suggests, abandoned an evolutionary project of relating past...

Kinetic Imaginations: Exploring the Possibilities of Combining AI and Dance

This paper presents an interdisciplinary project which aims at cross-fertilizing dance with artificial intelligence. It utilizes AI as an approach to explore and unveil new territories of possible dance movements. Statistical analyzes of recorded human dance movements provide the foundation for a system that learns poses from human dancers, extends them with novel variations and creates new mov...

Creating Elementary Mathematics Lessons with Children’s Rich Imaginations

According to the report of TIMSS (1999), Japanese children’s performance in mathematics is relatively high, but their attitudes towards mathematics are extremely negative; in fact they are at the lowest in the world. This is a serious problem for mathematics education in Japan. This article discusses ways to improve the current mathematics education system, presenting concrete examples. To impr...

Mosques, Temples, and Orientalists: Hegemonic Imaginations in Banaras

In a climate of rising religious fundamentalism, it is relevant and pertinent to examine the processes by which a " religious " site is created. My general premise is that historical narratives are negotiations, rather than simple renditions of fact, and thus are always reflective of their authors' contemporary politics. Within this framework, this essay explores the processes through which the...