culture/lit at Universität Wien

"colore" - to care for, to farm or cultivate and to prepare land for the production of food. 

to artificially improve nature

• is not the same thing as the actual material object in the world
• adds an extra level
• always distorted to some extent

• both terms are subject to change and ideological functions
• culture as ‘improvement’ of nature (brutish, wild)
• culture → overcoming nature through culture → equating humanity with culture

“The distinctive ideas, customs, social behavior, products, or way of life of a particular nation, society, people, or period. Hence: a society or group characterized by such customs”

Values, customs, practices, beliefs shared by a group of people

The two Cultures C.P. Snow: commonalities among members of academic community (attitudes, standards, patterns of behavior, approaches and assumptions) are more substantial than differences (e.g. “mental patterns” of different “religion or politics or class”)

Travelling Concepts (Mieke Bal): the term ‘subject’ refers to completely different things depending on the academic discipline/‘culture’

• not a pipe, but image of a pipe
• draws attention to the differnce between the real object, the pictorial representation of it and the linguistic representation of this object
• word pipe --> denotation of the thing

Andreas Mahler: ideology as “interessierter Sinn” - “meaning making with an interest at stake”.

In it’s most general form ideology is meaning making with an interest

• Maps as representations of ‘real’ space / a ‘real’ place
• what info is communicated?

• late 12th century
• T-and-O/O-and-T map 
• orbis terrarum, T-shaped sea, mare magnum at the center
• Asia, Africa and Europe 
• East at top, south on right hand side, north is left
• Africa at bottom right corner
• Jerusalem at the center, Jesus in a frame in top corner
• life after death
• Underneath Jesus feet is Eden
• mix of real and mythical places

“Something which stands for or denotes another symbolically; an image, a symbol, a sign.”

• Gerardus Mercator; map 1569
• James Gall; cylindrical projection 1885
• Arno Peters; equal area map 1974
• Gall-Peters projection upside down: tends to freak us out

“Boston public schools map switch aims to amend 500 years of distortion. A district will drop the Mercator projection, which physically diminished Africa and South America, for the Peters, which cut the developed world down to size.”

• cultural product
• shaped by ideologies, stabilize hierarchies according to which power is distributed --> BUT maps need to be smaller than place it represents 
• need to be aware of this