Strategies of stimulating public awareness and implementing measures to safeguard traditional knowledge of the water management techniques generally known under the terms qanāt or kārīz involve paths of imbedding the technique into the history of a given society. The present study approaches such strategies in the case of the underground water networks in the arid regions in Xinjiang, North Western China, known there under the terms kārīz or kănérjĭng. There is an on-going debate concerning the beginnings of the construction of kārīz in Xinjiang. A recent revival of this technique started with a movement of kārīz (re)construction in the 1950s–1960s. In recent decades the kārīz/kănérjĭng water network has suffered due to the expansion of deep well drilling. At the same time the issue has become an object of museum representation. The first museum, Turfan Kariz Paradise, opened its gates in 1992; the Karez Folk Custom Garden, with a more pronounced event and commercial character, was inaugurated in 2000. Both exhibitions are near Turfan. They both demonstrate the traditional construction and maintenance techniques, and stress the strong linkage between local society and the specific traditional water technology. This paper argues that preserving the kārīz/kănérjĭng in the area of Turfan has become a delicate instrument in the political balance involving local authorities, the provincial government in Urumuqi and the central government in Beijing.
Zusammenfassung
Die Verehrung der Fußabdrücke des Propheten Mohammed im Islam steht in enger Verbindung sowohl zu Überlieferungen (ḥadīt) als auch zu Praktiken des Volksglaubens. In den muslimischen Gesellschaften liefert Mohammed als vorbildlicher Mensch verschiedene Elemente zur Re-Sakralisierung des Raumes in Verbindung mit seinem Körper. Seine Fußabdrücke eignen sich auf besondere Weise dafür, insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund der Einschränkungen bei der Darstellung der Zentralfigur des Propheten im islamischen religiösen Kontext. Überdies fügen sie sich auf eindrucksvolle Weise in die vorhandene sakrale Ornamentik. Schließlich dienen Fußabdrücke und Abbildungen des Schuhwerks des Propheten Mohammed als Allegorien der räumlichen Expansion des Islam.
Transcending the human perspective has always been a challengefor philosophical as well as for literary and scientific narratives. The present study focuses on such a transcendence from humans to plants through a joint reading of a philosophical and a literary narrative in a form of interdisciplinary conversation. Instead of interpreting literature by means of philosophical commentaries, the philosophical narrative itself will be focused and illuminated through the literary text. The essay La vie des plantes (The Life of Plants) (2016) by Emanuele Coccia is chosen as the philosophical component of this approach. The literary lens for focusing on Coccia's phenomenological treatise enacts the imagery concerning the gradual transformation of a woman into a plant in the story 'The Fruit of my Woman' published in 1997 by the South Korean author Han Kang.
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