(Re)signification Strategies: Theories and Practices

In contexts of continuous renewal, responding to new challenges requires innovating and refreshing the significance of experience. To this end, multiple (re)signification strategies are developed and put into practice. These processes have a cultural reach and a communicational profile. Seen from this angle, studying (re)signification strategies becomes relevant to better understanding how complex are the challenging issues contemporary societies are facing. Of all the different strategies that are possible or have been adopted over the course of the historical evolution of human societies, we point out the ones tending to push into the realms of culture for the sake of establishing communities of identity and meaning, alongside the fundamental matters pertaining to the ongoing demand or inescapability of reconciling the relations of meaning laid bare at the heart of people’s objective and intersubjective experiences. This working group, coordinated by Edgley P. de Paula and Robert Junqueira, is designed to facilitate an environment of interdisciplinary exchange between a multidisciplinary group of researchers with expertise in fields such as Anthropology and Sociology, including Economics, History, Law, Psychology, and Semiotics. We will ensure the convergence of the diverse disciplinary perspectives, methodological procedures, and objects on the basis of a common criterion favoring the key role that cultural factors play in the dynamic processes established in the context of the social corpus under investigation, together with other analytical or empirical issues that prove critical to the development of culturally-oriented approaches in the legal, social, and human sciences. We will welcome studies on the different appropriations and (re)significations of artifacts, spaces, historical accounts, as well as other research avenues emerging from our shared, social existence in the face of an attentive and contextualized observation of the representations collectively wrought throughout the ages.

All those who are interested are welcome!